Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/76

 male passengers. Fully half the men were wearing evening dress. William was thoroughly fortified in this particular, but he hadn't expected to be called upon to wear this new regalia except upon state occasions, such as at balls, the meeting of dukes and rajahs. Well, to-morrow night he would not be caught napping. Besides, what did he care? His school-teacher was wearing the same clothes she had come aboard with, and she "laid 'em all cold on looks."

He recognized the man on the other side of her. It was the "fresh guy" who had bumped into him so rudely coming up the gang-plank.

"I'll get his number to-morrow," he thought; "and I'll eat my hat if it isn't 'shine'! I wonder how he got that seat?"

After dinner the school-teacher disappeared. So William, very well satisfied with himself and the world at large, strolled into the smoke-room with the copy of Cellini. He lighted a brier pipe and soon became absorbed in the adventures of the amazing Florentine.

At half after ten a man entered the wireless-room and despatched a Marconigram to New York. This message, all very innocent on the face of it, started the whirligig upon which a certain Irishman was to spin out various lengths of his mortal thread. Fate is a cynical gamester; for the man who sent that message and the man who received it didn't know William Grogan from Adam!