evening to take a walk up and down Liverpool Street, where
he fell into conversation with a girl of prepossessing appearance.
Quite oblivious of the fact that Mademoiselle Soap-Suds had followed
him, "just to see if he was as simple as he looked," he enjoyed
himself immensely for some twenty minutes, and then ran right into
her. He assures me he was "'orror-struck." Like a man, he admitted
that he was conversing with "that--that there." I always like this
part of the tale. His confession seems to him to have been the
uttermost depths of mortal self-abnegation. Alas, the heiress of
Soap-Suds Senior had no appreciation of the queenly attribute of
forgiveness. She boxed his ears, and he never saw her again. "She was
allus a spiteful cat," he observes pensively; "so p'raps the wash 'us
'ud ha' been dear at the price. Still, it _was_ a nice little
business, an' no kid."

As I raise my pot of shaving-water a huge head and shoulders fill up
the upper half of the galley doorway. The mighty Norseman has come for
some "crawfish legs." Like Mr. Peggotty and the crustacea he desires
to consume, he has gone into hot water very black, and emerges very
red. His flannel shirt only partially drapes his illuminated chest--I
see the livid scar plainly. He beams upon me, and asks for a match.

"Well, Donkey," says Cook, "'ow goes it?"; "Donkey" is the mighty
Norseman's professional title aboard ship.

"Aw reet, mon," says he with the fiendish aptitude of his race for
idiom. "How is the Kuck?"

"Oh, splendid. Stand out o' the way, and let me make thy daily bread."

"Daily!" screams the Donkeyman. "Tell that to the marines. I have one
loaf sof' bread three times a week, an' there are seven days to a
week. Daily! Tell that----"

"Find another ship, me man, find another ship if the _Benvenuto_ don't
suit!" And the Mate passes on to the chart-house, where are many dogs.

"Ay, will I, when we get to Swansea," says the Donkey man to me,
beaming. "There are more ships than parish churches, eh? Mister, I
want to speak to you. Come out here." I go outside in the moonlight,
and the mighty Norseman takes hold of the second button of my
patrol-jacket.

"Well, Donkey?"

"I 'ave had a letter from Marianna," he whispers.

"Ah! And so she is----"

"She is Marianna, always Marianna now. A good letter--two and a half
page. See, in German, mister. She write it very well, Marianna." And I
behold a letter in German script.

Tastes differ. I am