Dear Jones: And so he had to come back and engineer for his living.
Baby Van Rensselaer: How very sad. Now I can scarcely bear to hear him whistle.
Dear Jones [to himself]: Well, I didn’t mean to produce that effect. [To her.] Oh, he doesn’t mind it a bit. Hear him now.
The engineer was executing a series of brilliant variations on the “Air du Roi Louis XIII.,” melting by ingenious gradations into the “Babies on our Block.”
Dear Jones [hastily]: Race Rock lies over that way. You can’t see it yet—but you will after a while.
Baby Van Rensselaer: Oh, then there is a Race Rock?
Dear Jones: Why, certainly.…
With this starter, it may readily be understood that a man of Dear Jones’s fecundity of intellect and fine imaginative powers was able to fill the greater part of the afternoon with fluent conversation. Two or three times Baby Van Rensselaer made futile attempts to go into the cabin to see how the Duchess was sleeping; but as many times she forgot her errand. There was a fair breeze blowing from the northeast, but the sea was smooth, and the little boat scarcely rocked on the long, low waves. It was getting toward four o’clock when there was a sudden stoppage of the engineer’s whistling, and of the machinery of the boat. Baby Van Rensselaer sent Dear Jones back to inquire into the cause, for they were alone on the broad sea, with only a tantalizing glimpse of New London harbor stretching out welcoming arms of green, with the Groton monument stuck like a huge clothes-pin on the left arm. Dear Jones came back, trying hard to look decently perturbed and gloomy, but with a barbarian joy lighting up his bronzed features.
Baby Van Rensselaer: What is it?
Dear Jones: The machinery is on a dead centre. And the whistling engineer says that he’ll have to wait until he can get into port and hitch a horse to the crank to start her off again.