"_C'est une chose monstrueuse. Nous sommes les invites de la grande nation Francaise; nous sommes les officiers de sa Majeste la Reine d'Angleterre; et vous n'avez pas du vin de Cockalorum!_" There was enough of other wine, at all events,' added Frank King. 'I am afraid there was a good deal of headache next morning among the younger officers of her Majesty's fleet.' 'Weren't you afraid,' said Nan, who had forgotten what shyness was by this time; 'weren't you afraid the French might be tempted to take a mean advantage and capture the fleet bodily?' 'It would have been no more mean advantage,' said he, with a laugh, 'than we used to take in fighting them when they were sea-sick.' 'Sailors sea-sick?' she exclaimed. 'Yes, that's just where it was,' he said, and the friendly interest he displayed in this young lady was very wonderful. Already they seemed to have known each other for a quite indefinite time. 'Mind you, people laugh nowadays at the old belief that one English sailor was as good as seven French ones. But it was quite true; and the explanation is simple enough. The fact was that the English kept such a strict blockade of the French ports that the French sailors never had a proper chance of finding their sea legs. They never got out. When they did come out they had to fight; and how can you expect a sea-sick man to fight? But I was talking of that chum of mine, Greville. He was the coolest hand I ever came across. Once he and I--when we were mids, you know--had to go down by rail from Genoa to Spezia----' At this moment the music slowly ceased; and the kaleidoscopic groups out there, that had been going through all sorts of interminglings and combinations, lost cohesion, as it were, and melted away into the murmuring and amorphous crowd. Miss Nan knew very well that she ought now to return to her mamma; but how was she to break in upon this story? When one has already begun to tell you something, more particularly when that something is about himself and an old companion--and especially if you do not wish to be perplexed with invitations to dance--it is not polite to interrupt. So the young lieutenant, taking no notice whatever of the cessation of the dancing, continued his story, and told several more, which Miss Nan found intensely interesting--so absorbing, indeed, that she met the eyes of her companion without any abashment, and frequently laughed in her low, quiet way. These two seemed very friendly, and heedless of what was going on around them; and might, in fact, have continued talking for a quite indefinite time had not, all of a sudden, Charley Stratherne come up, followed by a tall man with a long yellow beard; and before Nan knew what had happened, she was being led away to pierce the great throng that had now grown very dense indeed, a waltze having already begun. As for the young lieutenant, he somewhat abruptly declined his friend's offer to find him a partner.