It was a great sight to see the review, when the President came along on the yacht Mayflower and I forgot all about the battleships being of iron liable to sink if the wind got out of the tanks, and was never so proud in my life as I was when I saw the jacks climb up on the rigging and hang on like monkeys, lined up like they were drilling on deck, and when the Connecticut began to fire a salute to the President, out of those great iron sewer pipes, and all the rest of the fleet began to shoot at the air, the noise was so loud that it made your head feel like you do when you take seidletz powders, and it gullups up your nose, and the smokeless powder made the smoke so thick you couldn’t see anything but the President’s teeth, as he sailed along on his yacht, and I got so patriotic that the chills went up my back like when you have the grip coming on, and then the smoke cleared away and when a million American flags were flung to the breeze, I began to choke up like you do when you are sick and the callers say, “Well, brace up boy, you may pull through, but there are a hundred chances against your living till morning,” and the tears rolled down my cheeks, and my throat got full like I had the tonsilitis, and everybody else on our launch except two Japanese were crying, and then the President’s yacht took a position, and all the battleships swinging into line and marched past, and the bands played, and we all just bellered for patriotic joy, and I was so mad to see those Japanese standing there like bottles of castor oil, not even smiling, that I blew up a toy balloon which I have been playing air ship with, and I whacked it on the head of the meanest looking Jap, and when it exploded he was the scardest-looking person I ever saw, because he thought one of those sixteen-inch shells had gone off in his hat, and everybody said, “served him right,” and then he laughed, the first time since the review started, and he wanted the skim of my toy balloon as a souvenir of the first gun fired in the war with Japan.
When it Exploded the Jap Was the Scaredest Person I Ever Saw.
From that day, when I had examined critically our fleet and seen it salute, and monkey around the President, I felt so patriotic that I wanted to fight for my country, and I could hardly wait two days for Mr. Evans to send his launch ashore after me, and I didn’t care if the whole thing was iron, that couldn’t float under natural conditions and if Bob Evans should put oarlocks on a bar of railroad iron, and put me on it, with orders to go sink a Japanese sampon, or whatever they call their war ships, I would step aboard that bar of railroad iron with a light heart, wave my hat and tell them all to go plumb.
So we went ashore, and that evening there was a ball at the hotel, and all the officers of the navy were there, and the army, and millions of ladies with clothes on the lower half of them, and talcum powder and black court plaster on the upper half, and the way they danced and waltzed and flirted and et lobsters would make you dizzy, and when Bob Evans walked limping by me, with a two-hundred-pound lady on one arm, and a ninety-pound girl on the rheumatiz side of him, I was so full of patriotic fire I couldn’t help saying, “Hello, Bob, I will be on deck all right,” and he looked at me with an expression on his face that looked as though he had drawn a lobster that had been dead too long, and he marched along with his female procession, and the orchestra struck up a good-night waltz, and everybody waltzed, and took some drinks, and went home to wait the sailing of the fleet the next day, and I went to bed with an order to be called at sunrise, so I could be on the porch with my ticket in my hand, ready to jump into the launch when she whistled and sail away “for a frolic or a fight,” and I didn’t care which.
CHAPTER VII.
A Storm Comes from the Coast of Cuba—Everyone Goes to Sleep on the Ship Except the Watchman and Pilot—The Bad Boy Is Put in the Dungeon—The Captain Says to Throw the Boy Overboard to Feed the Sharks.
I feel like a bridegroom that has been left waiting at the church, with no bride appearing, and the crowd scoffing at him, and commenting on his clothes.
I waited on the porch of the hotel at Fortress Monroe all the forenoon for Mr. Evans’ launch to come and get me and take me aboard his gladship, holding my ticket in one hand and my bundle of clothes in the other.