He crawled up to the main deck and huddled in the shelter of a
pile of hay-bales where Pete was declaring to Tim and the rest
that Satan "couldn't never get nothing on him."

Morton broke into Pete's publicity with the question, "Say, is
it straight what they say, Pete, that you're the guy that owns
the Leyland Line and that's why you know so much more than the
rest of us poor lollops? Watson, the needle, quick!" [Applause
and laughter.]

Wrennie felt personally grateful to Morton for this, but he went
up to the aft top deck, where he could lie alone on a pile of
tarpaulins. He made himself observe the sea which, as Kipling
and Jack London had specifically promised him in their stories,
surrounded him, everywhere shining free; but he glanced at it
only once. To the north was a liner bound for home.

Home! Gee! That _was_ rubbing it in! While at work, whether
he was sick or not, he could forget--things. But the liner,
fleeting on with bright ease, made the cattle-boat seem about
as romantic as Mrs. Zapp's kitchen sink.

Why, he wondered--"why had he been a chump? Him a wanderer?
No; he was a hired man on a sea-going dairy-farm. Well, he'd get
onto this confounded job before he was through with it, but
then--gee! back to God's Country!"


While the _Merian_, eleven days out, pleasantly rocked through