He looked at me and laughed because that was a very secret matter. But he replied:
"Oh, you would, would you?" and his voice carried that particular British intonation that seemed to say, "Well it is jolly well none of your business."
Then I asked him when he thought we would land in Liverpool.
"I really don't know," said the ship's commander, and then, with a wink, he added, "but my steward told me that we would get in Tuesday evening."
Kirby and I went to the smoke room on the boat deck well to the stern of the ship. We joined a circle of Britishers who were seated in front of a coal fire in an open hearth. Nearly every one in the lighted smoke room was playing cards, so that the conversation was practically confined to the mentioning of bids and the orders of drinks from the stewards.
"What do you think are our chances of being torpedoed?" was the question I put before the circle in front of the fireplace.
The deliberative Mr. Henry Chetham, a London solicitor, was the first to answer.
"Well," he drawled, "I should say about four thousand to one."
Lucien J. Jerome of the British Diplomatic Service, returning with an Ecuadorian valet from South America, advanced his opinion.
I was much impressed with his opinion because the speaker himself had impressed me deeply. He was the best monocle juggler I had ever met. In his right eye he carried a monocle without a rim and without a ribbon or thread to save it, should it ever have fallen from his eye.