Others may have taken
them for dewlaps, but I knew better; they were poison sacs.
It was quite apparent that he abhorred the very idea of having to
cross to Europe on the same ocean with the rest of us, let alone
on the same ship. And for persons who were taking their first
trip abroad his contempt was absolutely unutterable; he choked at
the bare mention of such a criminal's name and offense. You would
hear him communing with himself and a Scotch and soda.
"Bah!" he would say bitterly, addressing the soda-bottle. "These
idiots who've never been anywhere talking about this being rough
weather! Rough weather, mind you! Bah! People shouldn't be allowed
to go to sea until they know something about it. Bah!"
By the fourth day out his gums were as blue as indigo, and he was
so swelled up with his own venom he looked dropsical. I judged
his bite would have caused death in from twelve to fourteen minutes,
preceded by coma and convulsive rigors. We called him old Colonel
Gila Monster or Judge Stinging Lizard, for short.
There was the spry and conversational gentleman who looked like
an Englishman, but was of the type commonly denominated in our own
land as breezy. So he could not have been an Englishman. Once
in a while there comes along an Englishman who is windy, and
frequently you meet one who is drafty; but there was never a breezy
Englishman yet.
With that interest in other people's business which the close
communion of a ship so promptly breeds in most of us, we fell to
wondering who and what he might be; but the minute the suspect
came into the salon for dinner the first night out I read his
secret at a glance. He belonged to a refined song-and-dance team
doing sketches in vaudeville. He could not have been anything
else - he had jet buttons on his evening clothes.
There was the young woman - she had elocutionary talents, it turned
out afterward, and had graduated with honors from a school of
expression - who assisted in getting up the ship's concert and then
took part in it, both of those acts being mistakes on her part,
as it proved.
And there was the official he-beauty of the ship. He was without
a wrinkle in his clothes - or his mind either; and he managed to
maneuver so that when he sat in the smoking room he always faced
a mirror. That was company enough for him. He never grew lonely
or bored then. Only one night he discovered something wrong about
one of his eyebrows. He gave a pained start; and then, oblivious
of those of us who hovered about enjoying the spectacle, he spent
a long time working with the blemish. The eyebrow was stubborn,
though, and he just couldn't make it behave; so he grew petulant
and fretful, and finally went away to bed in a huff. Had it not
been for fear of stopping his watch, I am sure he would have slapped
himself on the wrist.
This fair youth was one of the delights of the voyage. One felt
that if he had merely a pair of tweezers and a mustache comb and
a hand glass he would never, never be at a loss for a solution of
the problem that worries so many writers for the farm journals - a
way to spend the long winter evenings pleasantly.
Chapter II
My Bonny Lies over the Ocean - Lies and Lies and Lies
Of course, we had a bridal couple and a troupe of professional
deep-sea fishermen aboard. We just naturally had to have them.
Without them, I doubt whether the ship could have sailed. The
bridal couple were from somewhere in the central part of Ohio and
they were taking their honeymoon tour; but, if I were a bridal
couple from the central part of Ohio and had never been to sea
before, as was the case in this particular instance, I should take
my honeymoon ashore and keep it there. I most certainly should!
This couple of ours came aboard billing and cooing to beat the
lovebirds. They made it plain to all that they had just been
married and were proud of it. Their baggage was brand-new, and
the groom's shoes were shiny with that pristine shininess which,
once destroyed, can never be restored; and the bride wore her
going-and-giving-away outfit.
Just prior to sailing and on the morning after they were all over
the ship. Everywhere you went you seemed to meet them and they
were always wrestling. You entered a quiet side passage - there
they were, exchanging a kiss - one of the long-drawn, deep-siphoned,
sirupy kind. You stepped into the writing room thinking to find
it deserted, and at sight of you they broke grips and sprang apart,
eyeing you like a pair of startled fawns surprised by the cruel
huntsman in a forest glade. At all other times, though, they had
eyes but for each other.
A day came, however - and it was the second day out - when they were
among the missing. For two days and two nights, while the good
ship floundered on the tempestuous bosom of the overwrought ocean,
they were gone from human ken. On the afternoon of the third day,
the sea being calmer now, but still sufficiently rough to satisfy
the most exacting, a few hardy and convalescent souls sat in a
shawl-wrapped row on the lee side of the ship.
There came two stewards, bearing with them pillows and blankets
and rugs. These articles were disposed to advantage in two steamer
chairs. Then the stewards hurried away; but presently they
reappeared, dragging the limp and dangling forms of the bridal
couple from the central part of Ohio.
