Only proud Elinor braved the dangers of breakfast that morning with Billie. Mary Price, stricken down by the memory of chocolate ice cream, could not lift her head from the pillow. Nancy refused to speak and Miss Campbell lay in a comatose state and declined all nourishment.
You will remember that in a former volume,—“The Motor Maids Across the Continent,”—it was prophesied by a Gypsy fortune teller in San Francisco that Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids would soon take a long voyage across stormy waters to a foreign land. Nothing had seemed more improbable at the time, and the travelers had laughed incredulously. Nevertheless, the Comet, their faithful red motor car, was stored at that moment in the ship’s hold with other baggage, and the four friends and Miss Helen Campbell were now sailing on the broad Atlantic.
It was Billie and her Cousin Helen, those two insatiate wanderers, who had planned the journey, and it was Billie’s indulgent father, Mr. Duncan Campbell, who had actually cabled his permission all the way from Russia.
Through raging seas they had sailed, then, as the old Gypsy had prophesied, for they had scarcely said farewell to the towers of New York that stand clustered together at one end of the island, and sailed around Sandy Hook, when they met with a gale that rocked the deeps and churned the waters into foam. All night the boat rolled and pitched, and all night the suffering passengers groaned in their berths; all save that incorrigible Billie Campbell, who slept the sleep of the perfectly healthy and snuggled under her covers comfortably when the wind whistled through the cordage.
Scarcely a dozen people appeared in the dining-room that morning, and Billie and Elinor were the only women. Elinor almost collapsed as they passed the belt of cooking smells on the way to the dining-room. They had not taken one of the larger and more expensive ships on which science has eliminated all offensive smells of the kitchen. But it’s a wonderful thing what will power will do, and strengthened by orange juice and hot tea, Elinor’s fortitude returned, the color came into her cheeks and the light to her eyes.
“If seasick people would only eat,” Billie was saying, “they wouldn’t mind the rocking a bit. It’s that empty feeling that makes things so bad.”
Elinor nodded her head. She still couldn’t trust herself to reply.
“The mistake seasick people make,” observed a young man about twenty-one, sitting opposite to them, “is to drink slops. Solids are the thing,—like this, for instance.”
The two girls regarded his breakfast for one brief moment; then Elinor fled from the table like a hunted soul. He was eating bananas, cereal, chops, fried eggs, finnan haddie,—which smelt abominably at that unfortunate time,—and griddle cakes.
“It’s too bad I mentioned ‘slops,’” he observed to Billie in an apologetic tone. “It’s a dangerous word to use on a ship. On land it’s safe enough.”