All the flags of Europe waved overhead from long staves, which gave it an aspect of Babel on a feast-day, and the glistening sands surrounded the town like a moving sea.
They had stopped there, touching the quays, almost in the midst of the long streets full of wooden shanties.

Since his departure, Sylvestre never had seen the outside world so closely, and the movement and numbers of boats excited and amused him.
With never-ending screeching from their escape-pipes, all these boats crowded up in the long canal, as narrow as a ditch, which wound itself in a silvery line through the infinite sands.

From his post on high he could see them as in a procession under a window, till disappearing in the plain.
On the canal all kinds of costumes could be seen; men in many-coloured attire, busy and shouting like thunder.

And at night the clamour of confused bands of music mingled with the diabolical screams of the locomotives, playing noisy tunes, as if to drown the heart-breaking sorrow of the exiles who for ever passed onward.
The next day, at sunrise, they, too, glided into the narrow ribbon of water between the sands.

For two days the steaming in the long file through the desert lasted, then another sea opened before them, and they were once again upon the open.