The Commodore, having noted an abundance of drift lying about, detailed himself to procure fire-wood, and stretched at full length upon the dry sand, leisurely tossed fragments of wood toward the spot where the Cook was engaged in the soothing attempt to light a fire with damp paper and wet matches, and the Purser was scraping, within the water's edge, a hole to be used after supper as a dish-pan, when the expedition suddenly obtained its first foreign view of the picturesque. From the shore of the main land there crept out something which at first bore itself somewhat as indicated on the next page. [Illustration: The Picturesque afar.] It finally resolved itself into a strange craft which seemed to be a generous pig-trough remodelled by one with yearnings after the art of the undertaker. Standing, yet bent nearly double, in the stern was a slight, short old man, clothed in raiment utterly unlike anything which any member of the expedition had ever seen at home. The old man paddled his boat at a surprising rate of speed directly toward the camp of the expedition, and as he did so the gazers gradually lost their enjoyment of the picturesque in the realization of a dread duty about to devolve upon them for the first time during the cruise. The old man being a Canadian, it naturally resulted that he must be a Frenchman, and incapable of English. Who was to converse with him? The Cook, who had picked up some French among the Louisiana creoles, but had not for ten years heard or spoken a word of the beautiful language, modestly retired behind the Commodore's broad shoulders. The silence began to be terrible, but it was bliss compared with the sensation with which the group shuddered when the strange craft slid noiselessly and darkly up the beach, and her crew partially undoubled himself and remarked, "Wahu ei hoo mi eh ha ma?" [Illustration: The Picturesque anear.] Three mariners involuntarily dropped back a pace or two; the fourth (the Cook) felt secure in his inconspicuousness until he discovered that he had been dropped to the ground by the Commodore's backward movement, and that the Commodore was nervelessly sitting upon him. At length the Vice, whose admiration for the French Commune had caused him to immure himself many a night with some ex-Communists who had escaped to America, asked in faltering tones, "Q'est-ce-que vous voulez?" "That's it," gasped the Cook, as he endeavored to reanimate the Commodore's spinal cord with the sharp end of a quill toothpick, "make the ancient mariner explain himself." But the Ancient Mariner only shook his head with a vague look, and said, "O hyu wuh oo mi en?" [Illustration: Wahu ei hoo mi eh ha ma?] Then the Commodore, who had lived a year in Paris, and was familiar with the polite phrases there in vogue, said, "Voulez-vous pourboire?" The old man shook his head, scrutinized the party closely, read the names of the boats, and exclaimed, "Haw hihi."