leeward, back and head well above the water, and the two great ears resting flat upon the surface like gigantic lily-pads, Nurse Amy uttered a faint cry and swooned in my arms.”

“Some folks get all the luck!” commented the Pressman, who, having filled his book, was now jotting down notes upon his left cuff.

“You’ve not much to complain of, it strikes me!” observed the Second Officer, with a glance at the crammed notebook.

“I guess that’s true!” said the Pressman, with a sigh of satisfaction. “Now, all I want is a photograph or a sketch of that splendid heroine of a girl, and the honor of shaking her hand, and telling her she deserves to be an American—and I’d not trade places with the President.”

The Second Officer appeared to be struggling with some emotion. The muscles of his mouth worked violently. He reddened through the red, and suspicious moisture shone in his eyes. One by one the members of the silent but not unappreciative audience of male passengers that had gradually gathered within earshot of the Second Officer and his victim, manifested the same symptoms. And glancing for the first time at those listening faces, and observing the identical expression stamped upon each, the Pressman, encircled by wet, crinkled eyes, 13and cheerfully-curled-back lips, fringed with teeth in all stages of preservation, grasped the conviction that he had been had. And at this crucial moment the hatch-door of the smoke-room rolled back in its brass coamings, and a pointed gray beard and kindly keen eyes, sheltered by the peak of a gold-laced cap, appeared in the aperture.

13

“New York Harbor, gentlemen,” said the Captain genially. “We’re running into the docks now, and the Custom House officers will board us directly.... I shouldn’t wonder,” he continued, as the majority of the occupants of the smoke-room one by one glided away, “if the newspapers made a story out of our missing port-rail!”

“Permit me to introduce myself as a reporter of the N’York Yeller,” said the young gentleman in tweeds, as he rose and touched his hat. “Perhaps, sir, you would favor me with the facts in connection with the occurrence?”

“Haven’t you had it from Murchison? Why, Murchison——” the Captain was beginning, when with a choking snort the Second Officer rushed from the smoke-room. “Though there’s nothing to tell, Mr. Reporter, worth hearing. A derrick-chain broke at Southampton Docks, and a case of 

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