Read "A Fisher Girl of France" by Fernand Calmettes online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was seven o'clock by the sun when the steamer came into the waters of the Vergoyer. A perfect fleet followed it. They had come from Cayeux, Hourdel, Berck, Crotoy, even from Treport, and, perhaps, Etaples. Nowadays news travels far by telegraph, and, thanks to the connection between the Maritime Bureaus, word was scattered far and wide that they were going to explore the gulf; that the living were to see with their own eyes the abode of the dead.
Like so many birds of prey after a wounded whale, boats of all sizes and all rigs, sloops, barges, luggers, _flambarts_, followed in the wake of the steamer. They were all after plunder, all hoping to get rich easily. Divers often used explosives at the bottom of the sea to break up wrecks, and then the _débris_ floated. If they came across any such wreckage, it might be very valuable.