Peter the Brazen decided to take a turn or two round deck before going to his bunk, to drink in a potion of this intoxicating, winelike night. The wheel of fortune might whirl many times before he was again sailing this most seductive of oceans.
And he was a little intoxicated, too, with the wine of his youth. His lips, immersed in the fountain, found very little bitterness there. Life was earnest and grave, as the wiseacres said; but life was, on the whole, sublime and poignantly sweet. A little bitterness, a little dreary sadness, a pang at the heart now and again, served only to interrupt the smooth regularity, the monotony, to add zest to the nectar.
When he had finished the cigarette, he flung the butt over the rail into the gushing water, which swam south in its phosphorescent welter, descended between decks to the stateroom that had been assigned to him, and fitted the key to the lock.
He felt decidedly young and foolishly exalted as he closed the door after him and heard the lock click, for to few men is it given to have two lovely young women in distress seek aid, all in the span of a few hours. Perhaps these rosy events had served merely to feed oil to the fires of his conceit; but Peter's was not a conceit that rankled anybody. And there were always volunteers, hardened by the buffets of this life, to cast water upon that same fire.
So, humming a gay little tune, Peter snapped on the light, bathing the milk-white room in a liquid mellowness, opened the port-hole, wound his watch, hung it on the curtain-bar which ran lengthwise with his berth, pushed the flowered curtains at either end as far back as they would go, in order to have all the fresh air possible, and----
Peter gasped. He declared it was absolutely impossible. Such things did not happen, even in this world of strange happenings and of stranger stirrings below the surface of actual happenings. His self-complacencies came shattering down about his ears like mountains of senseless glitter, and he stooped to recover the object which was lying upon, almost ready to tumble from, the rounded, neat edge of the white berth.
A rose of cameo! The hot breath from his lips, which drooped in astonishment and chagrin, seemed to stir the delicate petals of the exquisitely carved red rose which reposed in its mountain of soft gold in the palm of his trembling hand. The fine gold chain, like a rope of gold sand, trickled between his fingers and dangled, swinging from side to side.