Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim Read Free Book Online Page A

congested. "Stowaways are."
    There had been no one in the cabin when first they came on board
and took their things down, and they hadn't been in it since
till they came to bed.
    "
German
men," whispered Anna-Felicitas, again with a
delicate expressive sniff.
    "Nonsense," whispered Anna-Rose, stoutly. "Men
never come into ladies' cabins. And there's skirts on the
hooks."
    "Disguise," whispered Anna-Felicitas, nodding again.
"Spies' disguise." She seemed quite to be enjoying
her own horrible suggestions.
    "Take your head back into the berth," ordered
Anna-Rose quickly, for Anna-Felicitas seemed to be on the very
brink of an apoplectic fit.
    Anna-Felicitas, who was herself beginning to feel a little
inconvenienced, obeyed, and was thrilled to see Anna-Rose presently
very cautiously emerge from underneath her and on her bare feet
creep across to the opposite side. She knew her to be valiant to
recklessness. She sat up to watch, her eyes round with
interest.
    Anna-Rose didn't go straight across, but proceeded slowly,
with several pauses, to direct her steps toward the pillow-end of
the berths. Having got there she stood still a moment listening,
and then putting a careful finger between the curtain of the lower
berth and its frame, drew it the smallest crack aside and peeped
in.
    Instantly she started back, letting go the curtain. "I beg
your pardon," she said out loud, turning very red. "I--I
thought--"
    Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush
down her back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any
more than before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker
than she had gone. She just stopped on the way to switch off the
light, and then felt along the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth
till she got to her head, and pulling it near her by its left
pigtail whispered with her mouth close to its left ear, "Wide
awake. Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."
    And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.
CHAPTER V
    The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady
in the berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that
didn't make them less German. Nothing ever makes a German less
German, Anna-Rose explained to Anna-Felicitas.
    "Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious
dilution of their blood by the right kind of mother."
    "Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in
England."
    This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of
the next day, by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the
human freight being Germans, for one of their own submarines came
after the
St. Luke
and no one was quite so loud in expression of
terror and dislike as the two Germans.
    They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were
Germans. They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was
nothing compared to how one had been born. The curtains of their
berths, till then so carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and
the berths gave up their contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas
remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it was the resurrection and the
berths were riven sepulchres chucking up their dead.
    This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the
St. Luke
was pitching about off the southwest coast of
Ireland. The twins, waking about seven, found with a pained
surprise that they were not where they had been dreaming they were,
in the sunlit garden at home playing tennis happily if a little
violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place that kept on tilting
itself upside down. They lay listening to the groans coming from
the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how long it would be
before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised her head once with
the intention of asking if she could help at all, but dropped it
back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes tight and lay as
quiet as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas didn't even
raise her head, she felt so very uncomfortable.
    At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in--the same
stewardess, they languidly noted, with