CHAPTER VIII — ON BOARD THE "JUPITER"
A grey day at sea. The Jupiter seemed to be slinking through the mist and drizzle, so still was the world of waters. The ocean was as smooth as a mill pond; the reflected sky came down bleak and drab and no wind was stirring. The rush of the ship through the glassy, sullen sea produced a fictitious gale across the decks; aside from that there was dead calm ahead and behind.
A threat seemed to lurk in the smooth, oily face of the Atlantic. Far ahead stretched the grey barricade that seemed to mark the spot where the voyage was to end. There was no going beyond that clear-cut line. When the ship came up to it, there would be no more water beyond; naught but a vast space into which the vessel must topple and go on falling to the end of time. The great sirens were silent, for the fog of the night before had lifted, laying bare a desolate plain. The ship was sliding into oblivion, magnificently indifferent to the catastrophe that awaited its arrival at the edge of the universe. And she was sailing the sea alone. All other ships had passed over that sinister line and were plunging toward a bottom that would never be reached, so long is eternity.
The decks of the Jupiter were wet with the almost invisible drizzle that filled the air, yet they were swarming with the busy pedestrians who never lose an opportunity to let every one know that they are on board. No ship's company is complete without its leg-stretchers. They who never walk a block on dry land without complaining, right manfully lop off miles when walking on the water, and get to be known—at least visually—to the entire first cabin before they have paraded half way across the Atlantic. (There was once a man who had the strutting disease so badly that he literally walked from Sandy Hook to Gaunt's Rock, but, who, on getting to London, refused to walk from the Savoy to the Cecil because of a weak heart.) The worst feature about these inveterate water-walkers is that they tread quite as proudly upon other people's feet as they do upon their own, and as often as not they appear to do it from choice. Still, that is another story. It has nothing to do with the one we are trying to tell.
To resume, the decks of the Jupiter were wet and the sky was drab. New York was twenty-four hours astern and the brief Sunday service had come to a peaceful end. It died just in time to escape the horrors of a popular programme by the band amidships. The echo of the last amen was a resounding thump on the big bass drum.
Three tall, interesting looking men stood leaning against the starboard rail of the promenade deck, unmindful of the mist, watching the scurrying throng of exercise fiends. Two were young, the third was old, and of the three there was one who merited the second glance that invariably was bestowed upon him by the circling passers-by. Each succeeding revolution increased the interest and admiration and people soon began to favour him with frankly unabashed stares and smiles that could not have been mistaken for anything but tribute to his extreme good looks.
He stood between the gaunt, soldierly old man with the fierce moustache, and the trim, military young man with one that was close cropped and smart. Each wore a blue serge suit and affected a short visored cap of the same material, and each lazily puffed at a very commonplace briar pipe. They in turn were watching the sprightly parade with an interest that was calmly impersonal. They saw no one person who deserved more than a casual glance, and yet the motley crowd passed before them, apparently without end, as if expecting a responsive smile of recognition from the tall young fellow to whom it paid the honest tribute of curiosity.
The customary he-gossip and perennial snooper who is always making the voyage no matter what ship one takes or the direction one goes, nosed out the purser and discovered that the young man was R. Schmidt of Vienna. He was busy thereafter mixing with the throng, volunteering information that had not been solicited but which appeared to be welcome. Especially were the young women on board grateful to the he-gossip, when he accosted them as a perfect stranger to tell them the name of another and even more perfect stranger.
"Evidently an Austrian army officer," he always proclaimed, and that seemed to settle it.