Poetry was a drug on the market. Nobody read it (or wrote it) these

days; and any one who attempted to sell it was clearly mad. Oh, a

jingle for Punch might pass, you know; something clever, with a snapper

to it. But epic poetry? Sonnets? Why, didn't you know that there

wasn't a magazine going that did not have some sub-editor who could

whack out fourteen lines in fourteen minutes, whenever a page needed

filling up? These things he had been told times without number. And

Maundering, Piffle and Drool had long since cornered the romance

market. The King's Highway had become No Thoroughfare.

America. He would go to the land of the brave (when occasion demanded)

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and the free (if you were imaginative). Having packed his trunk and

valise, he departed for Liverpool. Besides, America was all that was

left; he was at the end of his rope.

What a rollicking old fraud life was! Swung out of his peaceful orbit,

by the legerdemain of death; no longer a humble steady star but a

meteor; bumping as yet darkly against the planets; and then this

monumental folly which had returned him to the old orbit but still in

meteoric form, without peace or means of livelihood! An ass, indeed,

if ever there was one.

He eventually arrived at his destination, lied blithely to the chief

steward, and was assigned to the first-class cabins on the promenade

deck, simply because his manner was engaging and his face pleasing to

the eye. The sea? He had never been on it but once, and then only in

a rowboat. A good sailor? Perhaps. Chicken and barley broths at

eleven; the captain's table in the dining-saloon, breakfast, luncheon

and dinner; cabin housekeeper and luggage man at the ports; and always

a natty, stiffly starched jacket with a metal number; and "Yes, sir!"

and "No, sir!" and "Thank you, sir!" his official vocabulary. Fine job

for a poet!

It was all in the game he was going to play with fate. A chap who

could sell flamingo ties to gentlemen with purple noses, and shirts

with attached cuffs to coal-porters ought not to worry over such a

simple employment as cabin-steward on board an ocean liner.

Early the next morning they left port, with only a few first-class

passengers. The heavy travel was coming from the west, not going that

way. The series of cabins under his stewardship were vacant.

Therefore, with the thoroughness of his breed, he set about to learn

"ship"; and by the time the first bugle for dinner blew, he knew port

from starboard, boat-deck from main, and many other things, some

unknown to the chief-steward who had made a hundred and twenty voyages

on this very ship.




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