"Turn around," he said brokenly. I did so.
"Fall in," he ordered, after having made a prolonged inspection of my shrinking back. "I guess you'll do, but you are only getting through on a technicality—there's one white spot under your collar."
Officers are people after all, although sometimes it's hard to realize it. This one, in imagination, I anointed with oil and rare perfumes, and costly gifts I laid at his feet, while in a glad voice I called down the blessings of John Paul Jones upon his excellent head. Thus I departed with my kind and never did the odor of gasoline smell sweeter in my nose than did the fumes that were being emitted by the impatient flivver that waited without the gate. And sweet, too, was the fetid atmosphere of the subway after the clean, bracing air of Pelham, sweet was the smell of garlic belonging to a mustache that sat beside me, and sweet were the buttery fingers of a small child who kept clawing at me while their owner demanded of the whole car if I was a "weal mavy sailor boy?" I didn't look it, and I didn't feel it, but I had forty-three hours of freedom ahead of me, so what did I care?
All went well with me until I essayed the six flight climb-up to the cave of these cliff-dwelling people, when I found that the one-storied existence I had been leading in the Pelham bungalows had completely unfitted me for mountain climbing. As I toiled upward I wondered dimly how these people ever managed to keep so fat after having mounted to such a great distance for so long a time. Somehow they had done it, not only maintained their already acquired fat but added greatly thereto. There would be no refreshing cup to quaff upon arriving, only water, or at best milk. This I knew and the knowledge added pounds to my already heavy feet.
"My, what a dirty sailor you are, to be sure," they said to me from the depth of their plump complacency.
"Quite so," I gasped, falling into a chair, "I seem to remember having heard the same thing once before to-day."
June 25th. Neither Saturday nor Sunday was a complete success and for a while Saturday afternoon assumed the proportions of a disaster. After having rested from my climb, I decided to wash my Whites so that I wouldn't be arrested as a deserter or be thrown into the brig upon checking in. The fat people on learning of my intentions decided that the sight of such labor would tire them beyond endurance, so they departed, leaving me in solitary possession of their flat. I thereupon removed my jumper, humped my back over the tub, scrubbed industriously until the garment was white, then hastened roofwards and arranged it prettily on the line. This accomplished, I hurried down, removed my trousers, rehumped my back over the tub, scrubbed industriously until the trousers in turn were white and once more dashed roofwards. I have always been absent minded, but never to such an appalling extent as to appear clad only in my scanty underwear in the midst of a mixed throng of ladies, gentlemen and children. This I did. Some venturous souls had claimed the roof as their own during my absence so that when I sprang from the final step to claim my place in the sun I found myself by no means alone. With a cry of horror I leaped to the other side of the clothes-line and endeavored to conceal myself behind an old lady's petticoat or a lady's old petticoat or something of that nature. Whoever wore the thing must have been a very short person indeed, for the garment reached scarcely down to my knees, below which my B.V.D.'s fluttered in an intriguing manner.
"Sir," thundered a pompous gentleman, "have you any explanation for your surprising conduct?"
"Several," I replied briskly from behind my only claim on respectability. "In the first place, I didn't expect an audience. In the second—"
"That will do, sir," broke in this heavy person in a quarterdeck voice. "Who, may I ask, are you?"