Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French III).djvu/141

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LAURETTE OR THE RED SEAL.
131

a sailor's cabin—be it said without boasting. Everything has its own place, and its own nail; nothing can move. The vessel may toss as much as she chooses, without putting anything out of order. The furniture is all made to fit the form of the vessel, and of one's own little room. My bed was a chest; when it was opened, I slept in it; and when it was shut, it was my sofa, and there I smoked my pipe. Sometimes it was my table, and then I sat on one of the little casks in the cabin. My floor was waxed and rubbed like mahogany, and shone like a jewel. A real looking-glass! Oh, what a sweet little cabin it was!—and my brig, too, was not to be sneezed at. There was some fine fun on board there, and the voyage began this time pleasantly enough, but for— But I must not anticipate.

"We had a fine breeze from the N. N. W., and I was busy putting away this letter under the glass of my clock, when my déporté entered my cabin; he had by the hand a beautiful little girl of about seventeen, and he told me that he himself was only nineteen. A handsome fellow, though a little too pale, and too fair for a man. He was a man though, and a man who behaved better on this occasion than many an old one would have done—you will see. He had his little wife under his arm: she was as fresh and gay as a child. They looked like two doves. It really was a pleasure to see them.