We registered that night and went to supper together: Foley, Jackson, Bartholomew, and I. Afterward we dropped into the despatcher's office. Something was coming from McCloud, but the operator to save his life couldn't catch it. I listened a minute; it was Neighbor. Now, Neighbor isn't great on despatching trains. He can make himself understood over the poles, but his sending is like a boy's sawing wood—sort of uneven. However, though I am not much on running yards, I claim to be able to take the wildest ball that ever was thrown along the wire, and the chair was tendered me at once to catch Neighbor's extraordinary passes at the McCloud key. They came something like this:
"To Opr. Tell Massacree"—that was the word that stuck them all, and I could perceive that Neighbor was talking emphatically. He had apparently forgotten Bartholomew's last name, and was trying to connect with the one he had "disremembered" the night before. "Tell Massacree," repeated Neighbor, "that he is al-l-l right. Tell hi-m I give him double mileage for to-day all the way through. And to-morrow he gets the 109 to keep.—Neighb-b-or."
I
THE BULLDOG BREED
A Story of the Russo-Japanese War
By AMBROSE PRATT
"What do you make of her, Maclean?" asked Captain Brandon anxiously.
First mate Hugh Maclean did not reply at once. Embracing a stanchion of the S.S. Saigon's bridge in order to steady himself against the vessel's pitching, he was peering with strained eyes through the captain's binoculars at two small brown needle-points, set very close together, that stabbed the northeastern horizon.
At length, however, he lowered the glass, and resumed the perpendicular.