easant. Yes, he is the master. He rises, and shakes his forefinger
at the unfortunate till his hand is a quivering haze and his speech a
blast. "Ou--e--e--eh!" cries the skipper at last, when the unfortunate
is on the run.

He has an idea I cannot read the menu, so when an omelette is served he
informs me, in case I should suppose it is a salad. He makes helpful
farmyard noises. There is no mistaking eggs. There is no mistaking
pork. But I think he has the wrong pantomime for the ship's beef,
unless French horses have the same music as English cows. After the
first dinner, I was indiscreet enough to refuse the cognac with the
coffee. "Ah!" he chided, smiling with craft, and shaking a knowing
finger at me. He could read my native weakness. I was discovered.
"Viskee! You 'ave my viskee!" A dreadful doubt seized me, and I would
have refused, but repressed my panic, and pretended he had found my
heart.

He rose, and shouted a peremptory order. A little private cabinet was
opened. A curious bottle was produced, having a deadly label in red,
white, and green. "Viskee!" cried the captain in exultation. (My God!)
"Aha!" said the reader of my hidden desire, pouring out the tipple for
which he imagines I am perishing in stoic British silence. "Viskee!" I
drain off, with simulated delight, my large dose of methylated spirit.
Not for worlds would I undeceive the good fellow, not if this were
train-oil. He laughs aloud at our secret insular weakness. He knows it.
But he is our very good friend.

All is not finished with the whisky. Out comes the master's English
Grammar, for he is wishful to know us better before I leave him. And he
shall. To this Frenchman I determine to be nobler than I was made. I
think I would teach him English all the way to Cochin-China. He writes
in his notebook, very slowly, while his tongue comes out to look on, a
sentence like this: "The nombres Francaise, they are most easy that the
English language." Then I put him right; and then he rises, reaches his
hands up to my shoulders, looks earnestly in my eyes, and la-las my
National Anthem. It may please God not to let me look so foolish as I
feel while I wait for the end of that tune; but I doubt that it does.

II

Early next morning we arrived at Bougie, to get an hour's peace with
the arm of the harbour thrown about my poor _Celestine_. The deck of a
Grimsby trawler discharging fish in the Humber on a wet December
morning is no more desolating than