If The Crew Of The
"Trump" Were All Like The Crew Of The Captain's Boat, They Need
Fear No Two Hundred And Fifty Men Out Of Any Country, With Any
Joinville At Their Head.
We were carried on shore by this boat.
For two years, during which the "Trump" had been lying off Beyrout,
none of the men but these eight had ever set foot on shore.
Mustn't it be a happy life?
We were landed at the busy quay of
Beyrout, flanked by the castle that the fighting old commodore half
battered down.
Along the Beyrout quays civilisation flourishes under the flags of
the consuls, which are streaming out over the yellow buildings in
the clear air. Hither she brings from England her produce of
marine-stores and woollens, her crockeries, her portable soups, and
her bitter ale. Hither she has brought politeness, and the last
modes from Paris. They were exhibited in the person of a pretty
lady, superintending the great French store, and who, seeing a
stranger sketching on the quay, sent forward a man with a chair to
accommodate that artist, and greeted him with a bow and a smile,
such as only can be found in France. Then she fell to talking with
a young French officer with a beard, who was greatly smitten with
her. They were making love just as they do on the Boulevard. An
Arab porter left his bales, and the camel he was unloading, to come
and look at the sketch.
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