The English Channel has a character of its own, which distinguishes it from other seas and straits. It seems made fractious and difficult by Nature, and set as on purpose to be barrier between two nations who are too unlike to easily understand each other, and are the safer neighbors for this wholesome difficulty of communication between them. The "chop" was worse than usual on the night when our travellers crossed; the steamer had to fight her way inch by inch. And oh, such a little steamer! and oh, such a long night! CHAPTER VI. ACROSS THE CHANNEL. Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward noon, before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours after the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since have started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way out of the terrible ladies'-cabin, she crept on deck for her first glimpse of France. The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, and his faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than the vessel's deck, intersected with canal-like waterways, through whose intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to the landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people assembled to watch the boat come in,--workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers, custom-house officers, moving to and fro,--and all this crowd were talking all at once and all were talking French! I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of course, that people of different countries were liable to be found speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise. "Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!" She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night! "Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs. Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered custom-house officers pounce upon the passengers as they landed one by one, and she felt her heart sink within her. But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very bad. Katy's pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She did not trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to understand without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and out, and in a surprisingly short time all was pronounced right, the baggage had "passed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to the railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand. Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till four in the afternoon.