Vail was strong, too. After I had held Williams over the rail I turned to find him looking on, amused. And when the frightened darky had taken himself, muttering threats, to the galley, Vail came over to me and ran his hand down my arm.
“Where did you get it?” he asked.
“Oh, I’ve always had some muscle,” I said. “I’m in bad shape now; just getting over fever.”
“Fever, eh? I thought it was jail. Look here.”
He threw out his biceps for me to feel. It was a ball of iron under my fingers. The man was as strong as an ox. He smiled at my surprise, and, after looking to see that no one was in sight, offered to mix me a highball from a decanter and siphon on a table.
I refused.
It was his turn to be surprised.
“I gave it up when I was in train—in the hospital,” I corrected myself. “I find I don’t miss it.”
He eyed me with some curiosity over his glass, and, sauntering away, left me to my work of folding rugs. But when I had finished, and was chalking the deck for shuffle-board, he joined me again, dropping his voice, for the women had come up by that time and were breakfasting on the lee side of the after house.
“Have you any idea, Leslie, how much whiskey there is on board?”