It was then that a man carefully peered over the edge of the revenue boat and looked down at us.
“My land!” he said. “I was just waiting for you to explode!”
He then said that he had thought they had been struck by a torpedo, and on Tish explaining, he looked rather odd and brought two other men to look at us. In the end, however, we convinced them, and they invited us on board while they bailed our boat and fixed our engine.
The first man was the captain, and while Aggie made us some fresh tea in the galley Tish confided to him our real purpose, and showed him her badge.
He seemed greatly impressed, and said, “If more people would see their duty and do it, we would get rid of the rum evil.”
He then said that they were also a part of the revenue fleet, or had been. He didn’t know how long they could stick it out.
“I’m all right,” he said. “But now you take Joe and Bill, there. They’re not normal any more; it’s the loneliness gets them. Nothing to do but wait, you see.”
“You might try cross-word puzzles,” Tish suggested.
“We had a book of them,” he said dejectedly. “But Bill got mad one day trying to think of a South American river, in five letters, and flung it overboard.”
Over our tea Tish discoursed of the reasons which had turned us from our original idea to the revenue service, and the captain nodded his head.