The Drop of Irish

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.