"What wind?"
"Off shore."
"Very well, I'm coming."
Half-an-hour later I was hurrying down to the shore. The horizon was pale with the first rays of dawn, and I saw in the distance behind the bay des Anges the lights at Nice, and still further on the revolving lighthouse at Villefranche.
In front of me Antibes was dimly visible through the lifting darkness, with its two towers rising above the cone-shaped town, surrounded by the old walls built by Vauban.
In the streets were a few dogs and a few men, workmen starting off to their daily labour. In the port, nothing but the gentle swaying of the boats at the side of the quay, and the soft plashing of the scarcely moving water could be heard; or at times the sound of the straining of a cable or of a boat grazing against the hull of a vessel. The boats, the flagstones, the sea itself seemed asleep under the gold-spangled firmament, and under the eye of a small lighthouse which, standing out at the end of the jetty, kept watch over its little harbour.
Beyond, in front of Ardouin's building yard, I saw a glimmer, I felt a stir, I heard voices. They were expecting me. The Bel-Ami was ready to start.
I went down into the cabin, lighted up by a couple of candles hanging and balanced like compasses, at the foot of the sofas which at night were used as beds, I donned the leathern sailor's jacket, put on a warm cap, and returned on deck. Already the hawsers had been cast off, and the two men hauling in the cable, had brought the anchor apeak. Then they hoisted the big sail, which went up slowly to the monotonous groan of blocks and rigging. It rose wide and wan in the darkness of the night, quivering in the breath of the wind, hiding from us both sky and stars.
The breeze was coming dry and cold from the invisible mountain that one felt to be still laden with snow. It came very faint, as though hardly awake, undecided and intermittent.
Then the men shipped the anchor, I seized the helm, and the boat, like a big ghost, glided through the still waters. In order to get out of the port, we had to tack between the sleeping tartans and schooners. We went gently from one quay to another, dragging after us our little round dingy, which followed us as a cygnet, just hatched from its shell, follows the parent swan.