“Look here! I’ll take a hundred of your mules, sir; if you will bring enough hay for a week, for I’m not going to feed them on the bread of my crew. I will give them water from the boilers. That will cure those that are costive. But for G----’s sake get a move on! I don’t want to rot at Cette and I intend to sail to-morrow at five o’clock. But do your mules know how to swim, sir? Because, if the _Pamir_ is torpedoed there’s no place for them in my two lifeboats. And if they are sick, I’ve no orderlies to hold basins for them!...” The poor brute hooked it as soon as he could, and I am sure he is still wondering what strange monstrosity it was he stumbled upon. Villiers, who came up from the engine-room after Fourgues gave the order not to get under way, heard the last volley. But as soon as the muleteer had turned his back, Fourgues burst out laughing and gave each of us an Algerian cigar. “That’s how we are on the _Pamir_, Villiers! Of course, I’ll take their mules, as many as there is room for on the deck. They are needed at Salonica. But all the same, they’re a bit thick--sending us that bird at the last moment! As for you, my boy, to-night you are going to have a wooden floor laid over the deck for all these quadrupeds. I don’t intend they shall break their legs on the steel deck. Have it ready by to-morrow morning at six.” That’s the sort of man Fourgues is. He stayed up all night while the crew nailed those old planks that were left from our Moroccan Boches. At six o’clock everything was ready. We had made a fine floor with crossbeams underneath and with mangers along the railing. No one got any sleep. Villiers was all right. He calculated the length of the boards and crossbeams at once, the number of nails, the dimensions of the surface--everything. Without him we should have wasted stuff. If only we could have slept the next day! But the mules arrived with their hay at dawn and we went right on without stopping. Fourgues gave orders to serve wine _ad lib._, for, he said, with a little wine you can make a Frenchman climb to Heaven on a knotted rope.