But not so near a-shaking hands with Death did any of them tell, as Ned Kennedy,--who, poor fellow, lies buried in some lone _canon_ of the Sierra Madre. Let us hear him give it in his wild, reckless way. Ned was sitting opposite us, his thick, black hair curling from under his plaid travelling-cap,--his thick eyebrows working, and his hands occupied in arranging little fragments of pilot-biscuit on the table. He broke in upon the last man who was talking, with a-- "Tell you what, boys,--I've a better idea of what all that means. I suppose you both know what the Mediterranean lines of steamers are, and what capital seamanship, and travelling comfort, and all that, you find there. The engineers, however, are Scotch, English, or American, always; because why? A French officer once told me the reason. 'You see, _mon ami_,' he said, 'this row of handles which are used to turn these different stops and cocks. Now, my countrymen will take them down and use them properly, each one, just as well as your countrymen; but they will put them back again in their places never.' So it is, and the engineers are all as I say. "I left Naples for Genoa in the 'Ercolano,' of the Naples line. There were not many passengers on board,--no women,--and what there were were all priests or soldiers. Nobody went by the Neapolitan line except Italians, at that time,--the French company having larger, handsomer, and decidedly cleaner vessels. Of course, as a heretic and a civilian, I had nobody to talk to; so, finding that the engineer had a Saxon tongue in his head, I dove down into his den and made acquaintance. Being shut up there with Italians so much, he thawed out to me at once, and we were sworn brothers by the time we reached Civita Vecchia.