CHAPTER XI.
“L’HIRONDELLE DE MER.”
Kent Brown, when he reached New York on his return trip to Paris in quest of the rather wilful, very irritating, and wholly fascinating Judy, got his money changed into gold, which he placed in a belt worn under his shirt.
“There is no telling what may happen,” he said to the young Kentuckian, Jim Castleman, with whom he had struck up an acquaintance on the train. “Gold won’t melt in the water if we do get torpedoed, and if I have it next me, whoever wants it will have to do some tearing off of clothes to get it. And what will I be doing while they are tearing off my clothes?”
“Good idea! I reckon I’ll do the same—not that I have enough to weigh myself down with.” Castleman was on his way to France to fight.
“I don’t give a hang whether I fight with the English, French, Serbs or Russians, just so I get in a few licks on the Prussians.” He was a strapping youth of six feet three with no more idea of what he was going up against than a baby. War was to him a huge football game and he simply meant to get into the game.
The Hirondelle was a slow boat but sailing immediately, so Kent and his new friend determined to take it, since its destination, Havre, suited them.
“I like the name, too,” declared Kent, who shared with his mother and Molly a certain poetic sentiment in spite of his disclaimer of any such foolishness.
There were very few passengers, the boat being a merchantman. Kent and Jim were thrown more and more together and soon were as confidential as two school girls. Kent had been rather noncommittal in his replies at first to Jim’s questions as to what his business was in the war zone at such a time if it were not fighting. As their friendship grew and deepened, as a friendship can on shipboard in an astonishingly short time, Kent was glad enough to talk about Judy and his mission in Paris.
“She sounds like a corker! When is it to be?”
“I don’t know that it is to be, at all,” blushed Kent. “You see, we are not what you might call engaged.”