The little Tagalog serving-girl, squatting on the floor and blowing chaff from rice, could not keep her wondering gaze off this exquisite creature whose hair shone like the gold bangles on the ankles of the dancing-girls. There would be a good deal of chaff in that rice when the time came to cook it.
CHAPTER III
Immediately after "chow" that night Mathison and Hallowell entered the living-room, filling their pipes. They were both smiling, each with the idea that he was bucking up the other. For they were at the parting of the ways, these two, and they might never meet again. At dinner they had talked of everything but that which was uppermost in their thoughts. In the center of the living-room was a long trencher-table—a slab of wonderful mahogany propped by enormous boles of Calcutta bamboo. One end was stacked with books and magazines. The blank space at the other end was Hallowell's pet abiding-place. Here, after the day's work was done, he would wrestle with his mechanical problems.
Hallowell fired his pipe and held out the flaming match toward Mathison, who managed to catch the last flicker.
They waited until Paolo, the Spanish servant, went below with the dishes. Of late they had become a little suspicious of the Spaniard. He loitered in the dining-room when there was no legitimate excuse.
"Well, you lucky son-of-a-gun," said Hallowell, "in a few weeks you'll be rampaging up the Main, with proper sea-boots on your feet and a drab terrier under them. Lord! how I wish I were thirty instead of forty-five! But I've walked my last bridge. This is my chart-room. Of course, if I wanted to pull a wire or two, I could get to Washington. But I've certain ideas about the navy, and I don't want them actually touched. In Washington a chap sees the seams of the service, wires, timeserving, and all that. But out here it's the fighting-machine. We can't all go potting subs, but some of us can make the potting easier."
Mathison put his hands on the other's shoulders. "Bob, you're the most lovable man God ever gave to another for a comrade. And I'm going to miss you like the devil. And more, I'm going to worry over you, you're such an infernally absent-minded dub."