' Yes, sir."
"Right you are, Davie!" a higher, thinner voice proclaimed, "right you are.
I was having my future told, I was, and the lady--"
A roar of laughter drowned the words of the luckless second speaker, and
some one yelled vociferously, "Neddie the fortune-teller! Don't tell me
he's shipped with us again!"
"But I tell you," Neddie persisted shrilly, "I tell you they hit it right,
they do, often. And the lady, she says, 'Neddie Benson, don't you go
reckless on this next voyage. There's trouble in store,' she says.
'There'll be a dark man and a light man, and a terrible danger.' And I paid
the lady two dollars and I--"
Again laughter thundered in the forecastle.
"All the same," the deep-voiced Davie growled, "that sly, slippery--"
"Hist!" A man raised his hand against the light that came faintly from on
deck.
Then a mild voice asked, "What are you men quidding about anyway? One of
you's sitting on my chest."
"Listen to them talk," some one close beside me whispered. "You'd think
this voyage was all of life, the way they run on about it. Now it don't
mean so much to me. My name's Bill Hayden, and I've got a little wee girl,
I have, over to Newburyport, that will be looking for her dad to come home.
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