3

“It was carried away,” said the Second Officer, “by an elephant.”

“A pet you had running about aboard?” queried the Pressman, with imperturbable coolness.

“A passenger,” returned the Second Officer, with equal calm.

There was a snap, and the Pressman’s notebook was open on his knee. The pencil vibrated over the virgin page, when a curious utterance, between a wail, a cough, and a roar, made the hand that held it start.

“Yarr-rr! Ohowgh! Yarr!” The melancholy sound came from without, borne on the cool breeze of a late afternoon in March, through the open ventilators.

“Might that,” queried the young gentleman of the Press, “be an expression of opinion on the part of the elephant?”

“Lord love you, no!” said the Second Officer. “It’s the leopard.” He added after a second’s pause: “Or the puma.”

“Do you happen to have a menagerie aboard?” inquired the Pressman, making a note in shorthand.

“No, sir. The beasts—elephants, leopards, and a box of cobras—are invoiced from the London Docks to a wealthy amateur in New York State. Not an iron king, or a corn king, or a cotton king, or a pickle king, or a kerosene king,” said the Second Officer, with a steady upper lip, “but a chewing-gum king.”

“If you mean Shadland C. McOster,” said the Pressman, “my mother is his cousin. They used to chew gum together in school recess, sir, little guessing that Shad would one day soar, on wings made of that article, to the realms of gilded plutocracy.”

“I rather imagine the name you mention to be the right one,” said the Second Officer cautiously, “but I won’t commit myself. The beasts shipped from Liverpool 4are intended as a present for the purchaser’s infant daughter on her fifth birthday.”

4

“Yarr-rr! Ohowgh! Ohowgh!” Again the coughing roar vibrated through the smoke-room. Then the chorus of “Hail Columbia!” rose from the promenade deck, where the lady passengers were assembled ready to wave starred and striped silk pocket-handkerchiefs and exchange patriotic sentiments at the first glimpse of land.

“It’s not what I should call a humly voice, that of the leopard,” observed the 

 Prev. P 3/241 next