head, taps,
friendly pinches, and wandering of fingers about the ears.

"Bad place for a dog, old chap. Lots of motion here, and smells, but
'twill soon be over. So cheer up. Any way, you are lots better off than
I am. In a single interview I have secured the contempt of an
exceptionally fine woman. Yes, your Pats has done well."

He smiled in the darkness, a melancholy smile.

"She probably told everything to the priest, and he has explained to her
satisfaction wherein I am a fool,--a malicious, blaspheming, dangerous
villain, and a stupendous ass. And he is right. Perhaps, in time,--a
long time,--I may learn that insulting people's religion isn't the
shortest road to popularity."

In his abstraction the hand, for an instant, was withdrawn. Solomon
protested, and the attentions were resumed. "Keep still, old man, I am
not going. And don't get that chain around your legs. But she is a fine
girl, Sol: _too_ fine, perhaps. Just a little, wee bit too
everlastingly high-minded and superior for ordinary dogs like us."

While administering these pearls of wisdom the speaker had become
interested in two approaching figures, dimly visible in the obscurity.
As they came nearer, he saw that one, the older of the two, a man with
gray chin whiskers and a blue jersey, was drunk. This man stopped, and
holding the other by the arm exclaimed:

"It's so, damn it! It's so, I tell yer! What's he doin' this minute?
He's blind drunk in his cabin. Why, the jag on him would sink a
man-o'-war. Oh, he's a daisy cap'n, he is! He's the champion navigator."

"He'll be all right in the mornin'."

"All right in the mornin'! It'll be a week! And where'll _we_ be
to-morrer mornin'? Where are we--hic--now? God knows, and _he_
ain't tellin'."

With a maudlin gesture and a reverberating hiccup, the speaker,
following the motion of the boat, pushed his friend against the wall and
held him there. "I'll tell yer where we are; we are more'n fifty miles
east of where we think we are. We ain't sighted Anticosti yet. And we
ain't goin' to."

The other man laughed, "Oh, shut up, Bart. You are gettin' a jag on
yerself."

"Yes, sir! We are fifty miles too far to easterd now, and by to-morrer
mornin' it'll be a hundred miles."

They passed on, the older man still holding forth. "I've been this
cruise a dozen times, but, by God! this is the first time I ever tried
to get there by--hic--headin' for Labrador."

They disappeared in the darkness, in th