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Twenty minutes later Callender went upstairs to dress for dinner, but Brett rejoined Powers on the piazza. He sat down without looking at Powers or speaking to him, and his eyes, crossing the darkening bay, rested once more on the lordly silhouette of the Sappho. In the failing light she had lost something of her emphatic outline, and was beginning to melt, as it were, into the shore.

Brett and Powers were partners. Powers was the floor member of the firm and Brett ran the office. But they were partners in more ways than the one, and had been ever since they could remember. As little boys they had owned things in common without dispute. At St. Marks Powers had pitched for the nine, and Brett had caught. In their senior year at New Haven they had played these positions to advantage, both against Harvard and Princeton. After graduation they had given a year to going around the world. In Bengal they had shot a tiger, each giving it a mortal wound. In Siam they had won the doubles championship at lawn tennis. When one rode on the water wagon the other sat beside him, and vice versa. Powers’s family loved Brett almost as much as they loved Powers, and if Brett had had a family it would probably have felt about Powers in the same way.

As far as volume of business and legitimate commissions went, their firm was a success. It could execute orders with precision, despatch, and honesty. It could keep its mouth shut. But it had not yet learned to keep out of the market on its own account. Regularly as a clock ticks its profits were wiped out in speculation. The young men believed in the future of the country, and wanted to get rich quick, not because they were greedy, but because that desire is part of the average American’s nature and equipment. Gradually, however, they were “getting wise,” as the saying is. And they had taken a solemn oath and shaken hands upon it, that if ever they got out of their present difficulties they would never again tempt the goddess of fortune.

“Old man’s in bad, I guess,” said Powers.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Brett, and was ashamed to feel that he must not be more frank with his partner. “We’re all in bad.”

“The Cumberland has been sunk,” said Powers, “and the rest of us are aground and helpless, waiting for the Merrimac to come down the river in the morning.” He shook his fist at the distant Sappho. “Why,” he said, “even if we knew what he knows it’s too late to do anything, unless he does it. And he won’t. He won’t quit firing until Waters blows up.”

“I’ve a good notion,” said Brett, “to get out my pigeon gun, take the club launch, board the Sappho about midnight, hold the gun to old Merriman’s head, and make him promise to save the country; or else make him put to sea, and keep him there. If he were kidnapped and couldn’t unload any more securities, the market would pull up by itself.” The young men chuckled, for the idea amused them in spite of their troubles.

By a common impulse they turned and looked at the club’s thirty-foot naphtha launch at anchor off the club’s dock; and by a common impulse they both pointed at her, and both exclaimed:

“The Monitor!”

Then, of course, they were very careful not to say anything more until they had crooked together the little fingers of their right hands, and in silence registered a wish each. Then each spoke the name of a famous poet, and the spell was ended.

“What did you wish?” said Brett idly.

Powers could be very courtly and old fashioned.

“My dear boy,” he said, “I fancy that I wished for you just what you wished for yourself.”

Before this they had never spoken about her to each other.

“I didn’t know that you knew,” said Brett. “Thanks.”