out a
long while after us, and they have already nearly overtaken us."

"Bah!" said Gourville, "who told you that they do not come from
Beaugency or from Moit even?"

"We have seen no lighter of that shape, except at Orleans. It comes from
Orleans, monsieur, and makes great haste."

Fouquet and Gourville exchanged a glance. The captain remarked their
uneasiness, and, to mislead him, Gourville immediately said:

"Some friend, who has laid a wager he would catch us; let us win the
wager, and not allow him to come up with us."

The patron opened his mouth to say that it was quite impossible, but
Fouquet said with much _hauteur_,--"If it is any one who wishes to
overtake us, let him come."

"We can try, monseigneur," said the man, timidly. "Come, you fellows,
put out your strength; row, row!"

"No," said Fouquet, "on the contrary; stop short."

"Monseigneur! what folly!" interrupted Gourville, stooping towards his
ear.

"Pull up!" repeated Fouquet. The eight oars stopped, and resisting the
water, created a retrograde motion. It 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, now full in his eyes; the skipper 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 ten 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 captain.

"Nor I," cried Gourville.

"You who can see so plainly the people in that lighter," resumed
Fouquet, "try to describe them to us, before we are too far off."

"I thought I saw two," replied the boatman. "I can only see one now,
under the tent."

"What sort of man is he?"

"He is a dark man, broad-shouldered, bull-necked."

A little cloud at that moment passed across the azure, darkening the
sun. Gourville, who was still looking, with one hand over his eyes,
became able to see what he sought, and a