LITMIR.BIZ

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Jones"; it wasn't at all romantic. But it might be assumed. Anyhow, it did not matter. He turned to his chair.

      She came back.

      "Say, I forgot to tell you that my name is Grogan."

      "And mine is Jones." There was not the slightest hesitance in her reply.

      "William Grogan, generally Bill."

      "I certainly am not going to call you that." She laughed. This was nothing but a big, lonesome boy. So she accepted his advances for exactly what they were. "Here's the book. I know you'll enjoy it. It will make Florence and Rome doubly interesting to you."

      "If it's got action, that's all I want. It's mighty kind of you. I'd probably jump overboard if I didn't have something to read."

      "There is plenty to read in the ship's library."

      "A library on board? Well, that's luck. Say, have you seen the steward about your seat in the dining-room?"

      "I don't care where I sit."

      "Would you mind if I saw to it?"

      "Indeed no." She might better sit next to him ​than next to some one who might be wholly prosaic and uninteresting. He would at least afford her a little amusement.

      He gave a quick nod of his head—well shaped under its thatch—and strode away to interview the chief steward. He looked like a very strong young man, good-humored until aroused, and then she imagined rather a difficult customer. She had handled his prototype in boyhood; wild little animals, always ready to play or fight, impervious to anything but kindness. The Irish—how well she knew them, hot-headed, passionate in their hates and loves, with an exaggerated sense of loyalty, sensitive in the extreme, generous to a fault, and always blue-eyed. Perhaps she should have snubbed him for a day or so; but she, too, had been lonely. Had she not begun this long voyage for the very dread of loneliness? Had she not suddenly and desperately craved for strange scenes, multitudes?

      At dinner that night he was at her right, at one of the beam tables on the port side. She noticed that he made no mistakes, that his table manners were good. On the other side of her was another young man, somewhere in the thirties. He was as far removed from the Grogan type as the moon is from Mars. Immaculately dressed, suave, polished, good-looking, he managed to divert her attention frequently.

      William was dressed in his every-day clothes, and he scowled as his roving eye caught the flash of white shirt-bosoms here and there among the ​male passengers. Fully half the men were wearing evening dress. William was thoroughly fortified in this particular, but he hadn't expected to be called upon to wear this new regalia except upon state occasions, such as at balls, the meeting of dukes and rajahs. Well, to-morrow night he would not be caught napping. Besides, what did he care? His school-teacher was wearing the same clothes she had come aboard with, and she "laid 'em all cold on looks."

      He recognized the man on the other side of her. It was the "fresh guy" who had bumped into him so rudely coming up the gang-plank.

      "I'll get his number to-morrow," he thought; "and I'll eat my hat if it isn't 'shine'! I wonder how he got that seat?"

      After dinner the school-teacher disappeared. So William, very well satisfied with himself and the world at large, strolled into the smoke-room with the copy of Cellini. He lighted a brier pipe and soon became absorbed in the adventures of the amazing Florentine.

      At half after ten a man entered the wireless-room and despatched a Marconigram to New York. This message, all very innocent on the face of it, started the whirligig upon which a certain Irishman was to spin out various lengths of his mortal thread. Fate is a cynical gamester; for the man who sent that message and the man who received it didn't know William Grogan from Adam!

      ​

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      NEXT morning William went to breakfast rather early. He ate oranges, oatmeal, beefsteak and fried potatoes, bacon and liver, three squares of toast, and drank two cups of coffee.

      William's cabin-mates were two old archeologists, bound for mid-Africa. Clausen sat opposite and eyed William with profound envy. To possess a physical organization that demanded such a start-off for the day! He sighed.

      "Young man, I'd give a million—if I had it!—for an appetite like yours."

      "Well," replied William, genially, "I guess it 'd take a million to keep it going. I've been the ruination of half a dozen boarding-houses." He folded his napkin and patted it down beside his plate, a thrifty habit he had acquired from years of living in boarding-houses where one napkin must go through three campaigns before it is turned into the laundry. "Say, Mr. Clausen, you've been over before. Ever ride an elephant?"

      "Yes"—mournfully.

      "What's it like?"

      "It's like straddling the roof of a wooden house during an exceedingly violent earthquake."

      ​"You can't scare me," said William, as he turn-stiled himself out of the chair and made for the upper deck.

      Could anything have scared him that glorious morning, his appetite satisfied, his lungs full of fresh sea-air, the blood bounding through his veins? I doubt it.

      William hurried away to his chair, but, finding that the school-teacher's was unoccupied, he immediately lost interest in the spot. He next turned into the smoke-room; nobody home there. Where were they all, anyhow? It was after nine, and not two dozen souls were up and abroad. Could anybody possibly be seasick on a day like this? There was only what the chief engineer called a fair beam sea running up from the south-west; not enough to spill the cat's milk.

      He began to worry. Supposing she was seasick? That would mean a long, lonesome day for him.

      A fit of restlessness laid hold of him. He tramped up and down the decks, explored the library, the barber's shop, and the steerage. In the end he found temporary anchorage against the weather rail, near the entrance to the smoke-room. He blinked in the dazzle of the leaping blue water, took out a Partaga, turned it over and over in his fingers, and grinned pleasurably. Back of that little roll of Havana was a twenty-thousand-dollar interest in Burns, Dolan & Co., master plumbers, about four thousand in the Corn Exchange, and a letter of credit for three thousand in his inside pocket, la-de-dah.

      ​He lighted the cigar and puffed luxuriously. He had read about Partagas. Sir Percival was always smoking one as he faced the lions, or Hockheimer, the theatrical magnate, as he gave a million in royalties to the poor playwright, or Reginald Van Wiggs as he heard his doom read in his uncle's will. William was always playing pranks mentally with some of the heroes he had read about. But that he, William Grogan, should live to stick this brand of perfecto between his teeth was like a dream in hashish. And once upon a time—two months since, in fact—his wildest dream would have stopped short of a box of George W. Childs's! Maybe it was a dream, after all, the ship, the cigar, the girl. Impulsively he brought the heel of his left shoe down upon the toe of his right. He felt it.

      "I should worry!" he murmured.

      The cigar slowly vanished in ashes. Truth to tell, while he enjoyed it to a certain extent, he would have preferred his corn-cob and "scrap." There wasn't any "kick" to these perfectos.

      "Beautiful morning, isn't it?"

      William looked up slowly. "Yes, it is."

      Panama hat, white flannels, white shoes, silk shirt, just exactly like those chaps on the stage dressed. The man was good-looking; William admitted this grudgingly, but he knew in his soul that he wasn't going to like the man. Why? Oh, it was one of his "hunches."

      "Going all the way around?"

      "Ye-ah. Always wanted to see the Orient."

      ​"You'll enjoy it. I took the grand

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