CHAPTER III


Bartholdi's mighty Liberty loomed high above the vessel as she grandly
swept her way among the crowded shipping of the Upper Bay. On the
huddled steerage-deck Moresco, quickly and mysteriously free from
durance and not at all abashed by what had happened to him, led a
little cheering, in which his countrymen joined somewhat faintly. On
the promenade-deck Vanderlyn was acting as the leader of enthusiastic
rooters for his native land.

With his mother, whose interest in the old German and his daughter he now
fostered very eagerly, he stood close by the rail across which he had
vaulted when Moresco had assaulted the old man. Not even the enthusiasm of
partings from new friends, ship made, could draw him from this point as
the vessel neared her dock. From it he watched the workings of the
health-and customs-officers among the steerage-passengers, while he tried
to definitely decide upon what means he might employ to keep from losing
sight of the two people in whom his interest had grown to be so great,
after they were diverted by the formalities of immigration laws from the
line of travel he would naturally follow when the ship tied up.

"The immigrants are sent to Ellis Island," he explained to Mrs.
Vanderlyn. "A case of sheep and goats, all right, according to the
tenets of this land of liberty and lucre. If you've got money you're a
sheep. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, has wide-open arms for you. No
one tries to stop your entrance. If you've none, why you're the goat