The men drank off the contents of the tin cups, and then began to sing with renewed energy. It was the quantity of wine they had drank, which made the men so jolly. He was confident that it had not been furnished by the officers or the stewards; and it was plain enough that the foreigners had found it in the hold of the vessel. Gregory spoke French well enough to do his part in carrying on an ordinary conversation in that language; and, descending into the fire-room, he asked the Frenchmen where they had obtained the wine. The men had drank too much to be disturbed by any common event; and they all laughed heartily at the question. The three Frenchmen were on duty, and Pierre spoke for them. “You are not the captain?” said he, looking the first officer over from head to foot. “No: I am the officer of the deck,” replied Gregory. “Plenty of wine in this vessel,” said Pierre, laughing again as though he was the happiest mortal in existence. The other two men threw open the furnace-doors, and began to shovel in the coal at a furious rate. But the officer observed that they kept an eye on the draughts, and used all the precautions against fire or injury to the boilers, doubtless doing so from the sheer force of habit. “Where did you get the wine?” repeated Gregory, as the fellow did not answer him. “Very good wine!” exclaimed Pierre, taking another bottle from one of the coal-bunkers, and breaking off the neck as he had done before. “Try some of it;” and he handed the bottle to the officer. The first officer of the Ville d’Angers, though he had been a good seaman and a good scholar for a considerable time, was not one of the “chaplain’s lambs,” as the good boys were called by the bad ones. He had no conscientious or other scruples against drinking a glass of wine, or even a bottle, as he had done when the eyes of the professors were not upon him. Gregory took the bottle; but he was not inclined to drink out of the dirty tin cup of the firemen, or to cut his lips with the glass of the broken bottle. The fireman saw his difficulty, and then disappeared for a moment, returning with a clean tumbler, which he had evidently taken from the mess-room forward of the engine on deck. He handed it to the officer with the greatest show of deference and politeness. Gregory filled the glass, and drank it off, though it was a heavy dram for a young man of his years. “Where did you get it?” asked the officer.