without seeming provocation, insist on picking a quarrel with the
middle-aged stranger, whom we will call Mr. Z; and if further along
in the voyage Mr. Z should introduce himself to you and suggest a
little game of auction bridge for small stakes in order to while
away the tedium of travel; and if it should so fall out that Mr.
Y and his friend Mr. X chanced to be the only available candidates
for a foursome at this fascinating pursuit; and if Mr. Z, being
still hostile toward the sobered and repentant Mr. Y, should decline
to take on either Mr. Y or his friend X as a partner, but chose
you instead; and if on the second or third deal you picked up your
cards and found you had an apparently unbeatable hand and should
bid accordingly; and Mr. X should double you; and Mr. Z, sitting
across from you should come gallantly right back and redouble it;
and Mr. Y, catching the spirit of the moment, should double again
--and so on and so forth until each point, instead of being worth
only a paltry cent or two, had accumulated a value of a good many
cents--if all these things or most of them should befall in the
order enumerated--why, then, if I were you, gentle reader, I would
have a care. And I should leave that game and go somewhere else
to have it too--lest a worse thing befall you as it befell the
guileless young Jerseyman on our ship. After he had paid out a
considerable sum on being beaten--by just one card--upon the playing
of his seemingly unbeatable hand and after the haunting and elusive
odor of eau de rodent had become plainly perceptible all over the
ship, he began, as the saying goes, to smell a rat himself, and
straightway declined to make good his remaining losses, amounting
to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high words,
meaning by that low ones, and accusations and recriminations, and
at eventide when the sunset was a welter of purple and gold, there
was a sudden smashing of glassware in the smoking room and a flurry