Valvick massively lifted his head sideways and scratched his cheek.
"Ay dunno. It depend on wedder dey know it at de port. Maybe. You want me to hask him?"
"Well — not exactly. Sort of sound him out, you see? Don't let on you know anything. You might do it before dinner; and then we'd be all ready to keep watch."
The other nodded vigorously, and Warren looked at his watch. "Nearly time for the bugle to dress for dinner. We're all set, then?"
There was an enthusiastic chorus in the affirmative. For all these people had within them the true, glorious harebrained spirit of adventure; and Warren poured them a quick one as a toast to the new gamble as lights came on through the vibrating sleekness of white decks, and rain-squalls spattered the portholes, and the voice of a bugle began to brattle past state-room doors, and the stately Queen Victoria shouldered on towards the wild business that was to be.
4 — A Matter of Skulls
"But didn't you know it?" inquired Peggy Glenn, in her sweetest and most surprised tone.
Her voice was clear in the almost deserted dining-saloon, its lights winking against polished rosewood and its vast height wrenched with ghostly cracklings. The roof writhed in the fashion of tottering blocks; Morgan was not at all sure about that glass dome. To eat (or do nearly anything else) was a sporting performance in which you must look sharp for sudden rushes of the crockery from any corner of the table, from the snake-like dart of the water-glass to the majestic ground-swell of the gravy. Morgan felt like a nervous juggler. The dining-saloon would slowly surge up with an incredible balloon swell, climb higher, tilt, and plunge down from its height with a long-drawn roar of water that dislodged stewards from their pillars and made diners — clutching their chairs — feel a sudden dizziness in the pit of the stomach.
There were possibly a dozen people to stem a clattering avalanche of dishes and silver. In general, they were eating away grimly but cautiously, while a gallant orchestra attempted to play "The Student Prince." But none of this bothered Peggy Glenn. Suave in black velvet, with her black bobbed hair done into some sort of trick wave that lent a hoydenish air to her thin face, she sat at Captain Whistler's elbow and regarded him with naive surprise.
"But didn't you know it?" she repeated. "Of course Curtis can't help it, poor boy. It runs in the family, sort of. I mean, I shouldn't exactly call it insanity, of course… "