CHAPTER II--ICELANDERS.
Their smack was named _La Marie_, and her master was Captain Guermeur.
Every year she set sail for the big dangerous fisheries, in the frigid regions where the summers have no night.

She was a very old ship, as old as the statuette of her patron saint itself.

Her heavy, oaken planks were rough and worn, impregnated with ooze and brine, but still strong and stout, and smelling strongly of tar.

At anchor she looked an old unwieldy tub from her so massive build, but when blew the mighty western gales, her lightness returned, like a sea-gull awakened by the wind.
Then she had her own style of tumbling over the rollers, and rebounding more lightly than many newer ones, launched with all your new fangles.
As for the crew of six men and the boy, they were "Icelanders," the valiant race of seafarers whose homes are at Paimpol and Treguier, and who from father to son are destined for the cod fisheries.
They hardly ever had seen a summer in France.

At the end of each winter they, with other fishers, received the parting blessing in the harbour of Paimpol.