The Dark Star

The usual signs of land greeted Neeland when he rose early next

morning and went out on deck for the first time without his olive-wood

box--first a few gulls, then puffins, terns, and other sea fowl in

increasing numbers, weed floating, fishing smacks, trawlers tossing on

the rougher coast waters.

After breakfast he noticed two British torpedo boat destroyers, one to

starboard, the other on the port bow, apparently keeping pace with the

Volhynia. They were still there at noon, subjects of speculation

among the passengers; and at tea-time their number was increased to

five, the three new destroyers appearing suddenly out of nowhere, dead

ahead, dashing forward through a lively sea under a swirling vortex of

gulls.

The curiosity of the passengers, always easily aroused, became more

thoroughly stirred up by the bulletins posted late that afternoon,

indicating that the tension between the several European chancelleries

was becoming acute, and that emperors and kings were exchanging

personal telegrams.

There was all sorts of talk on deck and at the dinner table, wild

talk, speculative talk, imaginative discussions, logical and

illogical. But, boiled down to its basic ingredients, the wildest

imagination on board the Volhynia admitted war to be an

impossibility of modern times, and that, ultimately, diplomacy would

settle what certainly appeared to be the ugliest international

situation in a hundred years.

At the bottom of his heart Neeland believed this, too; wished for it

when his higher and more educated spiritual self was flatly

interrogated; and yet, in the everyday, impulsive ego of James

Neeland, the drop of Irish had begun to sing and seethe with the

atavistic instinct for a row.

War? He didn't know what it meant, of course. It made good poetry and

interesting fiction; it rendered history amusing; made dry facts

succulent.

Preparations for war in Europe, which had been going on for fifty

years, were most valuable, too, in contributing the brilliant hues of

uniforms to an otherwise sombre civilian world, and investing

commonplace and sober cities with the omnipresent looming mystery of

fortifications.

To a painter, war seemed to be a dramatic and gorgeous affair; to a

young man it appealed as all excitement appeals. The sportsman in him

desired to witness a scrap; his artist's imagination was aroused; the

gambler in him speculated as to the outcome of such a war. And the

seething, surging drop of Irish fizzed and purred and coaxed for a

chance to edge sideways into any fight which God in His mercy might

provide for a decent gossoon who had never yet had the pleasure of a

broken head.

"Not," thought Neeland to himself, "that I'll go trailing my coat

tails. I'll go about my own business, of course--but somebody may hit

me a crack at that!"