At this moment a man opened the door near Rattleton, and asked: 

“Is the—­ah—­er—­moon up yet?”

“I don’t know,” moaned Harry.  “But it is if I swallowed it.  Everything else is up, anyhow.”

“If the—­ah—­moon comes up red tonight, it will mean——­”

“I don’t give a rap what it means!” snorted Rattleton.  “Don’t talk to me!  Let me die without torturing me!  I’m sick enough without having you make me worse!”

Mr. Slush, for he was the anxious inquirer about the moon, dodged back into the cabin, closing the door hesitatingly.

Then Rattleton, unaware of the proximity of his amused friends, hung over the rail and groaned again.

Frank walked up and spoke: 

“I see, my dear boy, that you are heeding the Bible admonition.”

“Hey?” groaned Harry.  “What is it?”

“‘Cast thy bread upon the waters!’ You are doing it all right, all right.”

“Now, don’t carry this thing too far!” Rattleton tried to say in a fierce manner, but his fierceness was laughable.  “The worm will turn when trodden upon.”

“But the banana peel knows a trick worth two of that.  Did you ever hear that touching little poem about the man who stepped on a banana peel?  Never did?  Why, that is too bad!  You don’t know what you’ve missed.  Listen, and you shall hear it.”

Then Frank solemnly declaimed: 

     “He walked along one summer day,
       As stately as a prince;
     He stepped upon a banana peel,
       And he hasn’t ‘banana’ where since.”

Rattleton gave a still more dismal groan.

“You are conspiring with the elements to hasten my death!” he said.  “I can’t stand many more like that.”

“You should wear a sheet of writing paper across your breast, same as I do,” said Diamond.  “Then you won’t be sick.”

“I’ve got two sheets of writing paper across mine,” declared Harry.

“You should drink a bottle of ginger ale to settle your stomach,” put in Frank.

“Just drank three bottles of ginger ale, and they’ve turned my stomach wrong side out,” gurgled the sick youth.

“You should allow yourself perfect relaxation, and not try to fight against it,” from Browning.

“Oh, I haven’t allowed myself anything else but perfect relaxation,” came from Harry.  “You all make me tired!”

Then he staggered into the cabin and disappeared on his way back to the stateroom.

Diamond and Browning followed, but Frank lingered behind.

Although he had kept the fact concealed, Merry was troubled with a strange foreboding of coming disaster.  In every way he tried to overcome anything like superstition, but he remembered that, on many other occasions, he had been warned of coming trouble by just such feelings.

“I’d like to know just what is going on upon this steamer,” he muttered, as he walked forward.  “I feel as if something was wrong, and I shall not be satisfied till I investigate.”