“By Jove, Tom, give me time to breathe; you’ve hurled a regular broadside of questions into my hull. Haul off and hold a minute; cease firing! as you fighters say,” expostulated our old acquaintance, Captain Jack, as he was fairly shoved into a chair at the table and opposite the laughing and red-faced lieutenant.
“Come here, waiter,” called Maxon to a passing attendant, in high glee over Jack’s cry for quarter and his own good luck in meeting an old chum when he was especially lonely and eager to have a talk about home and friends.
“Bring us a bottle of champagne and let it be as cold as the Admiral’s heart when a poor devil of a lieutenant asks for a few day’s shore leave.”
“Now, my water-logged consort, we will first and foremost drink in a brimming bumper of ‘Fizz’ the golden dome in Boston and the bonny-bright eyes of the beauties that beam on it,” exclaimed jolly Tom Maxon, bubbling over with happiness at having just the man he wished to talk about Boston with.
“I say! Tom, have you been studying up on alliteration? You rang in all the B’s of the hive in that toast,” said the merchant skipper, emptying his glass in honor of Boston and her fair daughters.
“I don’t require thought or study to become eloquent when the ‘Hub’ and her beauties be the theme, but you just up anchor and sail ahead giving an account of yourself, my hearty,” Tom replied with great gusto.
“To begin, then, as the typical story writer does, one November day some thirteen months ago, I sailed away (I’ve caught the complaint. I came near making a rhyme) from Boston in the good ship ‘Adams.’ When a week out of harbor as per instructions from the house of Dunlap, I unsealed my papers to find that the ship had been presented to me by my kinsmen, the Dunlap brothers.”
“Stop! Hold, my hearty, until we drink the health of the jolly old twins. May their shadows never grow less and may the good Lord send along such kinsmen to poor Tom Maxon,” interrupted the irreverent Tom, filling the glasses and proceeding to honor the toast by promptly draining his.
Jack and Tom had been pupils in the same school in Boston when they were boys. Their tastes and dispositions being much alike they became chums and warm friends. Like young ducks, both of the lads naturally took to the water. When they had gotten through with the grammar-school an appointment to the Annapolis Naval Academy was offered to young Maxon by the representative of his Congressional district, which he joyfully accepted, and hence was now a United States officer. Jack had entered the High School and later the merchant marine service.