Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/254

 quite by accident in the Y. M. C. A. hut, Tip having come across a joke in an English weekly which he felt compelled to share with someone else. As Nelson happened to be the nearest, Nelson was chucklingly invited to read the humorous paragraph. He did so, found it funny, laughed and was instantly—and metaphorically—clasped to the breast of the smart, good-looking young midshipman. The fact that Nelson was not even a petty officer appeared to have no weight with Tip, who was surprisingly democratic for a British naval officer. Later Nelson discovered a kind of explanation, which was that in Tip's eyes an American was quite different from other beings and that with him the ordinary rules didn't hold good. Tip had queer ideas on the subject of American life and customs, largely due to his reading. He firmly believed that New York and San Francisco were, if not adjacent, at least within a day's journey of each other, and that anywhere between the two cities one plunged into trackless forests and crossed limitless plains inhabited by Indians, cowboys, "bad men," panthers, rattlers, alligators and a variety of less ferocious animals such as elk, bison and antelope. Somewhere north of the plains and forests lay a wild pile of mountains, filled with glaciers and mountain sheep, and be- 229