Off Sandy Hook, and other stories
given up all interest in his own appearance. The weather was squally, a bit of a sea got up, hardly a passenger put in an appearance at the saloon tables, and Bingo only shook his ears when the bugle blew, and turned away from his morning haystack and mound of cabbages with disgust. Nurse Amy got him to eat some biscuits and drink a bucket of Bovril, but you could see he was only doing it to oblige her. ‘Oh, come, cheer up!’ she said in a brisk, professional way. ‘You’ll get your sea-legs on directly and the officer says we’re having a wonderfully smooth passage, considering the time of the year.’ But Bingo only sighed, and two tears trickled out of his little red eyes, as he swayed from side to side. ‘He’ll be worse before he’s better,’ says I; for somehow I was generally about when Nurse Amy was looking after her big charge. ‘He’ll be worse before he’s better,’ and he was.”

8

The Pressman’s face was streaked and shiny, his hair lay glued to his brow. The pencil went on, devouring page after page.

“Nurse Amy, luckily for her patient, was not upset by the pitching of the vessel, for it blew half a gale steady from the sou’-west, and the old Centipede dipped her nose pretty frequently. Nurse was as busy as a bee endeavoring by every means she could devise or adopt from the suggestions of the stewardesses, who showed a good deal of interest in her and her charge, to alleviate the sufferings of Bingo. I have seen that little woman stand for an hour on the wet planking, 9holding a six-foot deck-swab soaked with eau-de-Cologne to Bingo’s forehead....”

9

The Pressman jotted down, breathing heavily. “Deck-swab soaked in eau-de-Cologne....” he muttered. “Must have cost slathers of money, I reckon——”

“No expense was to be spared,” the Second Officer reminded him gently. “As for the brandy, Martell’s Three Star, he must have put away a dozen bottles a day.”

“No blamed wonder his head ached!” said the Pressman, moistening his own dry lips.

“Except an occasional bucket of arrowroot with port wine and a tin or so of cuddy biscuits, the animal would take no other nourishment whatever,” continued the Second Officer. “As he grew weaker and weaker, it was touching to see the way in which he clung to Nurse Amy.”

“Clung to her?” the Pressman wrote, marking the words for a headline.

“Fact,” said the 
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