of riveters renewing the plates of a rusted prow. On the dock near-by was a group squatted about a heap of ruddy sails that ruddier hands struck the needle through. Other groups were sorting cod on the deck of Our Lady of Good News. In dusky sheds, bare-footed girls laughed and sang as they shovelled pyramids of Cadiz salt into barrows for other girls to wheel to outgoing ships. Constantly we marvelled at the speech of even these humble natives of St. Pierre who have no uncouth accent or patois but speak the pure tongue of Tours and Orléans.
On the road to Galantry there are shops fragrant with tar and oakum, where anchors and hard-tack are sold by the pound, squid-hooks by the card, and rope by the metre. In this direction are the premises of a corporation euphoniously known as The French Codfish, La Morue Française. Besides flocks of trawlers, goëlettes and cod transports, it owns a great drying-plant at Fécamp, near St. Malo on the Norman coast.
A stony hill behind the company's warehouses surveys the town, rising from its mast-fringed water-front to cheerless terraces. As a "symbol and work of faith" there stands above this village of fading hope a crucifix on a far-seen mound. Beyond a ravine are other mounds and crosses enclosed by a fence—a "sad colony" that the grave-blaster will guide you about. He blasts because one cannot dig rock, and St. Pierre is an
