again. The women had brought down tables for convenience.
They had brought benches as well; they set up two cafes in the open air,
such as they had at Grandport. The Mahes were on the left; the Floches
on the right, still separated by a bar of sand. Nevertheless, that
evening the Emperor, who went from one group to the other, carried his
glasses full, so at to give every one a taste of the six casks. At about
nine o'clock they were much gayer than the night before.

The next day Coqueville could never remember how it had gone to bed.

Thursday the "Zephir" and the "Baleine" caught but four casks, two each,
but they were enormous. Friday the fishing was superb, undreamed
of; there were seven casks, three for Rouget and four for La Queue.
Coqueville was entering upon a golden age. They never did anything
any more. The fishermen, working off the alcohol of the night before,
slept till noon. Then they strolled down to the beach and interrogated
the sea. Their sole anxiety was to know what liquor the sea was going
to bring them. They waited there for hours, their eyes strained; they
raised shouts of joy when wreckage appeared.

The women and the children, from the tops of the rocks, pointed with
sweeping gestures even to the least bunch of seaweed rolled in by the
waves. And, at all hours, the "Zephir" and the "Baleine" stood ready to
leave. They put out, they beat the gulf, they fished for casks, as they
had fished for tun; disdaining now the tame mackerel who capered
about in the sun, and the lazy sole rocked on the foam of the water.
Coqueville watched the fishing, dying of laughter on the sands. Then in
the evening they drank the catch.

That which enraptured Coqueville was that the casks did not cease. When
there were no more, there were still more! The ship that had been lost
must truly have had a pretty cargo aboard; and Coqueville became egoist
and merry, joked over the wrecked ship, a regular wine-cellar, enough
to intoxicate all the fish of the ocean. Added to that, never did they
catch two casks alike; they were of all shapes, of all sizes, of all
colors. Then, in every cask there was a different liquor. So the Emperor
was plunged into profound reveries; he who had drunk everything, he
could identify nothing any more. La Queue declared that never had he
seen such a cargo. The Abbe Radiguet guessed it was an order from some
savage king, wishing to set up his wine-cellar. Coqueville, rocked in
mysterious intoxica