More than this, they engaged to meet on land, showing their fists and
threatening to disembowel each other as soon as they found each other
again.

"The rascal!" grumbled Rouget. "You know, that cask is bigger than the
one of yesterday. It's yellow, this one--it ought to be great." Then
in accents of despair: "Let's go and see the jambins; there may very
possibly be lobsters in them."

And the "Baleine" went on heavily to the left, steering toward the
point.

In the "Zephir," La Queue had to get in a passion in order to hold
Tupain and Brisemotte from the cask. The boat-hook, in smashing a hoop,
had made a leaking for the red liquid, which the two men tasted from the
ends of their fingers and which they found exquisite. One might easily
drink a glass without its producing much effect. But La Queue would not
have it. He caulked the cask and declared that the first who sucked it
should have a talk with him. On land, they would see.

"Then," asked Tupain, sullenly, "are we going to draw out the jambins?"

"Yes, right away; there is no hurry!" replied La Queue.

He also gazed lovingly at the barrel. He felt his limbs melt with
longing to go in at once and taste it. The fish bored him.

"Bah!" said he at the end of a silence. "Let's go back, for it's late.
We will return to-morrow." And he was relaxing his fishing when he
noticed another cask at his right, this one very small, and which stood
on end, turning on itself like a top. That was the last straw for the
nets and the jambins. No one even spoke of them any longer. The "Zephir"
gave chase to the little barrel, which was caught very easily.

During this time a similar adventure overtook the "Baleine." After
Rouget had already visited five jambins completely empty, Delphin,
always on the watch, cried out that he saw something. But it did not
have the appearance of a cask, it was too long.

"It's a beam," said Fouasse.

Rouget let fall his sixth jambin without drawing it out of the water.
"Let's go and see, all the same," said he.

As they advanced, they thought they recognized at first a beam, a chest,
the trunk of a tree. Then they gave a cry of joy.

It was a real cask, but a very queer cask, such as they had never seen
before. One would have said a tube, bulging in the middle and closed at
the two ends by a layer of plaster.

"Ah, that's comical!" cried Rouget, in rapture. "This one I want the
Emperor to taste. Come, children, let's go in."

They all