a changed man; that he was older, more serious.

During this time he received several letters from his father which he
answered very promptly. In the course of their correspondence it was
arranged that they should both leave for Europe on the twenty-fifth of
that month, and that consequently, Vandover should return to the city
not later than the fifteenth. Vandover was having such a good time,
however, that he stayed over the regular steamer in order to go upon a
moonlight picnic down on the beach. The next afternoon he took passage
for San Francisco on a second-class boat.

This homeward passage turned out to be one long misery for Vandover. He
had never been upon a second-class boat before and had never imagined
that anything could be so horribly uncomfortable or disagreeable. The
_Mazatlan_ was overcrowded, improperly ballasted, and rolled
continually. The table was bad, the accommodations inadequate, the
passengers hopelessly uncongenial. Cold and foggy weather accompanied
the boat continually. The same endless procession of bleached hills
still filed past under the mist, going now in the opposite direction,
and the same interminable game of whist was played in the smoking-room,
only with greasier, second-class cards, amidst the acrid smoke of
second-class tobacco. At supper, the first day out, a little Jew who sat
next to Vandover, and who invariably wore a plush skull-cap with
ear-laps, tried to sell him two flawed and yellow diamonds.

The evening after leaving Port Hartford the _Mazatlan_ ran into dirty
weather. It was not stormy--simply rough, disagreeable, the wind and sea
directly ahead. Half an hour after supper Vandover began to be sick. For
a long time he sat on the slippery leather cushions in the nasty
smoking-room, sucking limes, drinking seltzer, and trying to be
interested in the card games. He dozed a little and awoke, feeling
wretched, covered with a cold sweat, racked by a pain in the back of his
head, and tortured by an abominable nausea. He groped his way out upon
the swaying, gusty deck, descended to his cabin, and went to bed.

The _Mazatlan_ had booked more passengers than could be accommodated,
the steward being obliged to make up beds on the floor of the dining
saloon and even upon some of the tables. Vandover had not been able to
get a stateroom, and so had put up with a bunk in the common cabin at
the stern of the vessel.

About two o'clock in the morning he woke up in this place frig