“Tell the purser I’ll be with him in a moment. And hold on, Sam. Just step in here. I want you to know my old friend, Mr. Brown. We went to school together and have been friends all our lives. Willie is going to make the next trip with us, Sam, and there isn’t anything on this boat too good for him. Do you understand?”
“’Deed I does, Mr. Mercer. ’Deed I does, suh. It’s a pleasure to do anything for a friend of yours, Mr. Mercer.” And the grinning darky advanced and shook Willie’s proffered hand with seeming pleasure.
“Thank you, Sam. Thank you. Please tell Mr. Robbins that I’ll be there in a moment.”
The colored steward withdrew. Roy turned to Willie. “I’m sorry, Willie,” he said, “but I shall have to leave you for a little while. I offered to help the purser with some manifests, as soon as I had my telegrams off. He doesn’t know you are here, of course, or he wouldn’t have sent Sam up.”
“I notice you are aces high on this ship, Roy,” said Willie. “And I understand it all right enough. It’s that old trick of yours of being nice to everybody. No wonder they all like you.”
“You understand about this matter, Willie, don’t you?” replied Roy, ignoring his friend’s remark. “I’m just as sorry as I can be that I have to leave you. It’ll take me an hour or two with the purser. Just make yourself at home. As soon as I get done, I’ll show you the wireless outfit, as you asked me to. Ought to have done it right off, anyway. You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Willie?”
“Beat it,” said Willie. “You don’t owe me any excuses. I’m a million times obliged to you merely for the opportunity to be here, let alone being entertained. I’ll take a stroll while you’re helping the purser. I’ll be back in a couple of hours or so.”
Roy accompanied his guest to the pier, made sure that the men on guard would know him so that Willie would have no difficulty in getting back aboard the ship, and hurried away to the purser’s office.
Once on land, Willie drew a little to one side, out of the way of the traffic, to take a good look about him. Wonderful was the scene that greeted his eye. Although Willie lived in central Pennsylvania, the scene was familiar enough to him. As Roy had said, Willie was one of the four members of the Wireless Patrol who had spent some time in New York during the war, running down the secret wireless of a German spy. During that visit he had become well acquainted with New York—he had to become well acquainted with it, in fact, as part of the preparation for the work to be done. So now he felt entirely at home.
Yet always he was thrilled by the sight of the teeming activities of this great, roaring city. Being from an inland town, he especially liked the water-front, and all its suggestive activities. The coming and going of huge, laden drays and trucks, with their mysterious bales and boxes, always fired his imagination. What was in these commonplace containers, and whence had it come or whither might it be going? To what strange lands might not some of these packages of merchandise eventually come, and in what curious ways might they not travel? Chinese sampans might eventually bear some of these goods up brawling Chinese rivers; camel trains might carry them over the burning desert; elephants might convey a portion of this merchandise through Indian jungles or long safaris of African porters struggle through the dark continent with some part of these products on their heads.