Evans now lived aboard the battleship Delaware, Admiral Johnson’s flagship; and here the life was different, indeed, from that on the mother-ship of the destroyer flotilla. He found himself one of a large number of warrant officers, some real old-timers, but most of them much younger men than himself. To his great delight he found on board the Delaware his old friend Lindsay, erstwhile radio officer of the cruiser that had taken him to England. Lindsay had now risen to the rank of lieutenant and was in command of a turret on the great superdreadnought, but the same sunny disposition and cordial informality were unchanged; he still was not too proud to associate with a warrant officer.
Lindsay knew how to enjoy himself on an evening ashore; he had a faculty for finding out when there was any merry-making going on, and for being there. Evans, having little time or inclination to join in the crude pleasures which most of his fellow warrant officers sought in the town, now found real refreshment in knocking about on shore with Lindsay, the natural geniality of the youth being of a compelling sort. He managed to get Lindsay talking more than once about his own affairs, and learned that in his home in the Middle West his widowed mother depended on his savings as her chief means of support.
Now there are haunts in Punta Delgada where a visitor may find a roulette wheel spinning merrily of an evening. The scraps of paper representing Portuguese money fly hither and thither on the long table, and ever like a Nemesis the treasurer rakes them in as a man rakes in the autumn leaves that strew the road. He who frequents the roulette wheel often becomes poorer—else there would not be roulette wheels.
Now this game had a fatal fascination for Lindsay, who was one of those individuals that love to take a chance, and can always persuade themselves that next time they’ll make a pile. Once he had won a surprising sum of money at roulette and had sent it home to his mother before the opportunity to lose it again had beset him. Since then his earnings had nearly all fallen into the hungry maw of the spinning wheel. The most pathetic feature of the case was the way his eagerness to send more money home kept luring the incautious youth into taking another chance at the losing game.
Once on the evening before the fleet was to put to sea for some maneuver, Evans, dead tired from his arduous toil, was planning to go to bed early and get a long sleep. As supper-time drew near, Lindsay, making for the gangway to catch the last boat taking a liberty party ashore, chanced to meet Evans on deck.
“Are you coming ashore? It’s going to be a great night on the beach,” he said.
“I guess I’ll stay aboard and turn in early.”
“Oh, come on, be a sport, old man,” said Lindsay genially. “Lord knows where we’re going on this cruise or when we’ll get back; there’ll be all kinds of fun in town to-night.”
“You’ll have to break out a pile of excitement to get me ashore to-night.”
“Why, what’s the matter with you?”