I had been the guest of honor on a steam-yacht a year or two before,
after a game. There had been pink lights on the table, I remembered,
and the place-cards at dinner the first night out had been
caricatures of me in fighting trim. There had been a girl, too.
For the three days of that week-end cruise I had been mad about her;
before that first dinner, when I had known her two hours, I had
kissed her hand and told her I loved her!
Vail and Miss Lee had left the others and come into the chart-room.
As Charlie Jones and I looked, he bent over and kissed her hand.
The sun had gone down. My pipe was empty, and from the galley,
forward, came the odor of the forecastle supper. Charlie was
coughing, a racking paroxysm that shook his wiry body. He leaned
over and caught my shoulder as I was moving away.
"New paint and new canvas don't make a new ship," he said, choking
back the cough. "She's still the old Ella, the she-devil of the
Turner line. Pink lights below, and not a rat in the hold! They
left her before we sailed, boy. Every rope was crawling with 'em."
"The very rats
Instinctively had left it,"
I quoted. But Charlie, clutching the wheel, was coughing again,
and cursing breathlessly as he coughed.
CHAPTER IV
I RECEIVE A WARNING
The odor of formaldehyde in the forecastle having abated, permission
for the crew to sleep on deck had been withdrawn.
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