He wrung my hand cordially--perhaps it was the easiest way for an honest sailor, as he was, to acknowledge the patronising tone of my speech--but I could plainly see that he was sorely puzzled by the situation, and possibly very well pleased that there was no third party to be a spectator of it. “Throw yourself there on that sofa,” said he, “and take a sleep.” And with that piece of counsel he left me, and went up on deck. CHAPTER IX. HIS INTEREST IN A LADY FELLOW-TRAVELLER. Next mornings are terrible things, whether one awakes to the thought of some awful run of ill-luck at play, or with the racking headache of new port or a very “fruity” Burgundy. They are dreadful, too, when they bring memories--vague and indistinct, perhaps--of some serious altercations, passionate words exchanged, and expressions of defiance reciprocated; but, as a measure of self-reproach and humiliation, I know not any distress can compare with the sensation of awaking to the consciousness that our cups have so ministered to imagination that we have given a mythical narrative of ourself and our belongings, and have built up a card edifice of greatness that must tumble with the first touch of truth. It was a sincere satisfaction to me that I saw nothing of the skipper on that “next morning.” He was so occupied with all the details of getting into port, that I escaped his notice, and contrived to land unremarked. Little scraps of my last night's biography would obtrude themselves upon me, mixed up strangely with incidents of that same skipper's life, so that I was actually puzzled at moments to remember whether “he” was not the descendant of the famous rebel friend of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and _I_ it was who was sold in the public square at Tunis. These dissolving views of an evening before are very difficult problems,--not to _you_, most valued reader, whose conscience is not burglariously assaulted by a riotous imagination, but to the poor weak Potts-like organizations, the men who never énjoy a real sensation, or taste a real pleasure, save on the hypothesis of a mock situation.