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A h the back door that opened to the land

“Where’s Jake?”

“He tried to kiss me,” she answered in a distant voice

“Yeah?” he said, as if to say, You’re a girl, what do expect alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean? “So where is he?”

She looked him full in the face “A shark jumped into the boat and ate him”

He considered the way her srimness in her eyes, and the people she knew, and decided that Jake had gotten what he deserved, and he was not at all interested in how it had happened He held up a wicker basket “I brought you supper”

“Thank you”

“I brought enough for two Not knowing that-”

“Good I’”

She ate alone Then she spread her sleeping bag on the canvas cushioning her cargo and slept secure in the thought that Brian O’Shay would be proud of her The explosion at the torpedo factory had masked the theft of four experiland for research Armed with TNT by the brilliant Ron Wheeler, they were ten tilish had made them And no one at the Newport Naval Torpedo Station realized that they had not been blown to smithereens

38

THERE YOU ARE, BELL! JOLLY GOOD, WE DIDN’T MISS saying good-bye”

Bell was surprised when he reboarded the train as it pulled out of Sacra to San Francisco that Arnold Bennett and the Chinese, ere ticketed through to San Francisco, had their bags packed and in the corridor

“I thought you were going to San Francisco”

“Changed our mind, inspired by all these orchards and berry fields” The train was passing through strawberry fields croith fruit pickers in straw hats “We’re hopping off early at Suisun City Decided to catch a train to Napa Junction An old school chu up St Helena way-started a vineyard, actually, storapes and all that We’ll recover bucolically froors of our travels-splendid as they were-before pressing on to San Francisco I’ve a mind to cobble up an article for Harper’s on the subject while the boys enjoy so the Word of God home to China”