Pity,
ain't it, we didn't get on board by noon?" he digressed sociably. "I
could've found something to do ashore the four hours I've been twiddling
my thumbs here, and I guess you could too. Hardest, though, on our
friends the newspaper boys. Did you know they were out there waiting to
take a flashlight film? Fact. They do it nowadays every time a big liner
leaves. Then if we sink, all they have to do is run it, with 'Doomed
Ship Leaving New York Harbor' underneath."
To his shocked surprise I laughed at the information. My appetite
was unimpaired as I pursued my meal. Trains in which others ride may
telescope and steamers may take one's acquaintances to watery graves,
but to normal people the chance of any catastrophe overtaking them
personally must always seem gratifyingly far-fetched and vague.
"Think it's funny, do you?" my new friend reproached me. "Well, I don't;
and neither did the folks who had cabins taken and who threw them up
last week when they heard how the _San Pietro_ went down on this same
route. We're five plumb idiots--that's what we are--five crazy lunatics!
I'd never have come a step, not with wild horses dragging me if it
hadn't been for Jim Furman being pretty near popeyed, looking for a
chance to cut me out and sail.
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