Octavus Roy Cohen

“ Tommy raised an expressive hand to his throat. “Gee whiz! this weather makes a guy thirsty, don’t it, now?”
“Believe me, Xantippe—she do,” assented Lanky Bill earnestly.
“Now that you mention it,” joined the captain.
“Say,” Bill grew confidential and looped his arm through that of the captain. “There’s a joint up the street here where they mix drinks to the queen’s taste. How about joinin’ us? We’re all strangers in a strange land—yo, ho! That’s real nautical, ain’t it?” ”

“ But get away they must. Charleston is a small town, despite the fifty-eight thousand persons accorded it by the 1910 census, and a town where strangers must give their histories—even though those strangers be paying guests at one of the East Bay sailorman lodging-houses. And to make matters somewhat worse Boston Tommy had met temptation and succumbed to it. ”

“ Rio de Janeiro.”
Tommy’s face fell.
“Pshaw! If you’d have been headed for New York, me ’n’ my partner ’d paid passage an’ traveled with you.”
The captain smiled.
“That ain’t done, boys. The comp’ny don’t let us carry passengers. It puts us under different government regulations, an’ makes it harder on the company.”
“But they do do it,” insisted Tommy. “A friend of mine named Roberts—” He paused very suddenly indeed and gave vent to a fit of coughing. “He—er—shipped as a passenger.” ”

“ After which they realized that their costumes would be the fashionable black-and-white-stripe effect so popular with the innocent and hateful to the guilty. They had no great fondness for the South Carolina penitentiary. ”