So much for his whereabouts.  How had he come there?  Laboriously, he went over the events of the afternoon.  They were hazy, but certain peaks jutted above the haze.  They were “tagged,” as the flapper had surmised they were going to be.  Aboard the little old steamer had appeared Breede and Julia and the Demon.  They had called the flapper aside and apparently told her something for her own good, though the flapper had not liked it, and had told them with much spirit that they were to perfectly mind their own affairs.

Bean had fled into the throng on deck.  His hat had received many dents, and when he emerged to a clear space at the far end of the boat he had discovered that his perfectly new watch was gone.  He was being put upon, and meekly submitting to it as in that other time when he had not believed himself to be somebody.  He stared moodily over the rail as the little old steamer moved out.  Thousands of people on the dock were waving handkerchiefs and hats.  They seemed to be waving directly at him and yelling.  Above it all, he was back in the bird-and-animal store, hearing the parrot shriek over and over, “Oh, what a fool!  Oh, what a fool!”

He made an adventurous way through all kinds of hurried people, back to that group of queerly behaving Breedes.  The flapper was showing traces of tears, but also a considerable acrimony.  She was threatening to tell the captain to just perfectly turn the little old steamer back.  But it came to nothing.  At least to nothing more than Bean’s sharing the stateroom of the Hartford man, who had covered the lower berth with his belongings so that there might be no foolish mistake.

And that was because there had been no provision made on the little old steamer for this invasion of casual Breedes.  Pops and Moms had secured an officer’s room; the Demon, rather than sit up in the smoking-room of nights, had consented to share the flapper’s suite; and Bean had been taken in charge by a cold-blooded steward who left him in the narrow quarters of the Hartford person.

And there, in the far night, he was wishing he might be back in the steam-heated apartment with Nap.  He had a violent headache, and he had awakened from a dream of falling into a well of cool, clear water of which he thirstily drank.  His narrow bed behaved abominably, rolling him from side to side, then letting his head sink to some far-off terrifying depth.  And there was no way of leaving that little old steamer ... not for a man who couldn’t swim a stroke.

So he suffered for long miserable hours.  Light broke through the little round windows, and outside he could see the appalling waste of water, foaming, seething, rising to engulf him.  He couldn’t recall mounting to that high place where he had slept.  He wondered if the callous steward would sometime come to take him down.  Perhaps the steward would forget.

The man from Hartford bestirred himself and was presently shaving before the small glass.  Bean looked sullenly down at him.  The man was running a wicked-looking razor perilously about his restless Adam’s apple.  He was also lightly humming “The Holy City.”