and the
Chinamen, who in Saigon act as stevedores, appeared to him so lazy, so
intolerable. Sometimes he felt as if, seeing or guessing his impatience,
they were trying to irritate him by moving the bales with the utmost
slowness, and walking with unbearable laziness around with the windlass.

Then, when he could no longer bear the sight, he went to the cafe on the
wharf, where the captain of "The Saint Louis" was generally to be found.

"Your men will never finish, captain," he said. "You will never be ready
by Sunday."

To which the captain invariably replied in his fierce Marseilles
accent,--

"Don't be afraid, lieutenant. 'The Saint Louis,' I tell you, beats the
Indian mail in punctuality."

And really, on Saturday, when he saw his passenger come as usual to the
cafe, the captain exclaimed,--

"Well, what did I tell you? We are all ready. At five o'clock I get my
mail at the post-office; and to-morrow morning we are off. I was just
going to send you word that you had better sleep on board."

That evening the officers of "The Conquest," gave Daniel a farewell
dinner; and it was nearly midnight, when, after having once more shaken
hands most cordially with the old chief surgeon, he took possession of
his state-room, one of the largest on board ship, in which they had put
up two berths, so that, in case of need, Lefloch might be at hand to
attend his master.

Then at last, towards four o'clock in the morning, Daniel was aroused
by the clanking of chains, accompanied by the singing of the sailors. He
hastened on deck. They were getting up anchors; and, an hour after that,
"The Saint Louis" went down the Dong-Nai, aided by a current, rushing
along "like lightning."

"And now," said Daniel to Lefloch, "I shall judge, by the time it will
take us to get home, if fortune is on my side."

Yes, fate, at last, declared for him. Never had the most extraordinarily
favorable winds hastened a ship home as in this case. "The Saint Louis"
was a first-class sailer; and the captain, stimulated by the presence of
a navy lieutenant, always exacted the utmost from his ship; so that
on the seventeenth day after they had left Saigon, on a fine winter
afternoon, Daniel could see the hills above Marseilles rise from the
blue waters of the Mediterranean. He was drawing near the end of the
voyage and of his renewed anxieties. Two days more, and he would be in
Paris, and his fate would be irrevocably fixed.

But would they let him