"I don't blame her, nor even Frank, now. It was a tragical accident, and very nearly wrecked my happiness. You may say I ought to have left him in Buenos Ayres. I thought so at one time; but I believe now it would have made no difference. We were bound to meet some day. It was fate.
"I saw Rosa home and went back to the ship. The Old Man was going aboard just as I came to the gangway and asked me to go down and have a drink in his room. He was very excited about some lottery-tickets he had bought. Skippers and chiefs go in for these things a good deal. One captain in that employ won a cool ten thousand dollars in Bahia Blanca. It was the thing to do. Up in the agent's office the clerks would talk over the lottery drawings, and each skipper would be anxious to do the same as the others--you see? Well, my Old Man had bought fifty tickets. He was full of a system by which he picked them. Every third one, then every third one again. A mad idea! I thought of my brother waving his bunch, thought of his picking them up without even looking at the numbers. I said to the Old Man, 'Cap'n, you haven't a single good number. I expect the man who's got the lucky one is up in the city now.' 'Why, how do you know?' he said, passing the soda. 'I just feel it,' I said. He was worried about that. Gamblers have the most peculiar notions.
"Well, he sent the third mate ashore just before tea to get the _Sera_. 'Come on, Chief,' says he, coming into my room where I was washing, 'let's go through the numbers. I'm just crazy to prove you wrong.' 'Where did you buy them?' I asked. 'Outside the _Verdi_,' he told me. We went through them. I read out the numbers of his tickets while he compared them with those in the paper. His highest number was some two hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty-one, I remember. And the last winning number in the paper was that same number of thousands, two hundred and fifty-two. He dashed the paper on the floor. 'Darn!' he says, 'why didn't I take one more. Think o' that, Chief!' What was the use of thinking of it? 'I'm not surprised,' I said, 'though it is aggravating.' Humph!
"Half way down that splendid new street, one of the finest in Europe, the _Via Venti Settembre_, and not far from Schlitz's Restaurant, is Bertolini's Bristol Hotel. Rosa and I were walking down past it that night, on our way to _Acquasole_, where there was a band, when Frank came out. A cab stood at the kerb, and he was making for it when he saw us and bore down on us. He was dazzling. He had a big ulster and he was in evening dress. 'Now, Charlie, my boy, this is the limit. I was coming to see you. Come and dine with me at the _Roma_,' and he dragged us to the cab.