A young bluejacket under a cluster of deck-lights tossed, rolled, tossed, sat up. A restless lad near him also sat up. Between them they produced the makings and rolled a cigarette. They lit up, inhaled, began to talk.
"How about Bar Harbor, or Rockport, or some other little place off the New England coast a night like this, with a cool, fresh breeze sweeping in from the Atlantic?" asked the first one.
"What's the matter with the little old North River?" said the other, "or the East River, with the Brooklyn trolleys clangin' and the train to Coney and a few dollars in your pocket after a visit to the paymaster? ... And your best girl, o' course," he added after a moment.
They snuffed out their cigarettes and rolled back into their blankets. Killorin was still sitting up wide awake.
"And your best girl?" repeated Carlin to Killorin.
"Yes," responded Killorin, "as if that didn't go, like an anchor to a ship, without saying."
"Isn't it always a girl?" said Killorin presently. "Whatever drives the most of us to whatever it is we do, good or bad beyond the ordinary, but a woman stowed away somewhere to see what we do at the time or read of it later?"
The Killorins of the world are not standing and delivering to men they never saw before; and so it was not that night, nor the next; but on another hot night, and the ship headed up the Gulf, with the men sleeping anyhow and everywhere about the deck, that Killorin sat outboard of the sailing-launch and, looking out over the dark waters, said:
"Progresso astern and Veracruz ahead—always a port astern and another ahead, isn't it? And so you knew old Dan Riley that kept the candy store up home? ... And Mary Riley?" he asked; and, after a while, began to talk of things that had been.
Lovely Mary Riley! No thought ever I had that girls were made for boys to notice till I saw you!