Page:Roads of Destiny (1909).djvu/127

 of my chief lieutenant, came Kearny, indomitable, smiling, bright-eyed, bearing no traces of the buffets of his evil star. Rather was his aspect that of a heroic martyr whose tribulations were so high-sourced and glorious that he even took a splendour and a prestige from them.

“‘Well, Captain,’ said he, ‘I guess you realize that Bad-Luck Kearny is still on deck. It was a shame, now, about that gun. She only needed to be slewed two inches to clear the rail; and that’s why I grabbed that rope’s end. Who’d have thought that a sailor—even a Sicilian lubber on a banana coaster—would have fastened a line in a bow-knot? Don’t think I’m trying to dodge the responsibility Captain. It’s my luck.’

“‘There are men, Kearny,’ said I gravely, “who pass through life blaming upon luck and chance the mistakes that result from their own faults and incompetency. I do not say that you are such a man. But if all your mishaps are traceable to that tiny star, the sooner we endow our colleges with chairs of moral astronomy, the better.’

“‘It is n’t the size of the star that counts,’ said Kearny; ‘it’s the quality. Just the way it is with women. That’s why they gave the biggest planets masculine names, and the little stars feminine ones—to even things up when it comes to getting their work in. Suppose they had called my star Agamemnon or Bill McCarty or something like that instead of Phœbe. Every time one of those old boys touched their calamity button and sent me down one of their wireless pieces of bad luck, I could talk