Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French III).djvu/139

Rh child. He adjusted his shako on his head, which was covered with black oilcloth, and gave that peculiar shrug of the shoulders, which none can imagine who have not served in the infantry,—that shrug of the shoulders which the soldier gives to raise his knapsack, and ease its weight for a moment. It is a habit of the soldier, which, when he becomes an officer, remains as a trick. After this jerking movement, he drank a little wine from his flask, administered a kick of encouragement to the little mule, and began.

" must know then, in the first place, my boy, that I was born at Brest. I began by being troop-boy, gaining my half-ration, and my half-pay, at the age of nine years, as my father was a soldier in the Guards. But as I had a liking for the sea, one fine night when I was at Brest on leave of absence, I hid among the ropes of a merchant-ship bound to the Indies, and was not found until they were out at sea, when the captain preferred making a sailor-boy of me, to throwing me overboard. When the Revolution came on, I had made some headway, and was captain of a neat little trading vessel, having been tossed about the sea, like its foam, for fifteen years. As the old royal navy—a good old navy, faith, it was—found itself suddenly depopulated