The Flag of the Adventurer
Sydney C. Grier
9781465658630
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“At last!” murmured Eveleen Ambrose with heartfelt relief, gaining the unsteady deck by dint of a frantic clutch at her husband’s arm, and cannoning helplessly against an unfortunate man who happened to be standing near the head of the ladder. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” as he staggered wildly and recovered himself, with a look of mortal offence on his face; “I am so sorry—I——” “Steady!” said her husband sharply, retrieving her from an unintentional rush across the deck, and setting her up in a corner. “What’s the matter with you—eh?” “The matter?” Eveleen’s Irish mind was so unhappily constituted that it saw humour where none was visible to others. She began to laugh weakly. “The matter? Oh, nothing at all, of course!” “Hysterics now, I suppose.” Richard Ambrose’s voice was rough. “I am never hysterical!” indignantly. “But after four days and nights of being tossed about like a cork in that cabin down there, till I know the feel of every inch of the floor and ceiling of it—and hard enough they are, I can tell you!—mayn’t I have your gracious leave to be just a little weeshy bit shaky?” “Exaggeration is not wit,” he growled. “You have my free leave to feel as you like, provided it don’t make you go about knocking people down.” Tears—never very far from laughter in Irish eyes—rose rebelliously, and Eveleen turned quickly to gaze at the shore whose first appearance she had hailed with so much joy. There was nothing particularly attractive about the long line of mud-coloured coast backed by low mud-coloured hills, beyond a wide—still horribly wide—waste of tumbling waters; but it was land, blessed solid land! The man against whom she had cannoned spoke suddenly—she had the instant idea that he had been trying to make up his mind whether the circumstances warranted his addressing her without an introduction. “The fact is, ma’am, ladies have no business in these steamboats. The cabin may have seemed uncommon incommodious to you, but in order that you and your companions might enjoy it, four of the gentlemen on board had no cabin at all.”
