A misty February twilight is descending over the ocean.

The newly fallen snow has melted and the warm air is heavy and damp.

The northwestern wind from the sea is driving it silently toward the mainland, bringing in its wake a sharply fragrant mixture of brine, of boundless space, of undisturbed, free and mysterious distances.
In the sky, where the sun is setting, a noiseless destruction of an unknown city, of an unknown land, is taking place; structures, magnificent palaces with towers, are crumbling; mountains are silently splitting asunder and, bending slowly, are tumbling down.

But no cry, no moan, no crash of the fall reaches the earth--the monstrous play of shadows is noiseless; and the great surface of the ocean, as though ready for something, as though waiting for something, reflecting it faintly, listens to it in silence.
Silence reigns also in the fishermen's settlement.

The fishermen have gone fishing; the children are sleeping and only the restless women, gathered in front of the houses, are talking softly, lingering before going to sleep, beyond which there is always the unknown.
The light of the sea and the sky behind the houses, and the houses and their bark roofs are black and sharp, and there is no perspective: the houses that are far and those that are near seem to stand side by side as if attached to one another, the roofs and the walls embracing one another, pressing close to one another, seized with the same uneasiness before the eternal unknown.
Right here there is also a little church, its side wall formed crudely of rough granite, with a deep window which seems to be concealing itself.
A cautious sound of women's voices is heard, softened by uneasiness and by the approaching night.
"We can sleep peacefully to-night.