"What is it, Deschaillon?"
"I just came by to say your frien' ees in trouble. Zay play cards in zee salon. Smeeth he win beaucoup. Zay quarrel, perhaps zay fight. He ees your frien', and—"
Leonard smiled when he heard the mess hall dignified into a salon; but at the latter end of the sentence he sat up suddenly in his bunk and began pulling on his jacket despite the twinges in his side.
"Eh, how's that—fight?"
At that instant Hogan lolled against the jamb and announced his entrance with a laugh.
"What's this Deschaillon's telling me, Mike—the men fighting over cards?"
"Sure now I heard him and told him not to be wakin' a sick man up for sich trifles. They was a few raymarks ixchanged, but nawthin' ser'us." He turned reproachfully on the Gaul. "Nixt time be advised by me and don't be wakin' a sick man for nawthin'."
The two walked away and Leonard leaned back in his bunk, quite sleepless now. He stared into the blackness, his mind a moving picture show of the last three days. The Englishman was chief actor on this stage, and his disagreeably mixed character puzzled and disturbed the American. Caradoc's language and manners showed him to be a man of breeding, but he was full of contradictory habits. His uncosmopolitan moodiness, his vulgar quarreling over cards, were typical instances.
Leonard almost regretted that he had formed an uncomfortable intimacy with the fellow, but he could not very well break it off now since Smith had saved him from a fall that might easily have proved fatal.
Just then the Englishman entered the cabin silently. He lighted the bracket lamp quietly and looked about to satisfy himself that his mate was asleep. Later Madden heard him open his big kit bag and take something out. A moment after, the odor of alcohol scented the little cabin.