The captain frowned, looked at me carefully, and then said:--

"In this world there is but one cause of mischief--the Jesuits."


III.

The first night out, from Genoa to Leghorn, was bad enough, but that
which succeeded our departure from the latter port was by far the
worst of the three we spent in our voyage to Naples. How we envied the
happy people who went ashore at Leghorn! I think we even envied the
bones of the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese who met and slew each
other in the long-forgotten sea-fights, and sank too deeply through
the waves to be stirred by their restless tumult. Every one has
heard tell of how cross and treacherous a sea the Mediterranean is in
winter, and my own belief is, that he who has merely been sea-sick on
the Atlantic should give the Mediterranean a trial before professing
to have suffered every thing of which human nature is capable. Our
steamer was clean enough and staunch enough, but she was not large--no
bigger, I thought, than a gondola, that night as the waves tossed her
to and fro, till unwinged things took flight all through her cabins
and over her decks. My berth was placed transversely instead of
lengthwise with the boat,--an ingenious arrangement to heighten
sea-sick horrors, and dash the blood of the sufferer from brain to
boots with exaggerated violence at each roll of the boat; and I begged
the steward to let me sleep upon one of the lockers in the cabin.
I found many of my agonized species already laid out there; and the
misery of the three French commercial travellers was so great, that,
in the excess of my own dolor, it actually afforded me a kind of
happiness, and I found myself smiling at times to see the giant, with