[A Ball Player’s Career by Adrian C. Anson]@TWC D-Link book
A Ball Player’s Career

CHAPTER XXI
3/15

Sir Jas.

Willoughby, an effeminate-looking Englishman of the dude variety, whose weakness for cigarettes and champagne soon became known to us, and who was doing a bit of a tour for his own pleasure; Major General Strange, of the English army, a tall, awkward-looking man, with eagle eyes, gray beard and a bronzed complexion, who had for years been quartered in India, and who had taken part in the Sepoy rebellion, some of the incidents of which he was never tired of relating; Frank Marion, his pretty wife and bright-eyed baby, the parents being a pair of light comedians, whose home was in the United States and who were going to Australia for the purpose of filling an engagement at Sidney, and to whose ability as musicians and skill in handling the guitar and banjo we were indebted for a great deal of pleasure before reaching our destination; Colonel J.M.House and a Mr.Turner, both from Chicago, where they did business at the stock yards, and who were hale and hearty fellows, a little beyond the meridian of life, and who were making the Australian trip for the purpose of business and pleasure; and last but not least Prof.Bartholomew, an aeronaut, who hailed from the wilds of Michigan and talked in a peculiar dialect of his own, and who joined our party for exhibition purposes at San Francisco, and proved to be a constant source of amusement to us all.
We could not have had a more delightful trip than the one from San Francisco to Honolulu had the weather been made expressly to our order, the sea being at all times so smooth that one might almost have made the entire trip in a racing shell, and that without shipping water enough 'to do any damage.

It was blue above and blue below, the sky being without a cloud and the water without so much as even a gentle ripple, save at the bow of the boat where the water parted to let us through, and at the stern, where it was churned into masses of foam by the revolving screw of the steamer.

But if the days were beautiful the nights were simply grand, and the ladies were to be found on deck until a late hour watching the reflections of the moon and the stars upon the water and enjoying the balmy salt breezes that came pure and fresh from the caves of old Ocean.

The second afternoon out of San Francisco the passengers were suddenly startled by the clanging of a bell and the mad rush on deck of a lot of half-clad seamen, who seemed to come from all sorts of unexpected places, and who, springing to the top of the cabins and boiler rooms began quickly to unreel long lines of hose and attach them to the ship hydrants, while a score or more of sailors stood by the life buoys and the long lines of water buckets that lined the deck.


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