tions to
my new friend, when, from the bunk adjoining my own, there arose a
feeble cry that I identified as the voice of Dumaresq; and my grimy
nurse, gently laying my head back upon the pillow, at once hurried away
to attend to his other patient. I heard a few low-murmured words from
Dumaresq, followed by a reply from the unprepossessing unknown, and then
I fell into a delightfully refreshing, dreamless slumber.

When I next awoke it was night, for I could just catch a glimpse of a
narrow strip of star-lit sky swinging to-and-fro athwart the open
scuttle communicating with the deck, in unison with the pendulum-like
roll of the ship. There appeared to be a fine breeze blowing, for the
vessel was heeling strongly; the thunder of the wind in the sails, and
the piping of it through the taut rigging came down through the scuttle
with a pleasant, slumberous sound, and the roar of the bow-wave, close
to my ear, with the quick, confused swirl and gurgle of water along the
planks, assured me that the ship was moving at a tolerably rapid rate.
The ever-burning lamp still swung from its blackened beam, its yellow
flame wavering hither and thither in the eddying draught of wind that
streamed down through the scuttle, and its fat, black smoke coiling
upward in fantastic wreaths until it was lost in the darkness among the
beams.

A figure--a slumbering figure--still occupied the chest, and mistaking
it at first for my grimy unknown friend, I called to him, for I felt
both hungry and thirsty. He was evidently not sleeping very heavily,
for he awoke at my first call and came to the side of my bunk; but I at
once perceived that it was not the man I had before seen; this fellow's
voice and manner were surly in the extreme, and as he bent over me he
gruffly demanded, in a scarcely comprehensible French patois, what I
wanted. I answered, in French, that I should like something to eat and
drink; whereupon he produced, from a sort of cupboard in the darkest
corner of the forecastle, a bowl and a large can of soup, together with
a wooden tray of flinty biscuit and an old iron spoon. Pouring a
liberal quantity of the soup into the bowl, and plunging the spoon into
it, he handed it to me, placed the bread barge within my reach, and
again composed himself to sleep. The soup was quite cold, and its
surface was covered with floating lumps of congealed grease;
nevertheless, after rejecting the grease, I consumed the whole of the
soup, toge