p laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet
I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I
recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the
place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.

"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.

"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver
Tongue--if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana."

"But, Sasa--" I protested.

"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your
old head about nothings!"

"But, my dear girl--" I protested.

"They'll do very nicely, thank you," said Sasa, interrupting me, "and if
they're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't
there claret punch in a milk can? And as for lights--true lovers don't
want no lights!"

"Well, Sasa," I said, "I dare say it's a bright idea, and that you
deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the lord's
sake, let me off the ship before you remove the hatches."

"Oh, no," said Sasa, "everybody stay and see the fun!"

Fun, indeed, I thought, as I heard a terrific pounding below, and an
uproar that would have been creditable to a sinking liner. The deck
shook with sledge-hammer blows, and a lot of glasses tumbled off one of
our improvised tables. Then we heard what was obviously a revengeful
wrecking of the whole ship's interior--the smashing of crockery and
lamps, a tramping and a kicking and a throwing down of everything that
was loose or could be wrenched off, together with a hollow,
reverberatory boom of German profan---- No, I won't be unjust, and one
really couldn't hear well. Sasa stamped on the deck with her little foot
and cried out: "Be quiet, you silly baker!" But the silly baker only
roused himself to a renewed ferocity, and, instead of calming down, went
off again like twenty-five bunches of firecrackers under a barrel--and
large firecrackers, too.

Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at
length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however
infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By
the end of the second hour we had forgotten all about him, for heeling
over in the pleasant breeze, and what with singing and telling stories
and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take
thought of the stifling lovers below our feet. Occasionally I had a
haunting sense o