CHAPTER 12.
I wish that I was a painter, a really good painter, so that I could present to you a picture of the different positions adopted by Tartarin's chechia during the three days of the passage from France to Algeria.
I would show it to you first at the departure, proud and stately as it was then, crowning that noble Tarascon head.

I would show it next when, having left the harbour, the Zouave began to lift on the swell.

I would show it fluttering and astonished, as if feeling the first premonitions of distress.
Then, in the gulf of Lion, when the Zouave was further offshore and the sea a little rougher, I would present it at grips with the storm, clutching, bewildered, at the head of our hero, its long blue woollen tassel streaming in the spume and gusting wind.
The fourth position.

Six in the evening.

Off the coast of Corsica.