"Why, look at the swell feed—and the champagne here to-day. And look!" He slid off for inspection the band of the cigar he was smoking. "I paid three for a dollar for that same cigar the other day at a big hotel in Washin'ton. They must have money to throw overboard to be givin' that kind away."
Carlin knew the brand. He also knew that only two, or it might be three, officers of that ward-room mess could afford to smoke that make of cigar regularly; but he did not tell Flavin that. "They get those cigars for twelve cents apiece—buying 'em by the hundred—in Cuba, J. J.," he suggested mildly.
"And the dealers stick us thirty-five cents for em up here! Anyway, a fat time they have swelling 'round in uniforms given 'em by the gover'ment for the ladies to admire 'em."
Two years of political reporting in his home city and two more as Washington correspondent for the paper of most vital circulation in that same home city had not made of Carlin a politician, and it is to be doubted if ten times four years in a political atmosphere would have so made him; because ancestrally implanted in Carlin's breast was an inextinguishable desire to speak what he thought, and usually as soon as he thought it.
He said now—sharply: "What do you know about naval officers or navy life, J. J.?"
The Honorable J. J. Flavin had never, not even when he was only ward leader and therefore much more disposed to humility than now, been able to reconcile Carlin's unworshipful tongue with his own sense of what was due a man of importance in the political world. And Judas priest, he had a tongue of his own if it came to that! "Of course, you know all about it!" he retorted.
"No, I don't," replied Carlin promptly and placidly. "But I probably know more than do you or almost anybody else who has never had the chance to live aboard ship and see some of it. This afternoon the officers of this ship are spreading themselves according to service traditions to give you and me and all aboard here a good time. To-morrow they'll be to sea and on the job, a simple-living, busy crowd—working hard, taking chances, and making no talk about it."
Flavin whoofed a funnel of doubting cigar smoke into the teeth of the air-port breeze. "Taking chances! How? And where?"
"Everywhere. Day and night—battleships, destroyers, in submarines and aeroplanes. Thirty men and officers killed in one turret explosion only last month."
"Taking chances—huh! Foolish chances!"