AFLOAT

(SUR L'EAU)

By

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY RIOU

TRANSLATED BY LAURA ENSOR

LONDON

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
GLASGOW, MANCHESTER, AND NEW YORK

1889

This Diary contains no story and no verythrilling adventure. While cruising about onthe coasts of the Mediterranean last Spring,I amused myself by writing down every daywhat I saw and what I thought.

I saw but the water, the sun, clouds androcks,—I can tell of nought else,—and mythoughts were mere nothings, such as are suggestedby the rocking of the waves, lullingand bearing one along.

AFLOAT

April 6th.

I was sound asleep when my skipper Bernard awoke me by throwing up sandat my window. I opened it, and on my face, on my chest, in my verysoul, I felt the cold delicious breath of the night. The sky was aclear blue gray, and alive with the quivering fire of the stars.

The sailor, standing at the foot of the wall, said:

"Fine weather, sir."

"What wind?"

"Off shore."

"Very well, I'm coming."

Half-an-hour later I was hurrying down to the shore. The horizon waspale with the first rays of dawn, and I saw in the distance behind thebay des Anges the lights at Nice, and still further on the revolvinglighthouse 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 bythe old walls built by Vauban.

In the streets were a few dogs and a few men, workmen starting off totheir daily labour. In the port, nothing but the gentle swaying of theboats at the side of the quay, and the soft plashing of the scarcelymoving water could be heard; or at times the sound of the straining ofa cable or of a boat grazing against the hull of a vessel. The boats,the flagstones, the sea itself seemed asleep under the gold-spangledfirmament, and under the eye of a small lighthouse which, standing outat 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 astir, I heard voices. They were expecting me. The Bel-Ami was readyto start.

I went down into the cabin, lighted up by a couple of candles hangingand balanced like compasses, at the foot of the sofas which at nightwere used as beds, I donned the leathern sailor's jacket, put on a warmcap, and returned on deck. Already the hawsers had been cast off, andthe two men hauling in the cable, had brought the anchor apeak. Thenthey hoisted the big sail, which went up slowly to the monotonousgroan of blocks and rigging. It rose wide and wan in the darkness ofthe night, quivering in the breath of the wind, hiding from us both skyand stars.

The breeze was coming dry and cold from the invisible mountain that onefelt to be still laden with snow. It came very faint, as though hardlyawake, undecided and intermittent.

Then the men shipped the anchor, I seized the helm, and the boat, likea big ghost, glided through the still waters. In order to get out ofthe port, we had to tack between the sleeping tartans and schooners.We went gently from one quay to another, dragging after us our littleround dingy, which followed us as a cygnet, just hatched from itsshell, follows the parent swan.