“Extra good—why, that doesn’t mean a tenth of what he could do—one of the greatest natural phenomena ever known in America, or anywhere—he was black as the ace of spades, and unusually homely, so they hated to watch him when he was playing; yet he had the most astounding memory ever heard of—didn’t know one note of music from another—just depended on his ears, and that amazing talent that Nature had implanted in his, strange uncouth soul.”
“What could he do, partner, as was so wonderful?” demanded Perk, seemingly more or less interested.
“Of course I never saw or listened to him play, for he was dead long before my time,” Jack continued; “but I’ve heard people who had, and I’ve also read accounts of it in magazine articles, so I’m pretty well posted myself. If you turned your head away, they say you’d have sworn some famous composer was hitting the ivories of the piano, and bringing out the most divine strains ever heard. He could listen just once to some classical and difficult sonata played by an eminent performer, (something Blind Tom had never heard before in all his life) and then sitting down he would reproduce the whole selection exactly as the famous artist had played it, with never a chord missing. People used to be awed, as though realizing they were in the presence of a miracle!”
“Gee whiz! it must a been somethin’ fierce, Boss,” was Perk’s only comment.
“You know they say the Chinese and Japanese are wonderful imitators, and can reproduce any pattern to the minutest detail that is placed before them; but the best of them would be ten classes below that negro genius. So don’t think I’m anything but a tyro, brother, with my poor memory.
“Hot-diggetty-dig! but yeou’re good enough to make a poor bucko like me take a seat way back; that’s the honest truth, er Mr. Warrington, suh.”
As the following day broke with a promise of more clear weather Jack decided to waste no time. Accordingly they were off again, and speeding toward the north at a pace well over a hundred miles an hour.
“Gosh-a-mighty! I never’d have reckoned this here ole boat could hit it up so pretty,” Perk at one time called out, when they had muffled the engine exhaust so effectually that they were well able to converse without raising their voices to a shout. “She muster been built outen A Number One stuff to hold together like she’s done. If we got through this here job alive, partner, it’s gwine to be up to us-uns to write a sweet letter to the company what constructed this here amphibian, an’ tell ’em jest haow much we thinks o’ aour boat.”
“Possibly we may, partner,” the other told him; “but even that might break the Secret Service rule of keeping identities well covered up, lest you lose some of your effectiveness by getting too familiar. Besides, I’ve got an idea this boat’s been reconstructed—that as originally built she wasn’t in the amphibian class at all—some gent who owned her must have been fond of the model, and feeling the necessity for having a ship that could land on water, had her altered to suit his wants.”
“That may well be, suh,” Perk went on to assert, with one of his nods; “but jest the same they made a mighty good job o’ it, I’m asayin’, suh. Huh! to tell the truth right naow I wouldn’t cry much if I never did see aour ole bus, the big Fokker, agin; I’ve fell so turrible hard fo’ this hyah ship, built to imitate a duck, what kin swim on the water, rise from the same when yeou wants to git agoin’, an’ cut ahead at more’n a hundred clean an hour. Huh!”