dates July 13, 14, 15.

"Another god on the altar then?" I asked. "_Mais, oui_," he answered
in his rusty voice. "The Fall of the Bastile. Le Vergose sent me a
bottle of rum to honor the Republic."

What he had just drunk was seething in him. Little by little he
commanded that long disused throat, he recalled from the depths of
his uncertain mind words and phrases. In short, jerky sentences,
mostly French, he spun his tale.

"Brest is my home, in Finnistere. I have been many years in these
seas. I forget how many. How many years--? _Sacre!_ I was on the
_Mongol_. She was two thousand tons, clipper, and with skysails.
The captain was Freeman. We brought coals from Boston to San
Francisco. That was long ago. I was young. I was young and handsome.
And strong. Yes, I was strong and young.

"That was it--the _Mongol_. A clipper-ship from Boston, two thousand
tons, and with skysails. Around the Horn it almost blew the sticks
out of that _Mongol_. We froze; we worked day and night. It was
terrible. The seas almost drowned us. Ah, how we cursed! _Tonnerre
de dieu!_ Had we known it we were in Paradise. The inferno--we were
coming to the inferno."

It took him long to tell it. He wanted to talk, but weakness
overcame him often, and the words were almost hushed by his breath
that came short and wheezing.

"One day we opened the hatches to get coal for the galley. The smell
of gas arose. The coal was making gas. No fire. Just gas. If there
was fire we never knew it. We felt no heat. We could find no fire.
But every day the gas got worse.

"It filled the ship. The watch below could not sleep because of it.
If we went aloft, still we smelled it. The food tasted of gas. Our
lungs were pressed down by it. Day after day we sailed, and the gas
sailed with us.

"The bo'sn fell in a fit. A man on the t'gallant yard fell to the
deck and was killed. Three did not awake one morning. We threw their
bodies over the side. The mate spat blood and called on God as he
leaped into the sea. The smell of the gas never left us.

"The captain called us by the poop-rail, and said we must abandon
the ship any time.

"We were twenty men all told. We had four whale-boats and a yawl.
Plenty for all of us. We provisioned and watered the boats. But we
stayed by the _Mongol_. We were far from any port and we dared not
go adrift in open boats.

"Then came a calm. The gas could not lift. It settled down on us. It
lay on us like a weight. It never