“Violetta, ahoy!”
CHAPTER XXVII—ON BOARD THE VIOLETTA
CAPTAIN JANSEN met us at the gangway. There were some changes in the look of the Violetta's deck since last I had seen it, a year and a half before, in the West Indies. The awning was new. Those geranium pots were gone, which used to stand along the scuppers, and be carried down every night and whenever the weather threatened. The world had been too much for them. The same doilies were on the same rocking chairs. There was the brown mahogany parlour table. But among objects that recalled home conventions, something that breathed eastward, a tropic touch here and there, had been admitted. A huge Burmese tapestry swung from one side of the awning, and the breeze bayed it in, its green embroidered serpents writhing lazily above an honest but uninspiring sofa from Grand Rapids. Yellow Chinese mats from Singapore were on the deck in place of the former flowered carpet.
Mrs. Ulswater sat in her familiar rocking chair, small, thin, quiet, and slightly precise; and on one of the mats, with her back against Mrs. Ulswater's chair, sat a girl in a white dress, with dark hair, with very definite eyebrows and a tilted, provocative nose. In front of her, on another mat, sat Chepa smoking a cigarette. At some distance off, a motionless figure in dingy white crouched in the shadow of the cabin, whom I took to be Ram Nad engaged in abstraction. These were the occupants of the after-deck.
“Kit!” cried Mrs. Ulswater, dropping her knitting. Susannah sprang up and cried: “Did we beat the Mayor?”
I told them about the insurrection, Jimmie Hagan's arrest, and the Mayor's surrender, and how I wanted Dr. Ulswater to take charge of The Union Electric's cash.
“I'm ever so much obliged for your insurrection, Mrs. Ulswater. As to the Mayor—well, you've been around the world yourself since I saw you, and got acquainted with the Gentile. What do you think of him?”
“Whom do you mean by the Gentile?”