how to steer, so I hung around the bridge until Mr. Browning explained the compass to me and let me steer a while. Mr. Topper just sat on the cushion behind the wheel looking like somebody had poisoned his oatmeal, and kept his eyes fastened on the black yacht that followed us out of the Thimbles and was about half a mile behind us now.

We made pretty good time that day, keeping just off the Connecticut shore, and rounding Point Jude, and then cutting across to Newport. We got there just before six o’clock. I was kind of excited, because I was never in a naval base before, and I was never anywhere where millionaires were thick like I’d heard they were in Newport. I don’t know which I was hottest to see—a warship or a multi-millionaire.

The Albatross nosed into the harbor past the big coast defense guns that nose out over the rock, and past the old fort, and then we turned to the right around a kind of an island with officers’ houses on it, and cast our anchor near the station of the New York Yacht Club. I enjoyed it a heap, and so did Catty. The place was full of destroyers anchored side by side like sardines in a sardine tin. There were dozens of them, and a couple of cruisers and other boats of the navy.

We had hardly cast anchor when the black yacht poked her snout around the island and anchored about a hundred yards from us. Mr. Topper snorted and Mr. Browning shrugged his shoulders, but Catty and I—we knew. We knew that yacht was after us and Mr. Topper and meant business of some kind, and we made up our minds we would keep our eyes pretty wide open to see what it was.

After supper we went ashore with Mr. Browning and walked around looking for millionaires, but we didn’t see any to speak of. Catty claimed he saw one, but I didn’t believe it, because he didn’t wear a silk hat and hadn’t any diamonds to speak of. Catty claims millionaires don’t always wear silk hats and diamonds, but I know better. Anybody that can afford them, wears them; I should, and everybody’s kind of like me, I’ll bet. If I was a millionaire I’d sleep in a Prince Albert coat and patent leather shoes, and when I got up in the morning, the first thing I’d put on would be a dozen diamond rings. No sense having all that money if you can’t kind of dazzle folks that haven’t.

The dinghy of the black yacht followed us in, and Catty and I kept our eyes on the man that came in with it. He was kind of big and wide with black hair and real nifty yachting clothes, white pants and all, and buttons with anchors on them. I got a good close look at him. 

 Prev. P 14/125 next