Part 5 (1/2)

To Paris! Bowen started to touch the end of a finger for every time he had been to Paris. Old Perrault could not wait for him to finish. ”And the Champs elysees, Mister Bowen, you have been there?”

”The Champs elysees? If I had a dollar, M'sieu Perrault--”

”Eh?” The old man wanted to hear him say that ”M'sieu” in just that way again--”if you had one dollar, Mister Bowen?”

Bowen understood. ”Yes, if I had a dollar, M'sieu, for every time I sat on one of those chairs inside the sidewalk--in under the trees, you know, M'sieu--and watched the autos go by! Talk about autos!--there's the place for autos, coming down from that big Napoleon Arch. Some arch, that, isn't it? Yes, sir--down from there to the Place de la Concorde and back again, around the Arch and on to the Bois. And there's a sight for a man, too! To sit out on the Bois sidewalk, M'sieu, your chair almost under the bushes, and watch those cabs and autos in the late afternoon, coming on dark. Count them? No more than you could count fire-flies of an evening in the West Indies--like one string of light.”

”Mon Dieu! Come to the inner room, if you please, sir, and tell me more.

What a good angel which has sent you here! Twenty-five years since I have seen my Paris. And the Tuileries, my friend, is it yet the same?”

”Just the same, M'sieu, a million bare-legged children with short white socks running wild, and another half a million nurses with white caps running wild after them. And the Eiffel Tower! But that's since your time, M'sieu Perrault?”

”Ah--h, but have I not heard? Continue, continue, if you please, sir.

You bring a strange joy to my heart. The Louvre, for example--you have been there, yes?”

”Been there? Yes, and 'most googoo-eyed from looking at the pictures there--miles of 'em, aren't there?”

”Oh-h! and Mona Lisa--yes!”

”That dark one with the queer kind of a smile? She must have had green eyes, that one--green eyes with lights in them. And she kept them all guessing, I'll bet a hat, when she was alive--” and Bowen ran on till every blessed breakwater man silently stole away. Bowen and old Perrault had a three o'clock session that first night; and within the year he had married Claire.

II

Having completed his work on the wireless plant at the Navy Yard, Bowen thought himself due for a lay-off. And he did want to be home for a while, but orders came to have installed before the end of the year an experimental plant on Light-s.h.i.+p 67, which guarded Tide Rip Shoal to the eastward.

Bowen, with his two helpers and his apparatus, took pa.s.sage with Baldwin on the wheezy little _Whist_ to where, twenty miles east by south from the end of the breakwater, lay the tossing light-s.h.i.+p.

Baldwin was well acquainted with old 67. Every once in a while the commandant would order Baldwin to make this trip for the accommodation of somebody or other in the yard. ”But a wonder,” he observed now, as he had observed a score of times before on nearing her--”a wonder they wouldn't put one of those new cla.s.s o' steam lights.h.i.+ps out here. If I was you, Bowen, I'd have an eye to the life-boat you see hanging to her stern there.”

”Why?”

”Well, if the old hooker went adrift, you might need it.”

”What's her sails for?”

”I dunno. I often wondered, though. They've been tied up, just like you see 'em now--stopped snug and neat between gaffs and booms--for, oh, I dunno--twenty years now, I reckon. I know I've yet to see 'em hoisted.

But when'll I come and get you?”

”I'll send word to the yard station by wireless, to Harty or whoever's on watch there, when we get it rigged.”

”All right. And say, a great thing that wireless, ain't it? Well, good luck.” Baldwin gave the bell and the _Whist_ backed away. He rolled his wheel over, gave her another bell and around she came; then the jingle and ahead she went full-speed, which in smooth water was almost eight knots.

The light-s.h.i.+p crew, headed by her yellow-haired keeper, stood around and watched Bowen and his helpers a.s.sembling the parts of the wireless.

A momentous occasion for the light-s.h.i.+p crew, for n.o.body bothered them much. Once every two months the supply s.h.i.+p came around, and sometimes, if the weather was fine, some unhurried coaster would stand in and toss them a bundle of newspapers. But no running alongside old 67 by any big fellows. A good point of departure, Tide Rip Shoal! Sight it over your stern and lay your course by her, but otherwise give her a wide berth; for you could pile up a ten-thousand tonner on that shoal or the beach to the west and--yes, sir, high and dry, before you knew it, especially if it was thick and you were coming from the east'ard. No, the big fellows were satisfied to have a peek at Tide Rip through a long gla.s.s; and so on 67 anything at all except a spell of bad weather stirred them deeply.

In the daylight hours Bowen and his helpers worked at their wireless, and at night they sat in with the light-s.h.i.+p crew. Bowen usually played checkers in the cabin with the keeper, Nelson, and while they played the keeper gave him the gossip. He had been nineteen years on Tide Rip Shoal light-s.h.i.+p, had keeper Nelson.

”No, no things never happen. He blow and she tumble about and her chain chafe--chafe tarrible sometime. Nineteen year those chain ban chafe so.