--It must have been at midday; yes, monsieur, right in the middle of the day. But, my word, when it comes to sea fogs, midday is no better than a pitch-black night.... A local customs' officer told me, that at about half past eleven that day, as he went outside to close his shutters, the wind got up again and a gust blew his cap off. At the risk of being carried away himself, he began to scramble after it along the shore--on his hands and knees. You must understand that customs' men are not well off, and a cap is an expensive item. It seems that our man raised his head for a second and noticed a big ship under bare poles, running before the wind blowing towards the Lavezzi Islands. This ship was coming fast, so fast that he hardly had time to get a good look at her. No doubt it was the _Sémillante_ because half an hour later, the island shepherd heard something on these rocks.... But here's the very shepherd I'm talking about, monsieur; he will tell you himself.... Good day, Palombo, don't be frightened, come and warm yourself. A hooded man, whom I had seen a moment ago hanging around our fire, came timidly towards us. I had thought he was one of the crew, not knowing that there was a shepherd on the island. He was an old, leprous person, not quite all there, and affected by some awful disease or other which gave him obscenely thickened lips, horrible to look at. We took great trouble to tell him what it was all about. Then, scratching his diseased lip, the old man told us that, yes indeed, from inside his hut he had heard a fearful crash on the rocks at midday on that day. The island was completely flooded, so he couldn't go out-of-doors and it wasn't until the next day that he opened up to see the shore covered in debris and bodies washed up by the sea. Horrified, he ran to his boat to try to get some help from Bonifacio. The shepherd was tired by all this talking, and sat down, and the Master took up the story: --Yes, monsieur, this was the unfortunate old man that came to raise the alarm. He was almost insane with fear, and from that day on, his mind has been deranged. The truth is, the catastrophe was enough to do it.... Imagine six hundred bodies piled up haphazardly on the beach with splinters of wood and shreds of sail-cloth.... Poor _Sémillante_.... The sea had crushed everything to such tiny fragments, that the shepherd, Palombo, couldn't find enough good timber to make a fence round his hut.... As for the men, practically all of them were disfigured and hideously mutilated.... it was pitiful to see them all tangled up together. We found the captain in full dress uniform, and the chaplain with his stole round his neck. In one place, between two rocks, lay the ship's young apprentice, open-eyed.... He looked as though he was still alive--but he wasn't. It was fated; no one could have survived. Here the Master broke off his tale: --Hey, Nardi, he cried, the fire's going out.