On the day of their departure everything was packed and sent on board early in the morning.

The schooner was to sail with the evening breeze.

Meanwhile, as the colonel and his daughter were walking on the Canebiere, the skipper addressed them, and craved permission to take on board one of his relations, his eldest son's godfather's second cousin, who was going back to Corsica, his native country, on important business, and could not find any ship to take him over.
"He's a charming fellow," added Captain Mattei, "a soldier, an officer in the Infantry of the Guard, and would have been a colonel already if _the other_ (meaning Napoleon) had still been emperor!" "As he is a soldier," began the colonel--he was about to add, "I shall be very glad he should come with us," when Miss Lydia exclaimed in English: "An infantry officer!" (Her father had been in the cavalry, and she consequently looked down on every other branch of the service.) "An uneducated man, very likely, who would be sea-sick, and spoil all the pleasure of our trip!" The captain did not understand a word of English, but he seemed to catch what Miss Lydia was saying by the pursing up of her pretty mouth, and immediately entered upon an elaborate panegyric of his relative, which he wound up by declaring him to be a gentleman, belonging to a family of _corporals_, and that he would not be in the very least in the colonel's way, for that he, the skipper, would undertake to stow him in some corner, where they should not be aware of his presence.
The colonel and Miss Nevil thought it peculiar that there should be Corsican families in which the dignity of corporal was handed down from father to son.

But, as they really believed the individual in question to be some infantry corporal, they concluded he was some poor devil whom the skipper desired to take out of pure charity.

If he had been an officer, they would have been obliged to speak to him and live with him; but there was no reason why they should put themselves out for a corporal--who is a person of no consequence unless his detachment is also at hand, with bayonets fixed, ready to convey a person to a place to which he would rather not be taken.
"Is your kinsman ever sea-sick ?" demanded Miss Nevil sharply.
"Never, mademoiselle, he is as steady as a rock, either on sea or land!" "Very good then, you can take him," said she.
"You can take him!" echoed the colonel, and they passed on their way.
Toward five o'clock in the evening Captain Mattei came to escort them on board the schooner.