"Keep up your heart, and make yourself comfortable. Here's lots of the most amusing books on this shelf. Let me see. Here is the 'Navy List' for about ten years ago, and here's a 'Ready-reckoner,' and here is 'The Exciseman's Vade Mecum,' and here is a 'Chart of the Soundings of Baffin's Bay,' so you can't say you are out of books."
"Oh, how kind," said Todd.
"And you can order whatever you like to eat and drink, provided you don't think of anything but boiled beef, biscuits, and brandy."
"Oh, I shall do well enough. Rest is now what I want, and a quick voyage."
"Very good," said the captain. "You will not be at all interrupted here, so you can lie down in this magnificent berth."
"What, on that shelf?"
"Shelf? Do you call the state berth of the 'Lively William,' a shelf!"
"Well—well, I dare say it is very comfortable, though the roof, I see, is only eight inches or so from one's nose. I am very much obliged. Oh, very!"
The captain now left Todd to himself and to his own thoughts, and as he really felt fatigued, he got into the state berth of the Lively William, which, to tell the truth, would have been very comfortable if it had only been a little wider and a little longer, and the roof higher, and not quite so damp and hard as it was.
But, after all, what where all these little disagreeables, provided he, Todd, fairly escaped? If he once set his foot upon the shores of France, he felt that, with the great continent before him, he should be free, and he did not doubt for a moment getting in any capital a ready enough market among the Jews for the watches and jewellery that he had about him.