Then came the myriad-masted shipping, the twinkling lights in the harbor, and a sense of ceaseless motion in waters that never can be still. We did not tarry there long. The boat was bumping her bow against a pair of slippery stairs that led down to the water, and I entered the tottering thing that half sunk under me, dropped into my seat in the stern, and tried to call out something or other as we shot away from the place, with a cloud over my eyes that was darker than night itself, and a cloud over my heart that was as heavy as lead. After that there was nothing to do but climb up one watery swell and slide down on the other side of it, to count the shadow-ships that shaped themselves out of chaos as we drew near them, and dissolved again when we had passed; while the oars seemed to grunt in the row-locks, and the two jolly tars in uniform--they might have been mutes, for all I know--swung to and fro, to and fro, dragging me over the water to my "ocean bride,"--I think that is what they call a ship, when the mood is on them!
She did look pretty as we swam up under her. She looked like a great _silhouette_ against the steel-gray sky; but within was the sound of revelry, and I hastened on board to find our little cabin blue with smoke, which, however, was scarcely dense enough to muffle the martial strains of the _Marseillaise_, as shouted by the whole mess.
Thanaron--my Thanaron--was in the centre of the table, with his curly head out of the transom,--not that he was by any means a giant, but we were all a little cramped between-decks,--and he was leading the chorus with a sabre in one hand and the head of the Doctor in the other. Without the support of the faculty, he would probably not have ended his song of triumph as successfully as he ultimately did, when Nature herself had fainted from exhaustion. It was the last night in port, a few friends from shore had come to dine, and black coffee and cognac at a late hour had finished the business.
If there is one thing in this world that astonishes me more than another, it is the rapidity with which some people talk in French. Thanaron's French, when he once got started, sounded to me like the well-executed trill of a _prima-donna_, and quite as intelligible. The joke of it was, that Frenchmen seemed to find no difficulty in understanding him at his highest speed. On the whole, perhaps, this fact astonishes me more than the other.