“Oh! but if I told you how I left off being a sailor, we should see.”

“Well,” I replied, “why don’t you try? it will warm you, and make me forget that the rain is soaking into my back and only stopping at my heels.”

The good major solemnly prepared to speak, with all the pleasure of a child. He adjusted his oilcloth-covered shako on his head, and jerked his shoulder in a way that no one who has not served in the infantry can picture, in the way that a foot-soldier does to lift his knapsack and lighten its weight for a moment; it is a soldier’s custom, which, in an officer, becomes a bad habit. After this convulsive gesture, he again drank a little wine from his cocoa-nut, gave the little mule an encouraging kick in the stomach, and began.

II
THE STORY OF THE RED SEAL

You must know first of all, my lad, that I was born at Brest; I began as a soldier’s son, earning my half-rations and half-pay from the time I was nine years old, my father being a private in the Guards. But, as I loved the sea, one fine night, while I was on leave at Brest, I hid in the bottom of the hold of a merchant vessel leaving for the Indies; they only discovered me in mid-ocean, and the captain preferred making me a cabin-boy to throwing me overboard. When the Revolution came, I had made some progress, and in my turn had become captain of a neat enough little merchant vessel, having scoured the sea for fifteen years. When the ex-royal navy, a fine old navy too, by Jove! suddenly found itself without officers, they took some captains from the merchant navy. I had had some skirmishes with buccaneers of which I may tell you later; they put me in command of a brig of war named the “Marat.”

On the 28th of Fructidor, 1797, I received orders to set sail for Cayenne. I had to take there sixty soldiers and a man sentenced to transportation, who was left over from the hundred and ninety-three whom the frigate “Decade” had taken on board some days before. I was ordered to treat this individual with consideration, and in the Directory’s first letter was enclosed a second, sealed with three red seals, in the midst of which was one very large. I was forbidden to open this letter before reaching the first degree of north latitude, between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of longitude, that is to say, when just about to cross the line.

This big letter had a quite peculiar appearance. It was long, and so tightly shut that I could read nothing between the corners or through the envelope. I am not superstitious, but that letter frightened me. I put it in my room under the glass of a wretched little English clock which was nailed over my bed. That bed was a real sailor’s bed, you know what they are like. But what am I talking about? You are sixteen at the very most, you can’t have seen one.

A queen’s room cannot be arranged as neatly as a sailor’s, I say it without any wish to boast. Everything has its own little place and its own little nail. Nothing can move about. The vessel may roll as it pleases, without displacing anything. The furniture is made to suit the shape of the ship and of your own little room. My bed was a chest. When it was open, I slept in it; when it was shut, it was my sofa, and I smoked my pipe on it. Sometimes it was my table; then we sat on two little casks which were in the room. My floor was waxed and scrubbed like mahogany, and shone like a jewel: a real mirror! Oh! it was a pretty little room! And my brig certainly had its value as well. We often enjoyed ourselves famously there, and the voyage began pleasantly enough that time, had it not been.... But we must not anticipate.

We had a good north-north-west wind, and I was engaged in putting the letter under the glass of my clock, when my “convict” entered my room; he was holding the hand of a pretty young thing of about seventeen. He told me that he was nineteen; a handsome fellow, though rather pale, and too fair-skinned for a man. He was a man all the same; and a man who conducted himself, when occasion arose, better than many old ones would have done, as you will see. He held his little wife by the arm; she was as fresh and gay as a child. They looked like two turtle-doves. To me it was a pleasant sight. I said to them:

“Well, children! you have come to pay the old captain a visit: it is charming of you. I am taking you rather a long way; but so much the better, we shall have time to get to know one another. I am sorry to receive the lady without my coat; but I was going to nail this great rascal of a letter up there. Perhaps you would give me a hand?”