ents of divers bottles of liquor; I counted four dead
men dropped quietly overboard by them in the course of the hour and a
half we had to wait for the arrival of the mail-train, which was late,
as usual on this line.

At last we were off, about half-past two o'clock in the morning. It was
a beautiful, clear, moonlit night, so clear, indeed, that we could see
the Dover lights almost from Calais harbor. But we had considerably more
than a capful of wind, and there was a turgent ground-swell on, which
made our boat--double-engined, and as trim and tidy a craft as ever sped
across the span from shore to shore--behave rather lively, with sportive
indulgence in a brisk game of pitch-and-toss that proved anything but
comfortable to most of the passengers.

When we were steaming out of Calais harbor, our three friends, emerging
from beneath their tent, struck up in chorus Campbell's noble song, "Ye
Mariners of England," finishing up with a stave from "Rule, Britannia!"

But, alas for them! however loudly their throats were shouting forth the
sway proverbially held by Albion and her sons over the waves, on this
occasion at least the said waves seemed determined upon ruling these
particular three Britons with a rod of antimony; for barely a few
seconds after the last vibrating echoes of the "Britons never, never,
never shall be slaves!" had died away upon the wind, I beheld the three
leaning lovingly together, in fast friendship linked, over the rail,
conversing in deep ventriguttural accents with the denizens of Neptune's
watery realm.

We had one of the quickest passages on record--ninety-three minutes'
steaming carried us across from shore to shore. When we were just on the
point of landing, I heard the dark senior of the party mutter to his
companions, in a hollow whisper and mysterious manner, "He is gone
again;" to which the others, the bearded and the smooth-shaven,
responded in the same way, with deep sighs of evident relief, "Ay,
marry! so he is at last."

This mysterious communication roused my curiosity. Who was the party
that was said to be gone at last? Where had he come from? where had he
been hiding, that _I_ had not seen him? and where was he gone to now? I
determined to know; if but the opportunity would offer, to screw, by
cunning questioning, the secret out of either of the three.

Fate favored my design.

For some inscrutable reason, known only to the company's officials, we
cheap-trainers were not pe