and if he did not think the "flower de
louse" a neater symbol for people who put snuff into their soup and
restricted their ablutions to their faces than the tricolour, being too
muddled to consider that he was ignorant of that flag; and in short I
was so offensive, in spite of my ridiculous merriment, that his savage
nature broke out. He assailed the English with every injurious term his
drunken condition suffered him to recollect; and starting up with his
little eyes wildly rolling, he clapped his hand to his side, as if
feeling for a sword, and calling me by a very ugly French word, bade me
come on, and he would show me the difference between a Frenchman and a
beast of an Englishman.

I laughed at him with all my might, which so enraged him that, swaying
to right and left, he advanced as if to fall upon me. I started to my
feet and tumbled over the bench I had jumped from, and lay sprawling;
and the bench oversetting close to him, he kicked against it and fell
too, fetching the deck a very hard blow. He groaned heavily and muttered
that he was killed. I tried to rise, but my legs gave way, and then the
fumes of the punch overpowered me, for I recollect no more.

When I awoke it was pitch dark. My hands, legs, and feet seemed formed
of ice, my head of burning brass. I thought I was in my cot, and felt
with my hands till I touched Tassard's cold bald head, which so
terrified me that I uttered a loud cry and sprang erect. Then
recollection returned, and I heartily cursed myself for my folly and
wickedness. Good God! thought I, that I should be so mad as to drown my
senses when never was any wretch in such need of all his reason as I!

The boatswain's tinder-box was in my pocket; I groped, found a candle,
and lighted it. It was twenty minutes after three in the morning.
Tassard lay on his back, snoring hideously, his legs overhanging the
capsized bench. I pulled and hauled at him, but he was too drunk to
awake, and that he might not freeze to death I fetched a pile of clothes
out of his cabin and covered him up, and put his head on a coat.

My head ached horribly, but not worse than my heart. When I considered
how our orgy might have ended in bloodshed and murder, how I had
insulted God's providence by drinking and laughing and roaring out songs
and dancing at a time when I most needed His protection, with Death
standing close beside me, as I may say, I could have beaten my head
against the deck in the anguish of my