It came. It was the first meal I had seen served in the steerage, and it was served in buckets. You dipped into one, spiked a slab of beef floating in greasy swill, shovelled a wad of macaroni from a tin wash-basin to your tin plate, grabbed a chunk of stale bread from a clothes basket: there you were, set up for another five hours.
Too ravenous to demur, I seized my tin plate and rushed the ration-slingers. The messy meat I could not stomach, but I pryed loose a little mountain of macaroni. I was busy wolfing it when on looking up I saw the youngest Miss Chumley Grace regarding me curiously. With many others she had come to see the animals fed.
“It’s dollars to doughnuts,” I thought, “she’ll never know me in this beard. But all the same I’ll keep my face concealed.”
I had finished feeding, and was washing my plate at a running tap, when all at once I dropped it as if it had been red-hot. Brushing every one aside I made a leap for my cabin, and reached it, I will swear, in record time. Frantically I felt under the pillow of my bunk. Too late! Too late! The wallet in which I kept my money was gone.
“Alas!” I sighed. “My faith in Roman honesty has received a nasty knock.”
I did not report my loss. I was afraid the inevitable fuss would betray me to the Chumley Graces. I seemed to spend my whole time dodging them now. Once or twice I found the spectacled gaze of poppa fixed upon me. Many times I sneaked away under the scrutiny of the girls. All this added to my other miseries, which in themselves might have served Dante for another canto of his Inferno.
But at last it was over. There was the blue bay of Naples. Now we were manœuvring into the seething harbour. Now we were keeping off with streams of water boatmen who retaliated by hurling billets of wood. Now we were throwing dimes to the diving boys. Now there ran through the ship the thrill of first contact with the dock. Hurrah! In a few more moments I should be free, free to follow the Trail of Beautiful Adventure. True, I was broke; but what a fine, clean feeling that was!
Clutching my alligator-skin suitcase I reconnoitered, with conspiratorial wariness. Cautiously I crept out. Softly I sneaked over to the nearest gangway. My foot was on it; in another moment I would have made my escape. I could have laughed with joy when—a little hand was laid on my arm, and turning quickly I found myself face to face with the youngest Miss Chumley Grace.
“Oh, Mr. Madden,” she chirped, “we knew you all along, but it’s been such fun watching you. Do tell me, now, aren’t you just doing it for a bet?”