Excerpt from Union Down: A Signal of Distress
The careless young man broke into the most winning of mellow and musical laughs. He was scarce observing enough to notice the intense wistfulness which had sounded in those last words, and was now revealed in the sick man"s earnest eyes. He dropped into a chair and replied with the utmost of frank geniality:
"Where else can I go, my friend? We all must go to Boston - unless, Deo volente, we all go to the bottom."
"Bottom!" came in a gruff but hearty voice from some unseen person below. "Do you think, gentlemen, that the Bounding Wave is made of paper? No, no, sirs! she is made of the stanchest timbers and manned by the sturdiest of crews. No bottom for us, gentlemen; no bottom for us!"
"You hear this fellow in the cellarage," laughingly quoted the young man, turning his bright eyes full upon the invalid. "That sounds like Capt. Barr. I imagine he would sail his ship into a sea of molten lava, and in full faith that she would weather the conditions. Will my smoking annoy you?"
The other wondered how even this strong, healthful-looking man could so persistently make a chimney of himself; yet he drew his chair a little nearer, in order to reply more quietly, and with a sort of subdued eagerness:
"No, sir; indeed, no! Pray remain here." Then, with an unconscious betrayal of timidity in his faltering speech and lustrous dark eyes: "I asked if you were going to Boston, sir. I - I meant to have asked - is your home in Boston?"
Profound anxiety sounded in his subdued but earnest voice, and now the young man in gray - for they were both young men - noticed it.
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