A tender went forth to meet a Dutch American liner in the roads. We followed her along the jetty. At the end of the jetty the gale was already blowing; and rain-squalls were all round the horizon. Soon we were in the midst of a squall ourselves. The rain hid everything for a minute. It cleared. The vast stretch of sands glistened wet, with the variegated bathing-tents, from which even then beautiful creatures were bathing in a shallow surf. Beyond was the casino, and all the complex roofs of Boulogne, and to the north a road climbing up to the cliff-top, and the illimitable dunes that are a feature of this part of the country. Above all floated thunder-clouds, white in steely blue. The skipper did not like those thunder-clouds; he said they were the most dangerous of all clouds, “because anything might come out of them.” He spoke as if they already contained in their bosoms every conceivable sort of weather, which they would let loose according to their caprice.
The rain resumed heavily. The wind compelled us to hold tight to the rail of the pier. A poster announced that in the casino behind the rain, Suppé’s “Boccaccio” was to be performed that night, and Massenet’s “Thaïs” the next night. And opera seemed a very artificial and unnecessary form of activity as we stood out there in the reality of the storm. The Atlantic liner had now bid good-by to the tender, and was hugely moving. She found sea-room, and then turned with the solemnity of her bigness, and headed straight into the gale, pitching like a toy. The rain soon veiled her, and she was gone. I could not picture the _Velsa_ in such a situation, at any rate with the owner on board. We went back, rather pensive, to the Quai Chanzy.
The men in the pilot-boat alongside the _Velsa_ were not in the least reassuring as to the chances of the _Velsa_ ever getting to Brittany; but they were uplifted because the weather was too rough for them to go out. When the cone is on view, the pilot-service is accomplished by a powerful steam-vessel. Our friends, in their apparently happy idleness, sculled forth in a dinghy about fifty yards from where we lay, and almost immediately rejoined us with three eels that they had caught. I bought the three eels for two shillings, and the cook cooked them perfectly, and I ate one of them with ecstasy a few hours later; but eels are excessively antipathetic to the digestive organs, and may jaundice the true bright color of the world for days.