CHAPTER XXIII.
CALAIS.
It was upon a lovely evening in autumn, as the Dover steam-boat rounded the wooden pier at Calais, amid a fleet of small boats filled with eager and anxious faces, soliciting, in every species of bad English and "patois" [vulgar] French, the attention and patronage of the passengers.
"Hotel de Bain, mi lor'." "Hotel d'Angleterre," said another, in a voice of the most imposing superiority.

"C'est superbe--pretty well." "Hotel du Nord, votre Excellence--remise de poste and 'delays' (quere relays) at all hours." "Commissionaire, mi ladi," sung out a small shrill treble from the midst of a crowded cock-boat, nearly swamped beneath our paddle-wheel.
What a scene of bustle, confusion, and excitement does the deck of a steamer present upon such an occasion.

Every one is running hither or thither.

"Sauve qui peut" is now the watch-word; and friendships, that promised a life-long endurance only half an hour ago, find here a speedy dissolution.

The lady who slept all night upon deck, enveloped in the folds of your Astracan cloak, scarcely deigns an acknowledgment of you, as she adjusts her ringlets before the looking-glass over the stove in the cabin.