Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 099.djvu/72

factory, for the cry was long-drawn, most melancholy, and musical. Unlike anything I had ever heard before, it reminded me of the words of the old ballad of "The Demon Lover":—

"And waesome wailed the snow-white sprites
Upon the gurlie sea."

Fortunately the wind blew me across to Evian, a small watering-place of Savoy, where there is a large stone breakwater for the protection of steamers landing passengers. An unknown lee-shore is not pleasant to approach in a storm, in whatever craft you may happen to be ; and on nearing the other side, where the waves were beating dangerously, I felt exceedingly thankful that I had not, on leaving Ouchy, turned back to ask a young lady to accompany me whom I had seen walking in the garden of the Beaurivage. When I reached the breakwater the waves were breaking upon the huge rough stones in such a way that they would have smashed the boat to splinters upon these in half a minute. As it was, I just managed to get safely round the corner of the breakwater into the stiller water behind, and to disappoint the expectation of two priests who were watching the adventure as if with some hope of having soon to administer the sacrament of extreme unction. On trying to rise in the boat I sank down again, finding that my limbs were paralysed for the moment by the long sitting posture and the cold wind ; and a French gendarme immediately began scrutinising me in a severe and suspicious manner. There happened to be a second pair of sculls in the boat, and his eye, catching these, glanced on me interrogatively, as much as to say, "What have you done with the murdered man?" To the mind of this little Javert there was evidently something essentially wrong in an unknown individual thus suddenly emerging out of a storm and landing on the coast of France. At all events it showed a want of proper respect for the territory of a great nation, and he never lost sight of me until I recrossed the lake in a steamboat, leaving the skiff to follow when Madame la Bise would allow.