packet fought its way shoreward with Neeland's luggage lashed
in the cabin, and Neeland himself sticking to the deck like a fly to a
frantic mustang, enchanted with the whole business.

For the sea, at last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now
what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home-made raft on
the waters of Neeland's mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze.
Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short
of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on the Channel
during the night.

There was only one other passenger aboard--a tall, lean, immaculately
dressed man with a ghastly pallor, a fox face, and ratty eyes, who
looked like an American and who had been dreadfully sick. Not caring
for his appearance, Neeland did not speak to him. Besides, he was
having too good a time to pay attention to anybody or anything except
the sea.

A sailor had lent Neeland some oilskins and a sou'-wester; and he
hated to put them off--hated the calmer waters inside the basin where
the tender now lay rocking; longed for the gale and the heavy seas
again, sorry the crossing was ended.

He cast a last glance of regret at the white fury raging beyond the
breakwater as he disembarked among a crowd of porters, _gendarmes_,
soldiers, and assorted officials; then, following his porter to the
customs, he prepared to submit to the unvarying indignities incident
to luggage examination in France.

He had leisure, while awaiting his turn, to buy a novel, "Les
Bizarettes," of Maurice Bertrand; time, also, to telegraph to the
Princess Mistchenka. The fox-faced man, who looked like an American,
was now speaking French like one to a perplexed official, inquiring
where the Paris train was to be found. Neeland listened to the fluent
information on his own account, then returned to the customs bench.

But the unusually minute search among his effects did not trouble him;
the papers from the olive-wood box were buttoned in his breast pocket;
and after a while the customs officials let him go to the train which
stood beside an uncovered concrete platform beyond the _quai_, and
toward which the fox-faced American had preceded him on legs that
still wobbled with seasickness.

There were no Pullmans attached to the train, only the usual first,
second, and third class carriages with compartments; and a new style
corridor car with central aisle and lettered doors to compartments
holding four.

In