“Without proper food man becomes ill in body and morals. With it, he becomes hopeful, and inspired to high achievements. Different foods result in varied trains of thought. Acting upon this I hope to produce a condensed lozenge or wafer that shall assist each according to his needs. The inventor, the artist and the poet will then be gently stimulated in imagination, command of words or rhythmic forces, as may be required.”
Mr. Sturritt lowered his paper.
“For those lacking in their love of the truly beautiful I may also get up a dose—er, I should say—prepare a lozenge. For our long winter, however, I have laid in a line of—er—uncondensed supplies which I hope will make our memories of summer fonder, and the strangeness of the night less—less discouraging.”
“Good for you, Bill,” laughed Gale as he sat down. “Johnnie’s all right too, but in a case of this kind it’s the food question that I’m thinking of. Who’s next? Let’s hear from you, Biffer.”
The Captain rose with some embarrassment, and rather ponderously.
“I’m with Miss Gale, mostly,” he began. “I’ve seen the sea in a storm so beautiful that I wasn’t afraid, but the story I’m going to tell may seem to side some with Mr. Sturritt, too.
“Twenty-five years ago last January I was captain of a three-masted schooner in the colony trade, bound from Liverpool to Halifax. Five days out we struck one of the hardest no’theast storms I ever met. In less than an hour after she hit us we’d lost our mainmast, and our cook’s galley was a wreck. Our deck was open at the seams in forty places and everything, including our provision, was wet with salt water. I ought to have run back but I didn’t, and we hadn’t more’n got out of that storm till another hit us, and then another, until we’d had eleven hurricanes in less than that many days, and were in the worst condition a vessel could get into and keep afloat. We had none too much provision to start with, and most of what we’d had was lost. There was no way to cook what we did have, so it was half a loaf of bread and a pint of water a day, and drifting along under a little dinky sail, with a signal of distress flying. Well, the wind kept up and blew us across the ocean, somehow. We got in sight of Halifax light one evening, and right there we struck a nor’wester that laid us out proper. We rolled and pitched and waterlogged, and went back to sea again—God knows where.
“Then hard times did begin. It was four ounces of bread and half a gill of water a day for fifty days, and cold and freezing, trying to keep afloat.”
“And then you were rescued! Then you were taken off!”
It was Edith Gale. She was leaning forward, and her eyes glistening.