"We can try, monseigneur," said the patron, timidly. "Come, you fellows, put out your strength, row, row!"
"No," said Fouquet, "stop short, on the contrary."
"Monseigneur! what folly!" interrupted Gourville, stooping toward his ear.
"Quite short!" repeated Fouquet. The eight oars stopped, and resisting the water, they created a retrograde motion in the lighter. It was stopped. The twelve rowers in the other did not, at first, perceive this maneuver, for they continued to urge on their boat so vigorously that it arrived quickly within musket-shot. Fouquet was short-sighted, Gourville was annoyed by the sun, which was full in his eyes: the patron alone, with that habit and clearness which are acquired by a constant struggle with the elements, perceived distinctly the travelers in the neighboring lighter. "I can see them!" cried he, "there are two."
"I can see nothing," said Gourville. "You will not be long before you distinguish them: in twenty strokes of their oars they will be within twenty paces of us."
But what the patron announced was not realized; the lighter imitated the movement commanded by Fouquet, and instead of coming to join its pretended friends, it stopped short in the middle of the river.
"I cannot comprehend this," said the patron.
"Nor I, neither," said Gourville.
"You who can see so plainly the people in that lighter," resumed Fouquet, "try to describe them to us, patron, before we are too far off."
"I thought I saw two," replied the boatman, "I can only see one now under the tent."