I inquired:
"What o'clock is it?"
"Three o'clock, sir."
Then, without rising, I stretched out my arm, and opened the door that separated my room from the forecastle.
The two men were squatting in the low den, through which the mast passes in fitting into the step; the den was full of such strange and odd things, that one might take it for a haunt of thieves; in perfect order along the partitions, instruments of all kinds were suspended: saws, axes, marling spikes, pieces of rigging, and saucepans; on the floor between the two berths, a pail, a stove, a barrel with its copper circles, glistening under the immediate ray of light from the lantern which hangs between the anchor bitts, by the side of the cable tiers; and my men were busy, baiting the innumerable hooks hanging all along the fishing lines.
"At what hour must I get up?" I asked.
"Why, now, sir, at once."
Half an hour after, we all three embarked on board the dingy, and left the "Bel-Ami" to go and spread our net at the foot of the Drammont, near the Ile d'Or.
Then when our line, some two or three hundred yards long, had sunk to the bottom, we baited three little deep-sea lines, and having anchored the boat by sinking a stone at the end of a rope, we began to fish.
It was already daylight, and I could distinctly see the coast of Saint-Raphaël, near the mouth of the Argens, and the sombre mountains of the Maures, themselves running out seawards till they came to an end, far away in the open sea, beyond the gulf of Saint-Tropez.