mmodore?

The commodore was doing well enough, but the captain--the watchman shook
his head with the wisdom of a doctor.

The seeker after fresh air, eager to move on, yet loath to imply that
the air about a watchman was stale, said, with a glance at the stars,
that here was quiet.

But the watchman begged to differ. Never by starlight had he seen so
busy a hurricane-deck. Just now there was a lull but it was the first in
three hours. Preparations here, preparations there, for the dead, for
the living, the sick, the well; such a going and coming of cabin-boys,
of chambermaids, of the immigrant they called Marburg, the Hayles' old
black woman, the texas tender, the mud clerk, the actor and his wife,
her servant girl----

"And others," prompted the senator. "What doing?"

A hundred things. The actor's wife had got Miss Hayle into funeral black
from her own stage "warrobe," and the young man Marburg had brought up,
for Madame Hayle, one of his deceased mother's mourning gowns, "a
prodigious fine one." It did not fit but the actor's wife and her maid
were altering it while they kept watch where Basile lay and while Madame
Hayle resumed her cares on the lower deck.

And who was caring for the commodore?

Second clerk and mud clerk answered his few needs.

But the captain----?

Ah, that was another matter. The actor was with him.

Mr. Gilmore; um-hmm. A step or so forward of the captain's room, as the
senator moved toward the bell, two male figures seated on the edge of
the skylight roof spoke his name in a mild greeting, and, looking
closely, he found them to be Watson's cub and the Kentuckian whom the
pair down on the boiler deck had just called "California."

The senator expressed surprise that these two were not abed, where he
himself ought to be but--sleeplessness had driven him up here for fresh
air.

"Well, here the fresh air is," said California. "Senator, we've just
been wishing we could see you."

"Ah!" said the senator, grateful yet wary. "I'll just take a turn or two
up forward and be right back."

"But--hold on, senator; just one question."

The three stood. "Now, this first question ain't it; this is just the
cut and deal. Hayle's twins have offered to fight Hugh Courteney--any
way open to gentlemen, as they say--haven't they?"

"Oh--night before last, I--believe so."

"Ancient history, yes; but it's a standing invitation and they've called
him names: poltroon, coward----"

"Well, really,