thing to feed his discontent. Month by month he kept promising himself a vacation which he would devote with all his heart and soul to reparation. In spare moments he exercised his hands—hands grown out of recognition—and whenever he went ashore he sought out the local "Bethel" in order to test his fingers and memory on the piano. But the piano was usually beyond hope, likewise his performance.
The moods of depression never endured, and he ended by resolving to see the whole squalid job through, complete his collection of discharge certificates, and then, when the right day came, go up for his Master's papers. With this objective in view he was planning to join a British tramp in Melbourne when a French skipper offered him a post as second mate on a four-masted barque bound for California. The lure of sails and the fun of talking French decided him, and he signed the articles of the Général Fronchard at the office of the French consul.
On this ship there was red wine to drink, and a good cook. The galley smelt of olive oil, and Paul idly wondered whether national characteristics had anything to do with diet. The crew were lazy, but competent and jolly. There were cats and dogs to make friends with, and the homeliness he had missed on steam-driven ships. The captain was an indifferent navigator and trusted his subordinates to keep the vessel afloat whilst he played the gramophone and waltzed with a lady he called his wife. Occasionally the lady danced with Paul, and one hot night, somewhere in the latitude of New Caledonia, she stole out on deck during the second watch. "On étouffe là-bas," she said, then, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the quarters set apart for the captain, added, "Il est saoul ce soir."
She talked of the Southern Cross and admired Paul's knowledge of astronomy. How, par exemple, could he tell the difference between Venus and Jupiter? It wasn't
