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Page 5
"I know it. I'm an American -- first, last, and all the time. I'll
show 'em that when I strike Europe. Piff! My cig's out. I can't
smoke the truck the steward sells. Any gen'elman got a real
Turkish cig on him?"
The chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet.
"Say, Mac," cried Harvey cheerfully, "how are we hitting it?"
"Vara much in the ordinary way," was the grave reply. "The young
are as polite as ever to their elders, an' their elders are e'en
tryin' to appreciate it."
A low chuckle came from a corner. The German opened his
cigar-case and handed a skinny black cigar to Harvey.
"Dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt," he said.
"You vill dry it? Yes? Den you vill be efer so happy."
Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was
getting on in grownup society.
"It would take more 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that
he was lighting that terrible article, a Wheeling 'stogie'.
"Dot we shall bresently see," said the German. "Where are we
now, Mr. Mactonal'?"
"Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer," said the engineer.
"We'll be on the Grand Bank to-night; but in a general way o'
speakin', we're all among the fishing-fleet now. We've shaved
three dories an' near scalped the boom off a Frenchman since
noon, an' that's close sailing', ye may say."
"You like my cigar, eh?" the German asked, for Harvey's eyes were
full of tears.
"Fine, full flavor," he answered through shut teeth. "Guess we've
slowed down a little, haven't we? I'll skip out and see what the
log says."
"I might if I vhas you," said the German.
Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. He was
very unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together,
and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never
seasick, his pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at
the stern, which was finished in a turtle-back. The deck was
deserted, and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the
flag-pole. There he doubled up in limp agony, for the Wheeling
"stogie" joined with the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out
his soul. His head swelled; sparks of fire danced before his eyes;
his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels wavered in the
breeze. He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship
tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the turtle-back.
Then a low, gray mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked Harvey
under one arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and away to
leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to
sleep.
He was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to
blow at a summer-school he had once attended in the Adirondacks.
Slowly he remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead
in mid-ocean, but was too weak to fit things together. A new smell
filled his nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and
he was helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes, he
perceived that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was
running round him in silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a
pile of half-dead fish, looking at a broad human back clothed in a
blue jersey.
"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead, sure enough, and this
thing is in charge."
He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little
gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.
"Aha! You feel some pretty well now?" it said. "Lie still so: we
trim better."
With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a
foamless sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her
into a glassy pit beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt
blue-jersey's talk. "Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh,
wha-at? Better good job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you
come to fall out?"
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