"Addio, Dolores!" in the most mournful of voices.
"Scelerato!" was the response, hissed out from the prettiest of lips.
The next morning the Dodge Club left Naples.
"Dick," said the Senator, as they rolled over the road, "spin a yarn to beguile the time."
"Oh, well," said Dick, "since you're so very urgent it would be unbecoming to refuse. A story? Well, what? I will tell you about my maternal grandfather.
"My maternal grandfather, then, was once out in Hong Kong, and had saved up a little money. As the climate did not agree with him he thought he would come home; and at length an American ship touched there, on board of which he went, and he saw a man in the galley; so my grandfather stepped up to him and asked him:
"'No. I'm the man that boils the _mate_,' said the other, who was also an Irishman.
"So he had to go to the cabin, where he found the Captain and mate writing out clearance papers for the custom-house.
"'Say, captain, will you cross the sea to plow the raging main?' asked my grandfather.
"'Oh, the ship it is ready and the wind is fair to plow the raging main!' said the captain. Of course my grandfather at once paid his fare without asking credit, and the amount was three hundred and twenty-seven dollars thirty-nine cents.
"Well, they set sail, and after going ever so many thousand miles, or hundred--I forget which, but it don't matter--a great storm arose, a typhoon or simoon, perhaps both; and after slowly gathering up its energies for the space of twenty-nine days, seven hours, and twenty-three minutes, without counting the seconds, it burst upon them at exactly forty-two minutes past five, on the sixth day of the week. Need I say that day was Friday? Now my grandfather saw all the time how it was going to end; and while the rest were praying and shrieking he had cut the lashings of the ship's long-boat and stayed there all the time, having put on board the nautical instruments, two or three fish-hooks, a gross of lucifer matches, and a sauce-pan. At last the storm struck the ship, as I have stated, and at the first crack away went the vessel to the bottom, leaving my grandfather floating alone on the surface of the ocean.
"My grandfather navigated the long-boat fifty-two days, three hours, and twenty minutes by the ship's chronometer; caught plenty of fish with his fish-hooks; boiled sea-water in his sauce-pan, and boiled all the salt away, making his fire in the bottom of the boat, which is a very good place, for the fire can't burn through without touching the water, which it can't burn; and finding plenty of fuel in the boat, which he gradually dismantled, taking first the thole-pins, then the seats, then the taffrail, and so on. This sort of thing, though, could not last forever, and at last, just in the nick of time, he came across a dead whale.