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dates July 13, 14, 15. "Another god on the altar then?" I asked. "_Mais, oui_," he answered in his rusty voice. "The Fall of the Bastile. Le Vergose sent me a bottle of rum to honor the Republic." What he had just drunk was seething in him. Little by little he commanded that long disused throat, he recalled from the depths of his uncertain mind words and phrases. In short, jerky sentences, mostly French, he spun his tale. "Brest is my home, in Finnistere. I have been many years in these seas. I forget how many. How many years--? _Sacre!_ I was on the _Mongol_. She was two thousand tons, clipper, and with skysails. The captain was Freeman. We brought coals from Boston to San Francisco. That was long ago. I was young. I was young and handsome. And strong. Yes, I was strong and young. "That was it--the _Mongol_. A clipper-ship from Boston, two thousand tons, and with skysails. Around the Horn it almost blew the sticks out of that _Mongol_. We froze; we worked day and night. It was terrible. The seas almost drowned us. Ah, how we cursed! _Tonnerre de dieu!_ Had we known it we were in Paradise. The inferno--we were coming to the inferno." It took him long to tell it. He wanted to talk, but weakness overcame him often, and the words were almost hushed by his breath that came short and wheezing. "One day we opened the hatches to get coal for the galley. The smell of gas arose. The coal was making gas. No fire. Just gas. If there was fire we never knew it. We felt no heat. We could find no fire. But every day the gas got worse. "It filled the ship. The watch below could not sleep because of it. If we went aloft, still we smelled it. The food tasted of gas. Our lungs were pressed down by it. Day after day we sailed, and the gas sailed with us. "The bo'sn fell in a fit. A man on the t'gallant yard fell to the deck and was killed. Three did not awake one morning. We threw their bodies over the side. The mate spat blood and called on God as he leaped into the sea. The smell of the gas never left us. "The captain called us by the poop-rail, and said we must abandon the ship any time. "We were twenty men all told. We had four whale-boats and a yawl. Plenty for all of us. We provisioned and watered the boats. But we stayed by the _Mongol_. We were far from any port and we dared not go adrift in open boats. "Then came a calm. The gas could not lift. It settled down on us. It lay on us like a weight. It never
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