s my
chance!"

But when he returned he saw that Corinna, for the sake of the
convalescent children not allowed out on deck, had started to tell a
story. They were pressing around her in close ranks that presented a
triple line of defence.

CHAPTER XII

EVAN LOSES A ROUND

Evan, somewhat crestfallen, went out on deck and lit a cigarette. "Oh,
well, it can't last forever," he told himself. He found a seat near an
open window where he could overhear the story. To his mind Corinna had
not much of a talent for it. He thought he could have told a better
one himself. It was the chronicle of an unpleasantly good little girl,
and when Corinna was gravelled for matter to continue with, she filled
in by lengthily describing the heroine's clothes. "Just filibustering
like the U. S. Senate," thought Evan disgustedly.

Corinna, suspecting perhaps that she had too critical a listener,
changed her seat on the pretext of a draught and he could hear no more.

Meanwhile the good ship _Ernestina_ was industriously wig-wagging her
walking-beam down the upper Bay. She was a quaint, crablike little
craft. Her tall and skinny smokestack was like a perpetual exclamation
point. Her gait resembled that of a sprightly old horse who makes a
great to-do with his feet on the road but somehow gets nowhere. At the
end of each stroke of her piston she seemed to stop for an instant and
then with a wheeze and a clank from below, and a violent tremor from
stem to stern, started all over. Her paddle-wheels kicked up alarming
looking rollers behind, but with it all she travelled no faster than a
steam canal-boat. Not that it mattered; the children got just as much
ozone as on the deck of the _Aquitania_.

Evan's patience was not inexhaustible. By the time they reached
Norton's Point he was obliged to go in to see how the story was
progressing. It was no nearer its end, as far as he could judge.
Corinna's Dorothy Dolores was donning a party dress of pink messaline
with a panne velvet girdle. The children's interest flagged and they
drifted away, but there were always others to take their places.

Ikey O'Toole and his pal happened to pass through the saloon bound on
some errand of their own, and Evan had a wicked idea. "Come here,
boys," said he, "and I'll tell you a story about robbers."

Their eyes brightened. Evan took a seat opposite Corinna's and began:

"There was a band of train-robbers and cattle-rustlers who lived i