He stared at the booking-clerk, and the booking-clerk stared at him, each in complete ignorance of what the other meant. "Do you mean to say you can't speak French?" The captain came to the rescue, speaking so gently that his words were only audible to Bertie's ears. "No--o." "Do you mean to say you don't know enough to be able to ask for two first-class tickets for Constantinople?" "No--o." "How much French do you know?" "No--one." The captain evidently knew a great deal, for he immediately addressed the booking-clerk in fluent French--French which that official understood, for two tickets were at once forthcoming. But whether they were for Constantinople, or for Jericho, or for Kamtchatka, was more than the boy could tell. He was in the pleasant position of not being able to understand a word that was said; of being without the faintest notion where he was, and of not having the least idea where he was going to. It may be mentioned, however, that the captain had not asked for tickets for Constantinople--which at St. Brieuc he would have experienced some difficulty in getting--but for Brest. They had not long to wait before the through train from Paris entered the station. They got into a first-class carriage, which they had for themselves, and in due time they were off. The state of Bertie's mind was easier imagined than described. He had been in a dream since he had started on his journey to the Land of Golden Dreams; and dreams have a tendency to become more and more incoherent. His adventures up to the time of leaving London had been strange enough, but he had at least known in what part of the world he was. Now he was not possessed of even that rudimentary knowledge. The continued travelling towards an unknown destination, the unresting onward rush, as though the captain meant, like the brook, to "go on for ever"--and this in the case of a boy who had never travelled more than twenty miles from home in his life--had in itself been enough to confuse him; but the sudden discovery that he was in an unknown country, in which they spoke an unknown tongue, put the climax to his mental muddle. Had the captain, revolver in hand, then and there insisted on his informing him which part of his body as a rule was uppermost, he would have been wholly at a loss to state whether it was on his head or heels he was accustomed to stand. Something strange, too, about the railway carriage, about the country through which they passed, about the people and the very houses he saw through the carriage window made his muddle more.