ter billows. Thirteen hours of hard steaming barely
brought us abreast of Holyhead. The gale moderated towards morning, and
we ran along the Irish coast under a blue sky, making Queenstown shortly
after sundown.

By this time I had become acquainted with my cabin-mate, in which
respect I was singularly fortunate. M. ---- was a thorough Parisian,
and a favorable specimen of his class. Small of stature, and
slender of proportion--a very important point where space is so
limited--low-voiced, and sparing of violent expletives or gestures,
delicately neat in his person and apparel, one could hardly have
selected a more amiable colleague under circumstances of some
difficulty. I can aver that he conducted himself always with a perfect
modesty and decorum: he would preserve his equilibrium miraculously,
when his perpendicular had been lost long ago: he never fell upon me but
once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such
contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions
when the _mal-de-mer_ proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he
yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the
scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth,
composing his little limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was
invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my
insular prejudices. Discovering that I was in the habit of daily
immersing in cold water--a feat not to be accomplished without much
toil, trouble, and abrasion of the cuticle--he thought it necessary to
simulate a like performance, though nothing would have tempted him to
incur such needless danger. His endeavors to mislead me on this point,
without actually committing himself, were ingenious and wily in the
extreme. Sitting in the saloon at the most incongruous hours of day and
night, he would exclaim, "J'ai l'idee de prendre bientot mon bain!" or
he would speak with a shiver of recollection of the imaginary plunge
taken that morning. I don't think I should ever have been deluded, even
if my curiosity had not led me to question the steward; but never, by
word or look, did I impugn the reality of that Barmecide bath. To his
other accomplishments, M. ---- added a very pretty talent for piquet;
the match was even enough, though, to be interesting, at almost nominal
stakes, and so we got pleasantly through many hours--dark, wet, or
boisterous.

We were not a numerous compa