And Ramuntcho, comfortably seated in the bark, softly cradled and rested after the fatigues of the night, breathed the new breeze with well-being in all his senses.

With a childish joy, he saw the assurance of a radiant weather for that All-Saints' Day which was to bring to him all that he knew of this world's festivals: the chanted high mass, the game of pelota before the assembled village, then, at last, the dance of the evening with Gracieuse, the fandango in the moon-light on the church square.
He lost, little by little, the consciousness of his physical life, Ramuntcho, after his sleepless night; a sort of torpor, benevolent under the breath of the virgin morning, benumbed his youthful body, leaving his mind in a dream.

He knew well such impressions and sensations, for the return at the break of dawn, in the security of a bark where one sleeps, is the habitual sequel of a smuggler's expedition.
And all the details of the Bidassoa's estuary were familiar to him, all its aspects, which changed with the hour, with the monotonous and regular tide .-- Twice every day the sea wave comes to this flat bed; then, between France and Spain there is a lake, a charming little sea with diminutive blue waves--and the barks float, the barks go quickly; the boatmen sing their old time songs, which the grinding and the shocks of the cadenced oars accompany.

But when the waters have withdrawn, as at this moment, there remains between the two countries only a sort of lowland, uncertain and of changing color, where walk men with bare legs, where barks drag themselves, creeping.
They were now in the middle of this lowland, Ramuntcho and his band, half dozing under the dawning light.

The colors of things began to appear, out of the gray of night.