And say, when I’m led out and introduced, I must have acted like I was in a trance.  I got it so sudden, you see, and so unexpected.  Here I’d been sittin’ back all the while and knockin’ this whole thing as a squirrel-house expedition, besides passin’ comments on the crowd; and the next thing I know I’m counted in, with my name on the passenger list.

That was two days ago; and while I’ve been movin’ around lively enough ever since, windin’ things up at the office, hirin’ a wireless operator for Mr. Ellins, and layin’ in a stock of Palm Beach suits and white deck shoes, I ain’t got over the jolt yet.

“Say, Mr. Robert,” says I, when no one else is around, “how long can anybody be seasick and live through it?”

“Oh, it is seldom fatal,” says he.  “The victims linger on and on.”

“Hal-lup!” says I.  “And I’ll bet that roly-poly Mrs. Mumford comes twice a day to coo to me.  What did I ever get let in on this private seccing for, anyway?”

CHAPTER XII

TORCHY HITS THE HIGH SEAS

Well, I got to take it all back—­most of it, anyway.  For, between you and me, this bein’ a seagoing private sec. ain’t the worst that can happen.  Not so far as I’ve seen.

What I’m most chesty over, though, is the fact that I’ve been through the wop and wiggle test without feedin’ the fishes.  You see, when the good yacht Agnes leaves Battery Park behind, slides down past Staten Island and the Hook, and out into the Ambrose Channel, I’m feelin’ sort of low.  I’d been lookin’ our course up on the map, and, believe me, from where New York leaves off to where the tip end of Florida juts out into the Gulf Stream is some wide and watery jump.  No places to get off at in between, so far as I can dope out.  It’s just a case of buttin’ right out into the Atlantic and keepin’ on and on.

We hadn’t got past Scotland Lightship before the Agnes begins that monotonous heave-and-drop stunt.  Course, it ain’t any motion worth mentionin’, but somehow it sort of surprises you to find that it keeps up so constant.  It’s up and down, up and down, steady as the tick of a clock; and every time you glance over the rail or through a porthole you see it’s quite a ride you take.  I didn’t mind goin’ up a bit; it’s that blamed feelin’ of bein’ let down that’s annoyin’.

For a while there I was more or less busy helping Old Hickory get his floating office straightened out and taking down a few code messages for the wireless man to send back to the general offices while we was still within easy strikin’ distance.  It was when I planted myself in a wicker chair ‘way back by the stern, and begun watchin’ that slow, regular lift and dip of the deck, that I felt this lump come in my throat and begun wonderin’ what it was I’d had for lunch that I shouldn’t.  My head felt kind of mean, too, sort of dull and throbby, and I expect I wasn’t as ruddy in the face as I might have been.