Having started on foot and gone, with infinite precautions to be silent, through ravines, through woods, through fords of rivers, they were returning, as if they were people who had never anything to conceal3 from anybody, in a bark of Fontarabia, hired under the eyes of Spain's custom house officers, through the Bidassoa river.
All the mass of mountains and of clouds, all the sombre chaos4 of the preceding night had disentangled itself almost suddenly, as under the touch of a magic wand. The Pyrenees, returned to their real proportions, were only average mountains, with slopes bathed in a shadow still nocturnal, but with peaks neatly5 cut in a sky which was already clearing. The air had become lukewarm, suave6, exquisite7, as if the climate or the season had suddenly changed,—and it was the southern wind which was beginning to blow, the delicious southern wind special to the Basque country, which chases before it, the cold, the clouds and the mists, which enlivens the shades of all things, makes the sky blue, prolongs the horizons infinitely8 and gives, even in winter, summer illusions.
The boatman who was bringing the smugglers back to France pushed the bottom of the river with his long pole, and the bark dragged, half stranded9. At this moment, that Bidassoa by which the two countries are separated, seemed drained, and its antique bed, excessively large, had the flat extent of a small desert.
The day was decidedly breaking, tranquil10 and slightly pink. It was the first of the month of November; on the Spanish shore, very distant, in a monastery11, an early morning bell rang clear, announcing the religious solemnity of every autumn. And Ramuntcho, comfortably seated in the bark, softly cradled and rested after the fatigues12 of the night, breathed the new breeze with well-being13 in all his senses. With a childish joy, he saw the assurance of a radiant weather for that All-Saints' Day which was to bring to him all that he knew of this world's festivals: the chanted high mass, the game of pelota before the assembled village, then, at last, the dance of the evening with Gracieuse, the fandango in the moon-light on the church square.
He lost, little by little, the consciousness of his physical life, Ramuntcho, after his sleepless14 night; a sort of torpor15, benevolent16 under the breath of the virgin17 morning, benumbed his youthful body, leaving his mind in a dream. He knew well such impressions and sensations, for the return at the break of dawn, in the security of a bark where one sleeps, is the habitual18 sequel of a smuggler's expedition.
And all the details of the Bidassoa's estuary19 were familiar to him, all its aspects, which changed with the hour, with the monotonous20 and regular tide.—Twice every day the sea wave comes to this flat bed; then, between France and Spain there is a lake, a charming little sea with diminutive21 blue waves—and the barks float, the barks go quickly; the boatmen sing their old time songs, which the grinding and the shocks of the cadenced22 oars23 accompany. But when the waters have withdrawn24, as at this moment, there remains25 between the two countries only a sort of lowland, uncertain and of changing color, where walk men with bare legs, where barks drag themselves, creeping.
They were now in the middle of this lowland, Ramuntcho and his band, half dozing26 under the dawning light. The colors of things began to appear, out of the gray of night. They glided27, they advanced by slight jerks, now through yellow velvet28 which was sand, then through a brown thing, striped regularly and dangerous to walkers, which was slime. And thousands of little puddles29, 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, standing30 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 silhouette31 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 incessantly32 preoccupying33 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 afterward34, 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 adoration35 penetrated36 him more profoundly. In his after life, during his exile, the reminiscence of these delightful37 returns at dawn, after the nights of smuggling38, caused in him an indescribable and very anguishing39 nostalgia40. But his love for the hereditary41 soil was not as simple as that of his companions. As in all his sentiments, as in all his sensations, there were mingled42 in it diverse elements. At first the instinctive43 and unanalyzed attachment44 of his maternal45 ancestors to the native soil, then something more refined coming from his father, an unconscious reflection of the artistic46 admiration47 which had retained the stranger here for several seasons and had given to him the caprice of allying himself with a girl of these mountains in order to obtain a Basque descendance.—
