Lady Underhill winced. A current of air had sent the perfume of Algy’s cigar playing about her nostrils. She closed her eyes, and her face turned a shade paler. Freddie, observing this, felt quite sorry for the poor old thing. She was a pest and a pot of poison, of course, but all the same, he reflected charitably, it was a shame that she should look so green about the gills. He came to the conclusion that she must be hungry. The thing to do was to take her mind off it till she could be conducted to a restaurant and dumped down in front of a bowl of soup.
“Bit choppy, I suppose, what?” he bellowed, in a voice that ran up and down Lady Underhill’s nervous system like an electric needle. “I was afraid you were going to have a pretty rough time of it when I read the forecast in the paper. The good old boat wobbled a bit, eh?”
Lady Underhill uttered a faint moan. Freddie noticed that she was looking deucedly chippy, even chippier than a moment ago.
“It’s an extraordinary thing about that Channel crossing,” said Algy Martyn meditatively, as he puffed a refreshing cloud. “I’ve known fellows who could travel quite happily everywhere else in the world—round the Horn in sailing-ships and all that sort of thing—yield up their immortal soul crossing the Channel! Absolutely yield up their immortal soul! Don’t know why. Rummy, but there it is!”
“I’m like that myself,” assented Ronny Devereux. “That dashed trip from Calais gets me every time. Bowls me right over. I go aboard, stoked to the eyebrows with seasick remedies, swearing that this time I’ll fool ’em, but down I go ten minutes after we’ve started and the next thing I know is somebody saying, ‘Well, well! So this is Dover!’”
“It’s exactly the same with me,” said Freddie, delighted with the smooth, easy way the conversation was flowing. “Whether it’s the hot, greasy smell of the engines …”
“It’s not the engines,” contended Ronny Devereux.
“Stands to reason it can’t be. I rather like the smell of engines. This station is reeking with the smell of engine-grease, and I can drink it in and enjoy it.” He sniffed luxuriantly. “It’s something else.”
“Ronny’s right,” said Algy cordially. “It isn’t the engines. It’s the way the boat heaves up and down and up and down and up and down …” He shifted his cigar to his left hand in order to give with his right a spirited illustration of a Channel steamer going up and down and up and down and up and down. Lady Underhill, who had opened her eyes, had an excellent view of the performance, and closed her eyes again quickly.
“Be quiet!” she snapped.