would have been because he drew his against me.'

'And why should he have done so?'

'_Ventrebleu!_ for as many reasons as there are craft in the harbor.'

'For example?'

'Well, that I should have got a place in a ship's company that he was
trying for.'

'Such things as that? is it possible?'

'Oh, for smaller things. That a lass should have given me a dozen
oranges she had promised him.'

'How odd!' said Madame Bernier, with a shrill kind of laugh. 'A man who
owed you a grudge of this kind would just come up and stab you, I
suppose, and think nothing of it?'

'Precisely. Drive a knife up to the hilt into your back, with an oath,
and slice open a melon with it, with a song, five minutes afterward.'

'And when a person is afraid, or ashamed, or in some way unable to take
revenge himself, does he--or it may be a woman--does she, get some one
else to do it for her?'

'_Parbleu!_ Poor devils on the lookout for such work are as plentiful
all along the South American coast as _commissionaires_ on the street
corners here.' The ferryman was evidently surprised at the fascination
possessed by this infamous topic for so lady-like a person; but having,
as you see, a very ready tongue, it is probable that his delight in
being able to give her information and hear himself talk were still
greater. 'And then down there,' he went on, 'they never forget a grudge.
If a fellow doesn't serve you one day, he'll do it another. A Spaniard's
hatred is like lost sleep--you can put it off for a time, but it will
gripe you in the end. The rascals always keep their promises to
themselves.... An enemy on shipboard is jolly fun. It's like bulls
tethered in the same field. You can't stand still half a minute except
against a wall. Even when he makes friends with you, his favors never
taste right. Messing with him is like drinking out of a pewter mug. And
so it is everywhere. Let your shadow once flit across a Spaniard's path,
and he'll always see it there. If you've never lived in any but these
damned clockworky European towns, you can't imagine the state of things
in a South American seaport--one half the population waiting round the
corner for the other half. But I don't see that it's so much better
here, where every man's a spy on every other. There you meet an assassin
at every turn, here a _sergent de ville_..... At all events, the life
_la bas_ used to remind me, more than anything else, of sailing in a
shallow channel, where you d