exclaimed.

Turning in my grasp he whispered with a scarcely audible, but
exceedingly repulsive, giggle:

"Haven't I given her a good fright, eh?"

Then he added:

"Now, let me go! Let go, I say!"

"Have you lost your wits?" I retorted with a gasp.

For a moment or two his blinking eyes continued to glance at something
over my shoulder. Then they returned to me, while he whispered:

"Pray let me go. The truth is that, unable to sleep, I conceived that I
would play this woman a trick. Was there any harm in that? See, now.
She is still asleep."

As I thrust him away his short legs, legs which might almost have been
amputated, staggered under him. Meanwhile I reflected:

"No, I was NOT wrong. He DID of set purpose throw the mop overboard.
What a fellow!"

A bell sounded from the engine-room.

"Slow!" someone shouted with a cheerful hail.

Upon that, steam issued with such resounding shrillness that the woman
awoke with a jerk of her head; and as she put up her left hand to feel
her armpit, her crumpled features gathered themselves into wrinkles.
Then she glanced at the lamp, raised herself to a sitting position,
and, fingering the place where the hair had been destroyed, said softly
to herself:

"Oh, holy Mother of God!"

Presently the steamer drew to a wharf, and, with a loud clattering,
firewood was dragged forth and cast into the stokehole with uncouth,
warning cries of "Tru-us-sha!" [The word means ship's hold or
stokehole, but here is, probably, equivalent to the English "Heads
below!"]

Over a little town which had its back pressed against a hill the waning
moon was rising and brightening all the black river, causing it to
gather life as the radiance laved, as it were, the landscape in warm
water.

Walking aft, I seated myself among some bales and contemplated the
town's frontage. Over one end of it rose, tapering like a
walking-stick, a factory chimney, while at the other end, as well as in
the middle, rose belfries, one of which had a gilded steeple, and the
other one a steeple either green or blue, but looking black in the
moonlight, and shaped like a ragged paint-brush.

Opposite the wharf there was stuck in the wide gable of a two-storied
building a lantern which, flickering, diffused but a dull, anaemic
light from its dirty panes, while over the long strip of the broken
signboard of the building there could be seen straggling, and executed
in large yellow letters, the words, "Tavern and-