“What infernal nonsense is this? I can’t find a steward or an officer. The service is rotten, it’s positively damnable. And I can’t go on deck. Every door is locked. I’ll make it hot for the captain.”
“’Tis my advice to sit tight and take it easy, Mr. Chase,” soothingly returned O’Shea. “I am afraid the captain has troubles of his own this morning.”
“What do you mean? What do you know about it? Who the devil are you? Do you think I have no influence with the management of this miserable steamship company?”
“’Tis a long, wet walk from here to the company’s offices,” said O’Shea with an amused smile. “You are a tremendous man ashore, no doubt. I have read about ye in the newspapers. But unless I guess wrong, you will take your medicine with the rest of us.”
Mr. Jenkins P. Chase bolted down the staircase into the spacious dining-saloon. For lack of anything better to do, O’Shea and Johnny Kent followed him. The tables had been set overnight, but at this hour of the morning stewards should have been wiping down paint, cleaning brasswork, or getting ready to serve breakfast. The room was silent and deserted.
Jenkins P. Chase halted abruptly and his hands went out in a nervous, puzzled gesture. O’Shea brushed past him and advanced along an aisle between the tables to the galley or kitchen doors at the farther end of the saloon. These, too, were locked, but he could hear the rattle of pans and pots and a sound of voices, as if the cooks had begun the day’s work.
“That is the first cheerful symptom,” he said to himself. “The news will put heart into Johnny Kent, though I wish there were more indications of circulatin’ the grub among the passengers.”
The dictatorial manner of Jenkins P. Chase had become oddly subdued.
“You said we must take our medicine?” he remarked to O’Shea. “For God’s sake, what is wrong with this ship?”
“I know very little, my dear man. We were locked in during the night, clapped under hatches, as the saying is. And the course of the vessel was altered to head her for the South Atlantic instead of the Newfoundland Banks.”