"Poor as we was, we'd a been glad to get away, but he stops us again. 'Won't ye be good this once?' he says. 'I can't make it out,' he says, sad-like, to th' ceilin'. 'Here's Maniller layin' open before them, with nice long walks stretchin' out all around her. All kinds of nice long hot walks beckonin' them out among th' rice-paddies. An' th' Luneta, where they could set and look at th' ships when they was tired, and kill muskeeters. An' th' Y.M.C.A. readin'-room. An' th' Lib'ry. H'm. Yet I'm mor'lly certain they'll pass all them things by on the off side, an' fetch up in some low groggery, debauchin' young Engineers and Marines an' shatterin' th' Gover'ment. Why can't my oldest soldiers ack decent?' he says, 'sos't I can take some pride in th'm?'
"'May I ex-plain to th' Captain, sir?' asts Terry. 'That theayter biznai was an axxident.'
"'An axxident!' says the Old Man. 'H'm. If you see any axxidents comin' along to-day, give them the road. They'll get into just one more axxident,' he says to th' ceilin', 'an' they'll break my heart an' then,' he says, 'there'll be something noticeable doin'. Something noticeable. H'm.'
"We seen that was no place for us, and we sneaks out like a pair of cats that had got caught in swimmin'. 'Did you see his eye?' I says, when we was safe outside. 'It's up to us to walk cracks to-day.'
"Terry just grunts, and the silence didn't really get broken till we'd beat it down Real and was settin' on a bench in th' Luneta. Terry spoke first. 'Any man that figures up my stummick,' he says, 'at a quart and a half, has got another guess.'
"'That's a handsome Chink cattle-boat out by the end of the breakwater,' I says. 'Ain't she got graceful lines?'
"'Why,' asts Terry, scuffin' away at the gravel under the bench, 'didn't he give us a nickel and ast f'r the change? Whose money is that, anyway?'
"'That transport's a picture,' I says. 'If she was on'y a little closer, we could almost see the stripes round her smoke-stack.'
"'If,' says Terry, 'they was any way of makin' those dollars stretch, I'd paint a first coat of blood-color all over Maniller, just to show him what I could do. But he got th' bulge on us when he got th' cash.'
"'Get on to the ships,' says I. 'He'll ast us how they was lookin'.'