"Did you ever put your trust in a false-hearted woman?"
"Often, sah."
"Was she ever true to you, porter?"
"Never, sah."
"Porter, we are partners in mis-sis-ery."
And he wrung the rough, black hand with a solemnity that embarrassed the porter almost as much as it would have embarrassed the passenger himself if he could have understood what he was doing. The porter disengaged himself with a patient but hasty:
"I'm afraid you'll have to 'scuse me. I got to he'p the other passengers on bode."
"Don't let me keep you from your duty. Duty is the—the——" But he could not remember what duty was, and he would have dropped off to sleep, if he had not been startled by a familiar voice which the porter had luckily escaped.
"Pawtah! Pawtah! Can't you raise this light—or rather can't you lower it? Pawtah! This light is so infernally dim I can't read."
To the Englishman's intense amazement his call brought to him not the porter, but a rising moon with the profound query: