A Fisher Girl of France by Fernand Calmettes

It was hardly daybreak when Elise and Firmin appeared on the wharf, pushing before them a wheelbarrow, on which were their sailors' kits. They were the first to arrive. The tide had gone out and, aground in the mud, the sleeping boats seemed to await in the silence of the dawn the hour for waking. Such of them as were being made ready for sea could be told by the marks of recent overhauling and their newly tarred rigging. Here lay the _Bon-Pêcheur_, a sloop, broad in the waist but tapering gracefully, and well-designed to cut the waves. All was in order on deck. The closed hatches showed that supplies were stowed away and everything ready.

Elise stopped short. From the head of the wharf, across the masts and rigging, she could perceive the Bay of Somme, which the sun was just softly lighting up. Since her childhood she had known this great clear bay, with its gray outlines softening away into fog. She would not see it again that night. Every day she had come faithfully to give it a look. She loved it, not only when the tide was high and it reflected the brightness of the heavens in its palpitating waves, but when, though bare at low tide, it was still beautiful, with its banks of red sand and its streams of water winding through it to the great sea.