On reaching the station I purchased my ticket with a bravado air that ought to have aroused the suspicion of the ticket-master, and hurried to the car, where I sat fidgeting until the train shot out into the broad daylight.

Then I drew a long breath and looked about me.  The first object that saluted my sight was Sailor Ben, four or five seats behind me, reading the Rivermouth Barnacle!

Reading was not an easy art to Sailor Ben; he grappled with the sense of a paragraph as if it were a polar-bear, and generally got the worst of it.  On the present occasion he was having a hard struggle, judging by the way he worked his mouth and rolled his eyes.  He had evidently not seen me.  But what was he doing on the Boston train?

Without lingering to solve the question, I stole gently from my seat and passed into the forward car.

This was very awkward, having the Admiral on board.  I couldn’t understand it at all.  Could it be possible that the old boy had got tired of land and was running away to sea himself?  That was too absurd.  I glanced nervously towards the car door now and then, half expecting to see him come after me.

We had passed one or two way-stations, and I had quieted down a good deal, when I began to feel as if somebody was looking steadily at the back of my head.  I turned round involuntarily, and there was Sailor Ben again, at the farther end of the car, wrestling with the Rivermouth Barnacle as before.

I began to grow very uncomfortable indeed.  Was it by design or chance that he thus dogged my steps?  If he was aware of my presence, why didn’t he speak to me at once?  ’Why did he steal round, making no sign, like a particularly unpleasant phantom?  Maybe it wasn’t Sailor Ben.  I peeped at him slyly.  There was no mistaking that tanned, genial phiz of his.  Very odd he didn’t see me!

Literature, even in the mild form of a country newspaper, always had the effect of poppies on the Admiral.  ’When I stole another glance in his direction his hat was tilted over his right eye in the most dissolute style, and the Rivermouth Barnacle lay in a confused heap beside him.  He had succumbed.  He was fast asleep.  If he would only keep asleep until we reached our destination!

By and by I discovered that the rear car had been detached from the train at the last stopping-place.  This accounted satisfactorily for Sailor Ben’s singular movements, and considerably calmed my fears.  Nevertheless, I did not like the aspect of things.

The Admiral continued to snooze like a good fellow, and was snoring melodiously as we glided at a slackened pace over a bridge and into Boston.

I grasped my pilgrim’s bundle, and, hurrying out of the car, dashed up the first street that presented itself.

It was a narrow, noisy, zigzag street, crowded with trucks and obstructed with bales and boxes of merchandise.  I didn’t pause to breathe until I had placed a respectable distance between me and the railway station.  By this time it was nearly twilight.