Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/326



" hundred shillings? Thank you! Do I hear five hundred and fifty? Remember, gentlemen, that any accident—"

The voyage was nearing its end.

The easy, careless comradeships and intimacies of the sea were drawing to their close. Fearful to lose the new friendships, so hard upon their finding, the little groups all about the decks were drawing closer together, better to share the glory of the soft, autumn ocean breezes which followed the great vessel and lulled it gently from stern to stem. And the old friends, whose accepted comradeship antedated even the sailing of the ship that long, wonderful, incomprehensible week before, gathered together, too, and seemed to face the ending of the fleeting familiarities of the sea 298