“I’ll fix that,” declared Helen, and reached in to slide the blind shut. They heard the catch snap and were satisfied.
As they went through the passage from the outer deck to the saloon they saw a figure stalking ahead of them which made Helen all but cry out.
“I see her,” Ruth whispered. “It’s the same girl.”
“And she’s going into that stateroom,” added Helen, as the person unlocked the door of an inside room.
“I’d like to see her face,” Ruth said, smiling. “I see she has curly hair, and I believe it’s short.”
“We’ll look her up after the steamboat gets off. Her room is number forty-eight,” Helen said. “Come on, dear! Feel the jar of the engines? They must be casting off the hawsers.”
The girls went up another flight of broad, polished stairs and came out upon the hurricane deck. They were above the roof of the dock and could look down upon it and see the people bidding their friends on the boat good-bye while the vessel backed out into the stream. The starting was conducted with such precision that they heard few orders given, and only once did the engine-room gong clang excitedly.
The steamer soon swung its stern upstream, and the bow came around, clearing the end of the pier next below, and so heading down the North River. Certain tugboats and wide ferries tooted their defiance at the ocean-going craft, for the vessel on which Ruth and Helen were traveling was one of the largest coast-wise steamers sailing out of the port.
It was a lovely afternoon toward the close of June. The city had been as hot as a roasting pan, Helen said; but on the high deck the breeze, breathed from the Jersey hills, lifted the damp locks from the girls’ brows. A soft mist crowned the Palisades. The sun, already descending, drew another veil before his face as he dropped behind the Orange Mountains, his red rays glistening splendidly upon the towers and domes of lower Broadway.
They passed the Battery in a few minutes, with the round, pot-bellied aquarium and the immigration offices. The upper bay was crowded with craft of all kind. The Staten Island ferries drummed back and forth, the perky little ferryboat to Ellis Island and the tugboat to the Statue of Liberty crossed their path. In their wake the small craft dipped in the swell of the propeller’s turmoil.