uniform, Garibaldi, who--about when the search approached his
_paillasse_--suddenly hurried over to B. (his perspiring forehead more
perspiring than usual, his _kepi_ set at an angle of insanity) and
hurriedly presented B. with a long-lost German silver folding camp-knife,
purchased by B. from a fellow-member of Vingt-et-Un who was known to us
as "Lord Algie"--a lanky, effeminate, brittle, spotless creature who was
en route to becoming an officer and to whose finicky tastes the
fat-jowled A. tirelessly pandered, for, doubtless, financial
considerations--which knife according to the trembling and altogether
miserable Garibaldi had "been found" by him that day in the _cour_; which
was eminently and above all things curious, as the treasure had been lost
weeks before.

Which again brings us to the Skipper, whose elaborate couch has already
been mentioned--he was a Hollander and one of the strongest, most gentle
and altogether most pleasant of men, who used to sit on the water-wagon
under the shed in the _cour_ and smoke his pipe quietly of an afternoon.
His stocky even tightly-knit person, in its heavy-trousers and jersey
sweater, culminated in a bronzed face which was at once as kind and firm
a piece of supernatural work as I think I ever knew. His voice was
agreeably modulated. He was utterly without affectation. He had three
sons. One evening a number of _gendarmes_ came to his house and told him
that he was arrested, "so my three sons and I threw them all out of the
window into the canal."

I can still see the opening smile, squared kindness of cheeks, eyes like
cool keys--his heart always with the Sea.

The little Machine-Fixer (_le petit bonhomme avec le bras casse_ as he
styled himself, referring to his little paralysed left arm) was so