“It can’t be worse than the dago kind we’re used to,” Jake broke in. “What’s the matter with it, anyhow?”
“It’s like the British character, heavy and unchanging,” Bethune replied. “A London hotel menu, with English beer and whisky, in the tropics! Only people without imagination would offer it to their guests; and then they’ve printed a list of the ports she’s going to at the bottom. Would any other folk except perhaps the Germans, couple an invitation with a hint that they were ready to trade? If a Spaniard comes to see you on business, he talks for half an hour about politics or your health, and apologizes for mentioning such a thing as commerce when he comes to the point.”
“The British plan has advantages,” said Stuyvesant. “You know what you’re doing when you deal with them.”
“That’s so. We know, for example, when this boat will arrive at any particular place and when she’ll sail; while you can reckon on a French liner’s being three or four days late and on the probability of a Spaniard’s not turning up at all. But whether you have revolutions, wars, or tidal waves, the Britisher sails on schedule.”
“There’s some risk in that just now,” Stuyvesant observed.
Bethune turned to Jake. “You had better come. The card states there’ll be music, and the agent will hire Vallejo’s band, which is pretty good. Guitars, mandolins, and fiddles on the poop, and señoritas in gauzy dresses flitting through graceful dances in the after well! The entertainment ought to appeal to your artistic taste.”
“I’m going,” Jake replied.
“So am I,” said Dick.
Jake grinned. “That’s rather sudden, isn’t it? However, you may be needed to look after Bethune.”
An evening or two later, they boarded the launch at the town mole. The sea was smooth and glimmered with phosphorescence in the shadow of the land, for the moon had not risen far above the mountains. Outside the harbor mouth, the liner’s long, black hull cut against the dusky blue, the flowing curve of her sheer picked out by a row of lights. Over this rose three white tiers of passenger decks, pierced by innumerable bright points, with larger lights in constellations outside, while masts and funnels ran up, faintly indicated, into the gloom above. She scarcely moved to the lift of the languid swell, but as the undulations passed there was a pale-green shimmer about her waterline that magnified the height to her topmost deck. She looked unsubstantial, rather like a floating fairy palace than a ship, and as the noisy launch drew nearer Jake gave his imagination rein.