I Would Not Have Stopped Down In That Stuffy Saloon, If Anybody Had Offered Me A Hundred Pounds For Doing So. Not That Anybody Did; Nor That Anybody Seemed To Want Me There At All.

I gathered this from the fact that the first thing that met my eye, after I had succeeded in clawing my way down, was a boot.

The air was full of boots. There were sixty men sleeping there - or, as regards the majority, I should say TRYING to sleep there - some in bunks, some on tables, and some under tables. One man WAS asleep, and was snoring like a hippopotamus - like a hippopotamus that had caught a cold, and was hoarse; and the other fifty-nine were sitting up, throwing their boots at him. It was a snore, very difficult to locate. From which particular berth, in that dimly-lighted, evil- smelling place, it proceeded nobody was quite sure. At one moment, it appeared to come, wailing and sobbing, from the larboard, and the next instant it thundered forth, seemingly from the starboard. So every man who could reach a boot picked it up, and threw it promiscuously, silently praying to Providence, as he did so, to guide it aright and bring it safe to its desired haven.

I watched the weird scene for a minute or two, and then I hauled myself on deck again, and sat down - and went to sleep on a coil of rope; and was awakened, in the course of time, by a sailor who wanted that coil of rope to throw at the head of a man who was standing, doing no harm to anybody, on the quay at Ostend.

SATURDAY, 24TH

Arrival at Ostend. - Coffee and Rolls. - Difficulty of Making French Waiters understand German. - Advantages of Possessing a Conscience That Does Not Get Up Too Early. - Villainy Triumphant. - Virtue Ordered Outside. - A Homely English Row.

When I say I was "awakened" at Ostend, I do not speak the strict truth. I was not awakened - not properly. I was only half-awakened. I never did get fairly awake until the afternoon. During the journey from Ostend to Cologne I was three-parts asleep and one-part partially awake.

At Ostend, however, I was sufficiently aroused to grasp the idea that we had got somewhere, and that I must find my luggage and B., and do something or other; in addition to which, a strange, vague instinct, but one which I have never yet known deceive me, hovering about my mind, and telling me that I was in the neighbourhood of something to eat and drink, spurred me to vigour and action.

I hurried down into the saloon and there found B. He excused himself for having left me alone all night - he need not have troubled himself. I had not pined for him in the least. If the only woman I had ever loved had been on board, I should have sat silent, and let any other fellow talk to her that wanted to, and that felt equal to it - by explaining that he had met a friend and that they had been talking.

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