Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/278



fête swelled, developed, became furious. Evening drew on, an obscure September evening. Booths set up on the parade exhaled an odour of cooked mussels mingled with the smell of bladderwrack and spawn, which was abundantly produced at the breakwater. Candles were lighted on stages and stalls. A mad cacophony of drums, cymbals, rommelpots and hoarse-throated buffoonery filled the air; the dancing booths resounded with hiccuppy accordions baffled by frantic outburst from fifes. The entertainments of the evening began in the booths of the wild beast tamers, and savage roarings made an echo to the sighing of the waves and harmonised with one knows not what human surge, what fleshly trepidation, what whirlwind of lust that was passing over the countryside.

Never had the sea been so phosphorescent. The fires of St. Elme clung under an inky