It was a rough night at sea, and the packet so crowded by passengers that Pracontal was driven to pass the night on deck. In the haste of departure he had not provided himself with overcoats or rugs, and was but ill-suited to stand the severity of a night of cold cutting wind and occasional drifts of hail. To keep himself warm he walked the deck for hours, pacing rapidly to and fro: perhaps not sorry at heart that physical discomfort compelled him to dwell less on the internal griefs that preyed upon him. One solitary passenger besides himself had sought the deck, and he had rolled himself in a multiplicity of warm wrappers, and lay snugly under the shelter of the binnacle—a capacious tarpaulin cloak surmounting all his other integuments.
Pracontal's campaigning experiences had taught him that the next best thing to being well cloaked oneself is to lie near the man that is so; and thus, seeing that the traveller was fast asleep, he stretched himself under his lee, and even made free to draw a corner of the heavy tarpaulin over him.
“I say,” cried the stranger, on discovering a neighbor; “I say, old fellow, you are coming it a bit too free and easy. You've stripped the covering off my legs.”
“A thousand pardons,” rejoined Pracontal. “I forgot to take my rugs and wraps with me; and I am shivering with cold. I have not even an overcoat.”
The tone—so evidently that of a gentleman, and the slight touch of a foreign accent—apparently at once conciliated the stranger, for he said, “I have enough and to spare; spread this blanket over you; and here 's a cushion for a pillow.”
These courtesies, accepted frankly as offered, soon led them to talk together; and the two men speedily found themselves chatting away like old acquaintances.
“I am puzzling myself,” said the stranger at last, “to find out are you an Englishman, who has lived long abroad, or are you a foreigner?”
“Is my English so good as that?” asked Pracontal, laughing.
“The very best I ever heard from any not a born Briton.”
“Well, I'm a Frenchman—or a half Frenchman—with some Italian and some English blood, too, in me.”