"The captain never takes no for an answer," persisted the young man. "He will be terribly disappointed if you don't come, and as a matter of fact, counting surely upon your good fellowship, he has made special preparations for you."
Unfortunately—or fortunately, as it later turned out—among other serious defects in my education I have never been taught the firmer uses of the negative. I have never been able to say no to anybody as if I really meant it, and it has involved me in more difficulties than I care to record here or elsewhere. In any event, my regrets growing fainter and fainter, and Captain Maguffy's ambassador's insistence more and more marked, the sum total of some thirty-two negatives soon developed into one positive affirmative.
"All right," I said finally, "I'll run in on the captain; but only for a moment, just long enough to shake hands, say howdido, and get back to bed. I must be in bed by midnight as a matter of principle."
The ambassador thereupon assisted me into one of those indescribable one-horse "shays" that seem to sprout in the vicinity of Southern railway stations and hotels about as lushly as mint in the patches of the Carolinas. I used to think when I was a resident of Yonkers that the Hudson River Valley was a sort of hack heaven, whither all sorts of deceased vehicles went when they died; but several tours of the South since have convinced me that that idea was mere presumption on my part. The South, as well as the Hudson River Valley, fairly burgeons with vehicular antiques that would delight the soul of an archæologist anxious to find the connecting link between the carriages of the Cæsars and those of Andrew Jackson and his successors up to the merry days of Hayes.
The particular rattledy-bang old combination of wabbling wheels and hair-erupting cushions into which I was ushered was drawn by a white horse, and driven by a colored man. The horse was so very white that it could hardly be seen on the white coquina roads, and the negro was so black that he was equally imperceptible against the background of the night; so that I seemed to be floating through the night enjoying sensations similar to those of a man on his first journey in an aëroplane. The whole effect was eery in the extreme, especially as we drove and drove and drove, and floated and floated and floated, without apparently getting anywhere.
Then, of a sudden, I became terribly uneasy. The thought flashed through my mind, "Why, here you are, all alone, after ten o'clock at night, in a strange country, going to see a man you never heard of before, in company of an individual whose name you haven't asked, and whose face you have seen only dimly in the dark! You are known to have several hundred dollars in your pocket, and nobody under Heaven but yourself and your companion knows where you are, or in what kind of company." It really seemed time for a diplomatic "hedge."
"Where is Captain Maguffy's house?" I inquired as a starter, after we had driven for an overlong time.
"Newark, New Jersey," was the consoling reply, but soberly made.
"Well—I don't feel equal to a drive that far," I said dryly. "I supposed when I accepted this invitation that your captain was living around the corner somewhere."
"No," said my companion. "He's aboard his boat—the Samuel J. Taylor."