We looked at the bench where we had laid the Generalissimo, his martial cloak around him. Lo! he was not.
Guided by former experience, we found him under the table. Evidently no use propping him up. So with the cushions we made a bed on the floor, and the old warrior securely slept, soothed by the swish of the water that crossed and recrossed the cabin floor as the ship rolled to leeward or to starboard.
When the Generalissimo came aboard at Marseilles, surveying the fortifications of the harbour as if he intended storming them, his accent suggested that if not of foreign birth, he had lived long in continental courts and camps. Odd to note how, as his physical depression grew, an Irish accent softened his speech, till at length he murmured of misery in the mellifluous brogue of County Cork.
Pretty to see the steward when the flood in the saloon got half a foot deep ladle it out with a dustpan.
Tunis, Monday, 1 a.m.—Just limped in here with deck cargo washed overboard, bulwarks stove in, engine broken down, an awesome list to port, galley so clean swept the cook doesn't know it, the cabins flooded, and scarce a whole bit of crockery in the pantry. Twenty-one hours late; not bad on a thirty-six-hours' voyage.
Captain comforts us with assurance that having crossed the Mediterranean man and boy for forty years, he never went through such a storm. Have been at sea a bit myself; only once, coasting in a small steamer off Japan, have I seen—or, since it was in the main pitch dark, felt—anything like it. Generalissimo turned up at dinner last night, his moustache a little draggled, but his port once more martial. His chief lament is, that going down to his berth yesterday morning, having spent Friday night in the security of the saloon floor, he found his boots full of water. This brings out chorus of heartrending experience. Every cabin flooded; boxes and portmanteaus floating about. Sark and I spent a more or less cosy night in the saloon. To us entered occasionally one of the crew ostentatiously girt with a life-belt. Few incidents so soothing on such a night. Fortunately, we did not hear till entering port how in the terror of the night two conscripts, bound for Bizerta, jumped overboard and were seen no more.
"If this is the way they usually get to Tunis," says Sark, "I hope the French will keep it all to themselves. In this particular case, there is more in the Markiss's 'graceful concession' than meets the eye."
River Gambling.
"Punting," says the Daily News, "has become a very fashionable form of amusement on the Upper Thames." So it is at Monte Carlo. Punting is given up by all who find themselves in hopelessly low water.