Beastly tubs those steamers are! I wonder why they don't make some that go steady. And they ought to make the seats facing the side of the vessel, and not with your back to it. You miss such a lot of the view. I sat with my face to the side of the vessel most of the way. I don't exactly know what became of Jim. He said afterwards he'd been astern watching the English coast disappear. I suppose that accounted for his looking so jolly blue. We weren't sorry to clear out of that boat, I can tell you. Jim was first up the gangway, and I was third, owing to dropping my spare bags half-way up and having to pick them up. There was an awfully civil French fellow at the top of the gangway, who touched his hat to me. I couldn't make out what he said, but I fancied he must be asking for a tip, so I gave him a copper. That seemed to make him awfully wild, and he wanted to know my name. I had to tell him, and he wrote it down; but as he didn't get my address, I hope there won't be a fuss about it. I didn't see any harm in tipping him, but I suppose it's against French law, and I don't mean to do it any more. There was an awfully rum lot of chaps in our carriage between Calais and Paris. You'd have thought they had never seen a pair of bags before in their life; for they stared at mine all the way from Calais to Amiens, where we got out for refreshment. I thought it best to take my bags with me to the buffet, as they might have humbugged about with them if I'd left them in the carriage. They ought to make English compulsory in French schools. The duffers in the buffet didn't even know what a dough-nut was! Not even when Jim looked it up in the dixy and asked for _noix a pate_. The idiot asked us if we meant "rosbif," or "biftik," or "palal"--that's all the English they seemed to know, and think English fellows feed off nothing else. However, we did get some grub, and paid for it too. When we got back to the carriage I took the precaution of sticking my bags on the rack above Jim's head; so all the fellows stared at him the rest of the way, and I got a stunning sleep.