Page:In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories.djvu/259



night about eleven o'clock I stood at the stern of that fine Atlantic steamship, the City of Venice, which was plowing its way through the darkness toward America. I leaned on the rounded bulwark and enjoyed a smoke, as I gazed on the luminous trail the wheel was making in the quiet sea. Someone touched me on the shoulder, saying, "Beg pardon, sir"; and, on straightening up, I saw in the dim light a man whom at first I took to be one of the steerage passengers. I thought he wanted to get past me, for the room was rather restricted in the passage between the aft wheel-house and the stern, and I moved aside. The man looked hurriedly to one side and then the other and, approaching, said in a whisper, "I'm starving, sir!" Rh