THE LOVE OF MONSIEUR
less, until from that state of continued jubilation which marked his departure from the port of London he had passed into one of beatific unconsciousness, from which he only aroused himself to assuage his thirst the more copiously. One black morning in the wilds of the Atlantic he reached the deck, his eyes wide with fever and his mouth full of oaths, swearing that he would no longer stay below, but his legs were so completely at a loss that, what with the wild plunges of the vessel and the assaults of the seas which made clean breaches over her, he was thrown down into the scuppers again and again, and all but drowned in the wash of the deck. But the bruising and sousing in the saltwater, instead of rebuffing him or abating a whit of his ardor, but served to sober him and make him the more ambitious to take his proper place aboard the vessel. Jacquard would have restrained him, but he threw the Frenchman aside, and, while trying to descend the ladder at the angle of the poop, lost his balance, and, catching wildly at the lee bulwark, disappeared in the
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