recognised my friend's limited vocabulary, and I prepared to
regard Captain Nichols as a trustworthy witness.

"Busted?" asked the Captain.

"Blast you," answered Strickland.

"Come along with me. I'll get you some breakfast."

After a moment's hesitation, Strickland scrambled to his feet,
and together they went to the Bouchee de Pain, where the
hungry are given a wedge of bread, which they must eat there
and then, for it is forbidden to take it away; and then to the
Cuillere de Soupe, where for a week, at eleven and four,
you may get a bowl of thin, salt soup. The two buildings are
placed far apart, so that only the starving should be tempted
to make use of them. So they had breakfast, and so began the
queer companionship of Charles Strickland and Captain Nichols.

They must have spent something like four months at Marseilles
in one another's society. Their career was devoid of adventure,
if by adventure you mean unexpected or thrilling incident,
for their days were occupied in the pursuit of enough
money to get a night's lodging and such food as would stay
the pangs of hunger. But I wish I could give here the pictures,
coloured and racy, which Captain Nichols' vivid narrative
offered to the imagination. His account of their discoveries
in the low life of a seaport town would have made a
charming book, and in the various characters that came their
way the student might easily have found matter for a very
complete dictionary of rogues. But I must content myself with
a few paragraphs. I received the impression of a life intense
and brutal, savage, multicoloured, and vivacious. It made the
Marseilles that I knew, gesticulating and sunny, with its
comfortable hotels and its restaurants crowded with the well-to-do,
tame and commonplace. I envied men who had seen with their
own eyes the sights that Captain Nichols described.

When the doors of the Asile de Nuit were closed to them,
Strickland and Captain Nichols sought the hospitality of Tough Bill.
This was the master of a sailors' boarding-house, a huge
mulatto with a heavy fist, who gave the stranded mariner
food and shelter till he found him a berth. They lived with
him a month, sleeping with a dozen others, Swedes, negroes,
Brazilians, on the floor of the two bare rooms in his house
which he assigned to his charges; and every day they went with
him to the Place Victor Gelu, whither came ships' captains in
search of a man. He was married to an Ameri