d a great hand and fortuitously
caught a waiter by the arm. "_Meme chose pour tout le monde_." He
flicked him away. "Now, this is business. Will you come and rough it?
The _Vesta_ isn't a Cunard Liner. Not even a passenger boat. No
luxuries. I hope you understand."

"Hilary has been telling me just what I'm to expect," said Liosha.

"We'll do our best for you, ma'am," said Captain Maturin; "but you
mustn't expect too much. I suppose you know you'll have to sign on as
one of the crew?"

"And if you disobey orders," said I, "the Captain can tie you up to the
binnacle, and give you forty lashes and put you in irons."

"I guess I'll be obedient, Captain," said Liosha, proud of her
incredulity.

"I don't allow my ship's company to bring many trunks and portmanteaux
aboard," smiled Captain Maturin.

"I'll see to the dunnage," said Jaffery.

"The _what_?" I asked.

"It's only passengers that have luggage. Sailor folk like Liosha and me
have dunnage."

"I see," said I. "And you bring it on board in a bundle together with a
parrot in a cage."

Earnest persuasion being of no avail, I must have recourse to light
mockery. But it met with little response. "And what," I asked, "is to
become of the forty-odd _colis_ that we passed through the customs this
morning?"

"You can take 'em home with you," said Jaffery. He grinned over his
third foaming beaker of dark beer. "Isn't it a blessing I brought him
along? I told him he'd come in useful."

"But, good Lord!" I protested, aghast, "what excuse can I, a lone man,
give to the Southampton customs for the possession of all this baggage?
They'll think I've murdered my wife on the voyage and I shall be
arrested. No. There is the parcel post. There are agencies of
expedition. We can forward the luggage by _grande vitesse_ or _petite
vitesse_--how long are you likely to be away on this Theophile Gautier
voyage--'_Cueillir la fleur de neige. Ou la fleur d'Angsoka_'?"

"Four months," said Captain Maturin.

"Then if I send them by the Great Swiftness, they'll arrive just in
time."

I love my friends and perform altruistic feats of astonishing
difficulty; but I draw the line at being personally involved in a
nightmare of curved-top trunks and green canvas hat-containing crates
belonging to a woman who is not my wife.

There followed a conversation on what seemed to me fantastic, but to the
others practical details, in which I had no share. A suit of oilskins
and sea-boots fo