“Our Sam, that deck-hand, was telling me.  He said Mr. Keating put it on you, sort of to spite you—­is that so?”

“Oh, I wanted to come,” said Channing.

The captain laughed, comprehendingly.  “I guess we’ll be in a bad way,” he said, “when we need you in the engine-room.”  He settled himself for conversation, with his feet against the rail and his thumbs in his suspenders.  The lamps of Port Antonio were sinking into the water, the moonlight was flooding the deck.

“That was quite something of a bombardment Sampson put up against Morro Castle this morning,” he began, critically.  He spoke of bombardments from the full experience of a man who had seen shells strike off Coney Island from the proving-grounds at Sandy Hook.  But Channing heard him, eagerly.  He begged the tugboat-captain to tell him what it looked like, and as the captain told him he filled it in and saw it as it really was.

“Perhaps they’ll bombard again to-morrow,” he hazarded, hopefully.

“We can’t tell till we see how they’re placed on the station,” the captain answered.  “If there’s any firing we ought to hear it about eight o’clock to-morrow morning.  We’ll hear ’em before we see ’em.”

Channing’s conscience began to tweak him.  It was time, he thought, that Keating should be aroused and brought up to the reviving air of the sea, but when he reached the foot of the companion-ladder, he found that Keating was already awake and in the act of drawing the cork from a bottle.  His irritation against Channing had evaporated and he greeted him with sleepy good-humor.

“Why, it’s ol’ Charlie Channing,” he exclaimed, drowsily.  Channing advanced upon him swiftly.

“Here, you’ve had enough of that!” he commanded.  “We’ll be off Morro by breakfast-time.  You don’t want that.”

Keating, giggling foolishly, pushed him from him and retreated with the bottle toward his berth.  He lurched into it, rolled over with his face to the ship’s side, and began breathing heavily.

“You leave me ’lone,” he murmured, from the darkness of the bunk.  “You mind your own business, you leave me ’lone.”

Channing returned to the bow and placed the situation before the captain.  That gentleman did not hesitate.  He disappeared down the companion-way, and, when an instant later he returned, hurled a bottle over the ship’s side.

The next morning when Channing came on deck the land was just in sight, a rampart of dark green mountains rising in heavy masses against the bright, glaring blue of the sky.  He strained his eyes for the first sight of the ships, and his ears for the faintest echoes of distant firing, but there was no sound save the swift rush of the waters at the bow.  The sea lay smooth and flat before him, the sun flashed upon it; the calm and hush of early morning hung over the whole coast of Cuba.

An hour later the captain came forward and stood at his elbow.