alf an appetite between
us! Delightfully tired, I lay down, on three chairs for an hour (the
room did not boast a sofa). I slept, then I woke and thought for two
hours.

My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now
such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and
daring--perhaps desperate--line of action. I had nothing to lose.
Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past, forbade return. If I
failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would
suffer? If I died far away from--home, I was going to say, but I had no
home--from England, then, who would weep?

I might suffer; I was inured to suffering: death itself had not, I
thought, those terrors for me which it has for the softly reared. I
had, ere this, looked on the thought of death with a quiet eye.
Prepared, then, for any consequences, I formed a project.

That same evening I obtained from my friend, the waiter, information
respecting, the sailing of vessels for a certain continental port,
Boue-Marine. No time, I found, was to be lost: that very night I must
take my berth. I might, indeed, have waited till the morning before
going on board, but would not run the risk of being too late.

"Better take your berth at once, ma'am," counselled the waiter. I
agreed with him, and having discharged my bill, and acknowledged my
friend's services at a rate which I now know was princely, and which in
his eyes must have seemed absurd--and indeed, while pocketing the cash,
he smiled a faint smile which intimated his opinion of the donor's
_savoir-faire_--he proceeded to call a coach. To the driver he also
recommended me, giving at the same time an injunction about taking me,
I think, to the wharf, and not leaving me to the watermen; which that
functionary promised to observe, but failed in keeping his promise: on
the contrary, he offered me up as an oblation, served me as a dripping
roast, making me alight in the midst of a throng of watermen.

This was an uncomfortable crisis. It was a dark night. The coachman
instantly drove off as soon as he had got his fare: the watermen
commenced a struggle for me and my trunk. Their oaths I hear at this
moment: they shook my philosophy more than did the night, or the
isolation, or the strangeness of the scene. One laid hands on my trunk.
I looked on and waited quietly; but when another laid hands on me, I
spoke up, shook off his touch, stepped at once into a boat, desired
austerel