“If that Frog-eater touches me, I’ll brain ’im,” he shouted, “I’m a British subject on British soil, and no bloody Frenchman can arrest me!”
The consul knew only too well the truth of this assertion. A French officer has no more authority within the borders of a foreign consulate than on London Bridge, and any injury which the Welshman might do the gendarme in resisting arrest would come under the head of justifiable self-defense. The consul, however, had police powers in his own office. He took the belligerent seaman by the arm, led him outside onto the soil of France, and turned him over to the policeman. The officer conducted him to the station-house across the way, while several of us tagged after him.
“Where was he arrested?” demanded the sergeant.
“In the British consulate, monsieur.”
“Vraiment! And the British consul has sent money for his keeping while he is shut up, eh?”
“Non, monsieur.”
“Non? Then what do you mean by bringing him over here? Allez! Vous!” and the Welshman, who knew all this process, move by move, made a deep bow to the sergeant, stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his tattered vest, strutted out across the park, and back into the consulate.
“Good morning, consul!” he cried, with the blandest of smiles, and extending a gnarled and far from clean hand. “I’ve just escaped from grave danger, consul, and I’ve come back to see if, perhaps, you haven’t changed your mind about that couple of francs.”
The consul looked him over, glanced at the stack of letters and official papers that demanded his attention, and, with the sheepish look of a man who feels he is being made game of, admitted that he had.
There ran through the shipping quarters one morning the rumor that the “Dag” was signing on a crew. She was a tiny wooden brigantine under Norwegian colors, anchored in the vieux port. She carried a mere handful of men, was reported as “the hungriest hell that ever weighed an anchor,” and did not look seaworthy enough to cross an inland lake. Moreover she was bound for Madagascar by way of the Cape of Good Hope, a six-month trip at least. This was not the route I had mapped out for myself. But it was eastward, twenty-five days in Marseilles had left me ready to jump at any chance, and I raced down to the old harbor with the rest. It was only a chance meeting with “Dutch Harry,” another of the rascally boarding masters of the port, that saved me from putting my name on the “Dag’s” articles. “Dutch” had a contract with the agents of a tramp steamer from Boston to supply a force of seamen to paint the vessel in harbor; and an hour later I was hanging over the side on a swinging plank with the waves of the râde washing over my feet, daubing paint on the rusty hull. The boarding master received six francs a day for our labor—and paid us two and a half. But we took our meals with the crew—whenever the captain was ashore—and I saved enough to come to the assistance of several of my fellow destitutes, among whom was the wizened Jew, who had once more fallen on evil days.