so very
baggy on me?' 'H-e-em,' said he. 'I've known more waxy fits; a trifle of
padding wouldn't hurt your looks.' 'I know it,' said I; 'every soldier
we passed seemed to me to smoke me for an impostor, knowing the coat
wasn't made for me. Here, let's put one of these things underneath.' I
put it on, buttoned the coat over it, inflated it, and the effect was a
marvel;--it made a portly gentleman of me at once. I couldn't bear to
take it off. 'Just the thing for diligence-travelling in the South of
France,' said I; 'keep your neighbor's elbows from your ribs.' I never
thought that I must buy a coat to match it. I was so tickled at my own
fancy that buy it I would, in spite of Marston's remonstrance. Then we
went off and dined, and got very jolly together,--at least, I did,--so
that, when we pulled off to the steamer, I thought nothing about my coat
or the jacket under it.

"There was a dirty-looking sky overhead, and a nasty cobbling sea
getting up under foot as we ran out of Leghorn Harbor, and a little
French screw which we left at her anchor was fizzing off steam from her
waste-pipe,--evidently meaning to stay where she was. But our captain,
having been paid in advance for all the dinners of the voyage, preferred
being at sea before the cloth was laid. That made sure of at least
twenty out of every twenty-five passengers as non-comedents, and
lightened the cook's labors wonderfully. So we were soon jumping and
bobbing about and throwing water in a lively way enough; and our black
gowns and blue coats were lying about decks in every direction, with
what had been _padres_ and soldiers an hour before inside. I lit a cigar
and picked out the driest place I could find, and hugged myself on my
luck,--another man's coat getting wet on my back, while the air-tight
jacket was keeping me dry as a bone.

"As night fell, it grew worse and worse; and the little Sicilian captain
came on deck, looking rather wild. He called his pilots and mates into
consultation, and from where I lay I could hear the words, 'Spezzia,'
and 'Porto Venere,' several times; so I suppose they were debating
whether or no to keep her head to the gale, or to edge away a point or
two, and run for that bay. But with a head sea and a Mediterranean gale
howling down from the gorges of the Ligurian Alps, that thing wasn't so
easy. The boat would plunge into a sea and bury to her paddle-boxes,
then pitch upward as if she were going to jump bodily out of water,