Well, one fine night, after being on deck all day, and the whole night before, almost, I had turned in to my cot to sleep. From where I lay I could see the moonshine off the water through the stern-light in that after-cabin, by the half-open door. I felt the schooner going easily through the water, with a rise and fall from the heave of the long Line-swell; so close my eyes I couldn't, especially as the midshipman could be heard snoring on the other side like the very deuce. Accordingly I turned out into the after-cabin, and got hold of one of the Frenchman's volumes to read, when, lo and behold, I found it was neither more nor less than Greek, all I knew being the sight of it. Next I commenced overhauling the bundle of handwriting, which I took at first for a French log of the schooner's voyage, and sat down on the locker to have a spell at it. So much as I could make out, in spite of the queer outlandish turn the letters had, and the quirks of the unnatural sort of language, it was curious enough--a regular story, in fact, about his own life, the war, and Buonaparte himself. At another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd hours--and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards; but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was _Le Compte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine de la Marine Française_, and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond what I knew before, to be carried out in India,--when it struck me there was no one on the quarterdeck above. I listened for a minute through the stern-window, and thought I heard some one speaking over the schooner's lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on a jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.