At dinner that night, she failed to look in his direction, a circumstance that may not appear extraordinary when it is stated that she purposely or inadvertently exchanged seats with Mrs. Gaston and sat with her back to the table occupied by R. Schmidt and his friends. He had to be content with a view of the most exquisite back and shoulders that good fortune had ever allowed him to gaze upon. And then there was the way that her soft brown hair grew above the slender neck, to say nothing of—but Mrs. Gaston was watching him with most unfriendly eyes, so the feast was spoiled.
The following day was as unlike its predecessor as black is like white. During the night the smooth grey pond had been transformed into a turbulent, storm-threshed ocean; the once gentle wind was now a howling gale that swept the decks with a merciless lash in its grip and whipped into submission all who vaingloriously sought to defy its chill dominion. Not rain, but spray from huge, swashing billows, clouded the decks, biting and cutting like countless needles, each drop with the sting of a hornet behind it. Now the end of the world seemed far away, and the jumping off place was a rickety wall of white and black, leaning against a cold, drear sky.
Only the hardiest of the passengers ventured on deck; the exhilaration they professed was but another name for bravado. They shivered and gasped for breath as they forged their bitter way into the gale, and few were they who took more than a single turn of the deck. Like beaten cowards they soon slunk into the sheltered spots, or sought even less heroic means of surrender by tumbling into bed with the considerate help of unsmiling stewards. The great ship went up and the great ship came down: when up so high that the sky seemed to be startlingly near and down so horribly low that the bottom of the ocean was even nearer. And it creaked and groaned and sighed even above the wild monody of the wind, like a thing in misery, yet all the while holding its sides to keep from bursting with laughter over the plight of the little creature whom God made after His own image but not until after all of the big things of the universe had been designed.
R. Schmidt, being a good sailor and a hardy young chap, albeit a prince of royal blood, was abroad early, after a breakfast that staggered the few who remained unstaggered up to that particular crisis. A genial sailor-man and an equally ungenial deck swabber advised him, in totally different styles of address, to stay below if he knew what was good for him, only to be thanked with all the blitheness of a man who jolly well knows what is good for him, or who doesn't care whether it is good for him or not so long as he is doing the thing that he wants to do.
He took two turns about the deck, and each time as he passed the spot he sent a covert glance into the corner where Miss Guile's chair was standing. Of course he did not expect to find her there in weather like this, but—well, he looked and that is the end to the argument. The going was extremely treacherous and unpleasant he was free to confess to the genial sailor-man after the second breathless turn, and gave that worthy a bright silver dollar upon receiving a further bit of advice: to sit down somewhere out of the wind, sir.
Quinnox and Dank were hopelessly bed-ridden, so to speak. They were very disagreeable, cross and unpleasant, and somehow he felt that they hated their cheerful, happy-faced Prince. Never before had Count Quinnox scowled at him, no matter how mad his pranks as a child or how silly his actions as a youth. Never before had any one told him to go to the devil. He rather liked it. And he rather admired poor Dank for ordering him out of his cabin, with a perfectly astounding oath as a climax to the command. Moreover, he thought considerably better of the faithful Hobbs for an amazing exposition of human equality in the matter of a pair of boots that he desired to wear that morning but which happened to be stowed away in a cabin trunk. He told Hobbs to go to the devil and Hobbs repeated the injunction, with especial heat, to the boots, when he bumped his head in hauling them out of the trunk. Whereupon R. Schmidt said to Hobbs: "Good for you. Hobbs. Go on, please. Don't mind me. It was quite a thump, wasn't it?" And Hobbs managed, between other words, to say that it was a whacking thump, and one he would not forget to his dying day—(if he lived through this one!).
"And you'd do well to sit in the smoke-room, sir," further advised the sailor-man, clinging to the rail with one hand and pocketing the coin with the other.
"No," said R. Schmidt resolutely. "I don't like the air in the smoke-room."
"There's quite a bit of air out 'ere, sir."
"I need quite a bit."