The clerk was kept in a cage, like a bank teller, and knew that he was safe, for Doctor Senn had not brought his gun and had no training in profanity, and was thus at a disadvantage. He finally recovered sufficiently to say:
“Why don’t you have a time for the arrival and departure of your boats?”
“Because we can’t make time wait upon their arrival and departure.”
“But you could place the time for departure so far in the future that they could start on time even when they were behind time. Then all there would be to do would be not to be ahead of time—and one could be on hand on time.”
“On time? Ahead of time? Time in Panama? You’re joking, you know, and don’t know it. You Americans can undoubtedly attend to your own business, and ought to, but you can’t do business here.”
“Yes,” said Doctor Senn, “I have found that out. I suppose I must talk to the steward. Perhaps I can make him understand that I am not a banana.”
“Yes, doctor, talk to the steward. Perhaps he’ll understand.”
Whereupon the clerk’s thin lips closed like a clam shell, and he would neither talk back nor come out of his cage and fight; and Doctor Senn turned away murmuring that it was a sad thing that old heads could not be put on young shoulders, but it was much sadder when they could not be put on old shoulders.
Thus the organizer of the cosy little sea-party was an outcast. It was left for me to take pity on him and share my covey hole with him. He was grateful to have a place to lay his head.
However, after much to and fro running around and about the stupid steward, like ants about a lump of sugar, we all succeeded in our one desire, viz., in becoming stowaways in a little tub that was to be delivered to the mercy of the deep, and take great chances, like Rozhestzensky’s sacrificed fleet. I could not but feel that we had about the same kind of starting out chances as had the unpronounceable admiral with thirteen letters in his name, who should have left authority for others to exercise and mistakes for others to carry out, like Andrews and Company of United Fruit Company fame. Then he would not have been sent to a certain death at sea, and be sentenced to an uncertain death on land for having been sent to sea.