“… ha ha ha ha …”
“Who drew number nine, please, in the sweepstakes? Did any gentleman here draw the NINE please in the sweepstakes? There was an error.”
“Hell, I drew the eight.”
“I wonder — who’s kissing — her now … I wonder — who’s telling — her how—”
“Did anyone see the sunrise this morning? It had a black mark on it like an arrow.”
“If you saw any sunrise I’ll eat my hat. Black mark on it like an arrow! Like a poached egg, you mean. Put up your ante.”
“I have anted.”
(How can there be any doubt about it? She looked right at me. “Do you know that lady?” I said to Purington. “That’s Mrs. Battiloro, sister of A. B. Mandell, the novelist. She has just cut me. Walk around the deck with me again — I want to make sure that it was deliberate …” And it was. She came coolly toward me, talking with that tall fair girl — she looked at me coolly, still lightly talking — she shot me through with a blue eye. Why? It couldn’t have been because of that business this morning, when I pretended not to see Cynthia and her friend? No. I’m sure they didn’t guess that I saw them. My damned, absurd, diffidence. Of course it would have been awkward — I was so far away from them, there on the lower deck, and I would have had to shout, or wave a hand, or perform some other such horribly public action, and then go trotting, like a tractable little dog, to the foot of the companionway: to talk with them through the bars of my cage! No — it was a mistake; but I’m sure they didn’t guess it. Why, then? Why?… I am blushing angrily and hotly at the recollection, while I keep a look-out through the open smoking-room window to see if she comes round by the sun parlor. Is it barely possible that her mother doesn’t remember me, didn’t get a good look at me last night on the dark deck? No. She cut me. It was a cool and conscious cut if there ever was one. She disapproves of me, and has always disapproved of me. Scheming for a “good” marriage! Cutting the throats of such outsiders as me! “I know thee not, old man.” Was there something I did or said last night? My overexcited greeting? And does it mean that Cynthia, too, will cut me? Of course. It’s all been decided. It was talked over last night, and again this morning, with laughter — gay feminine laughter. My name looked for in vain on the passenger list — and the white-and-gold breakfast room scanned in vain. No Demarest to be seen. Where is Demarest, the laughing goldfish? He must be in the second cabin? But how odd! How funny! Now, Cynthia, take my advice, and drop him at once. He is not our sort. Those ridiculous letters he wrote to you last winter — and that awful book—)
“It isn’t what you say, it’s how you say it.”
“Sure, when you say that, smile!”
“—a club. A little club, more or less. One little club.”
“I don’t believe I’ll play, but I’ll watch you, if you don’t mind.”
“What you doin’, Susie? Where’s Johnny Cagny?”
“I’m writing my name. This isn’t as good as I can write … Say! Don’t tear my paper!”
“You shouldn’t be in the smoking room, Susie. It’s too rough for you in here. And that little Johnny Cagny, he’s too rough for you too.”
“Jesus! Listen to that screw kicking out! R-r-r-r-r-r-r!”
“—and then I got to New York too late for the boat! Though if I hadn’t stopped for a bath, and to go to the office for some money, I’d have been all right. But those damned agents told me four o’clock in the afternoon. Hell! And there’s my wife, waiting for me all this time in Liverpool … Oh well, it’s all in the day’s work.”
“That’s right … I’ve missed plenty of trains, but never a—”
“—perpendicular—’
“—sick to death of them. Sixteen days on that damned tanker, and now this bloody thing—”
“—asleep. Are ye asleep, Paddy? Rocked in the bosom of the deep, deep, deep—”
“Ha ha ha.”
“Half seas over. He’ll drink his way to Ireland. It’ll be a dry country by the time he gets there. Oh Paddy dear and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round—Who’s got anything better than a full house? Oh! SHANdygaff.”
“—told me about one trip he had, from Tampico to New Orleans, with some Mexican passengers. Indians, you know, those half-breeds. They had a hell of a time. Every time he turned his back, those damned Indians would light a fire on the decks! They’re always making little fires, you know, — just for company, and to warm up a few old coffee grounds in a can. Well, on a tanker full of oil! Gee whiz, man! she’d go up so quick you’d never know what happened. All night they had to watch them—”
“—is that so—”
“—is that so—”
“Aztecs, I suppose those were. Those Aztecs were a wonderful people. Wonderful builders — all just as straight as a die, and according to the points of the compass, and carvings all over everything. They had a high state of civilization.”
“That’s all right, but they were heathen just the same. They sacrificed human beings to the sun.”
“They thought Cortez was a reincarnated sun-god. That’s how he got control over them with so small an army. Damned dirty shame, too. Still, the world has to be civilized.”
“Why has it?… I don’t believe we’re a bit better than our so-called heathen ancestors.”
“Ah-h-h-h what you talkin’ about!”
“Well, look at Ireland, your own country, full of murders and burnings and treason and God knows what; and look at the Balkans; and look at the way we shoot down strikers, or burn niggers, or the whole bloody world going to war for nothing at all and all lying about it, every man jack of them, pretending there’s something holy about it! Look at the way in England, when they launch a battleship, they have a red-faced Bishop there, or an Archbishop, to consecrate the bloody ship in the name of God for murder! Civilized! You make me sick. The world hasn’t changed a hair for four thousand years.”
“That’s right, too!”
“Hear hear!”
“That’s all very easy to say, but just the same there is some progress. Look at the toothbrush—”
“Ha ha — make the world safe for toothbrushes!”
“Porter! Bring me the car toothbrush please!”
“Yes sir, and when she come back there was a foot sticking out of every berth—”
“Ante, mister.”
“—and when she whispered ‘Sweetheart!’ forty men answered with one voice. ‘Come in, darling! here’s your icky fing!’”
“Ha ha — that’s a good old-timer.”
“I — can sing — truly rural—”
“Then I was sent out scouting with a Dodge two-seater and a pocket full of cigars — throwing the bull, you know, you have to do it. Finding out what the other companies were up to. A sort of commercial spy, that’s really what it is. I didn’t know a thing about it, but I knew enough to bluff, and before they found me out I knew the game. Gee whiz, I had a stroke of luck once! I was up looking over some old wells — gone dry. They didn’t say anything about it, but the first thing I noticed, right beside one of these wells, was a couple of dead birds — sparrows or something. Gas! That’s what it was. Well, I kept mum, and drove over to a rival company about two miles off, pretending just to drop in for a friendly chat. The first thing I knew, I heard a chap complaining about a gas well on their place—‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said, ‘the way the pressure’s dropped on that well.’ That gave me an idea! I looked up the geological layout — and sure enough, their gas was leaking through our old oil well. And before they knew it, we had it tapped. A stroke of luck, that was! It gave me a lot of pull with the company.”