Beta Book

]
Wrennie felt personally grateful to Morton for this, but he went
up to the aft top deck, where he could lie alone on a pile of
tarpaulins. He made himself observe the sea which, as Kipling
and Jack London had specifically promised him in their stories,
surrounded him, everywhere shining free; but he glanced at it
only once. To the north was a liner bound for home.
Home! Gee! That _was_ rubbing it in! While at work, whether
he was sick or not, he could forget--things. But the liner,
fleeting on with bright ease, made the cattle-boat seem about
as romantic as Mrs. Zapp's kitchen sink.
Why, he wondered--"why had he been a chump? Him a wanderer?
No; he was a hired man on a sea-going dairy-farm. Well, he'd get
onto this confounded job before he was through with it, but
then--gee! back to God's Country!"

While the _Merian_, eleven days out, pleasantly rocked through
the Irish Sea, with the moon revealing the coast of Anglesey,
one Bill Wrenn lay on the after-deck, condescending to the
heavens.


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