d deal of sociability and singing when it
was fair, and we were very glad to be with our old mates again, and yet
more glad that every knot on our course was a step nearer home. Dennis
and I were not idle because we were independent, and we enjoyed
ourselves thoroughly. As to Alister, there was no difficulty in seeing
how well he stood with the red-bearded captain, and how good a friend
his own energy and perseverance (with perhaps some touch of clannishness
to boot) had gained for him. Dennis and I always shared his watches, and
they were generally devoted to the discussing and re-discussing of our
prospects, interspersed with fragmentary French lessons.

From the day that Alister had heard Dennis chatter to the squaw, through
all our ups and downs, at sea and ashore, he had never flagged in his
persistent profiting by Dennis's offer to teach him to speak French. It
was not, perhaps, a very scholarly method which they pursued, but we had
no time for study, so Dennis started Alister every day with a new word
or sentence, and Alister hammered this into his head as he went about
his work, and recapitulated what he had learned before. By the time we
were on our homeward voyage, the sentences had become very complex, and
it seemed probable that Alister's ambition to take part in a "two-handed
crack" in French with his teacher, before the shamrock fell to pieces,
would be realized.

"What he has learnt is wonderful, I can tell ye," said Dennis to me,
"but his accent's horrid! And we'd get on faster than we do if he didn't
argue every step we go, though he doesn't know a word that I've not
taught him."

But far funnier than Alister's corrections of his teacher, was a curious
jealousy which the boatswain had of the Scotch lad's new accomplishment.
We could not quite make out the grounds of it, except that the boatswain
himself had learned one or two words of what he called _parly voo_ when
he was in service at the boys' school, and he was jealously careful of
the importance which his shreds and scraps of education gave him in the
eyes of the ordinary uneducated seaman. With Dennis and me he was
uniformly friendly, and he was a most entertaining companion.

Owing to head winds, our passage was longer than the average. A strange
thing happened towards the end of it. We had turned in for sleep one
night, when I woke to the consciousness that Dennis had got out of his
berth, and was climbing past mine, but I was so sleepy that