They glided, they advanced by slight jerks, now through yellow velvet which was sand, then through a brown thing, striped regularly and dangerous to walkers, which was slime.
And thousands of little puddles, left by the tide of the day before, reflected the dawn, shone on the soft extent like mother-of-pearl shells.

On the little yellow and brown desert, their boatman followed the course of a thin, silver stream, which represented the Bidassoa at low tide.

From time to time, some fisherman crossed their path, passed near them in silence, without singing as the custom is in rowing, too busy poling, standing in his bark and working his pole with beautiful plastic gestures.
While they were day-dreaming, they approached the French shore, the smugglers.

On the other side of the strange zone which they were traversing as in a sled, that silhouette of an old city, which fled from them slowly, was Fontarabia; those highlands which rose to the sky with figures so harsh, were the Spanish Pyrenees.

All this was Spain, mountainous Spain, eternally standing there in the face of them and incessantly preoccupying their minds: a country which one must reach in silence, in dark nights, in nights without moonlight, under the rain of winter; a country which is the perpetual aim of dangerous expeditions; a country which, for the men of Ramuntcho's village, seems always to close the southwestern horizon, while it changes in appearance according to the clouds and the hours; a country which is the first to be lighted by the pale sun of mornings and which masks afterward, like a sombre screen the red sun of evenings .-- He adored his Basque land, Ramuntcho,--and this morning was one of the times when this adoration penetrated him more profoundly.