Cobh

What makes you think anything will?

A cable was sent shortly after The Gigantic left Queenstown.

She makes a stop in Ireland on her eastbound voyage, you know.

Mm-hmm.

He's a master arsonist.

10 seconds after one of his fires breaks out, you're dealing with a raging inferno.

Oh, but confound it, they tell me the man deserted the ship at Queenstown.

I had news this morning.

them.

Funeral services were held for the unknown victims in what was then Queenstown, Ireland.

Now it's Cove, Ireland, which is spelled C-O-V-H.

Well, naturally, that's how you spell Cove.

Yeah.

He had this mate in Cobh where he grew up-

County Cork

...

Everything's covered."

[gasps]

"Tickets, like, get..." And Dwayne was like, "I can't even afford bus fare, like, out of Cobh to Cork, never mind Cork to Dublin."

Cork to Dublin, and then Dublin to Slane, and-

The Filipino and Negro stewards from the American ships arrive with their baskets and cans.

They are very popular with Queenstown folk, who cherish the delusion that our trimly dressed, genial, grinning Negroes are the American Indians of boyhood's romance.

From the cathedral's solitary spire, a chime jangles out the quarters, amusing all who pause to listen with its involuntary renderings of the first bar of Strike Up the Band, Here Comes a Sailor.

And ever and anon, a breeze blows in from the harbor, bringing with it a faint smell from the funnels of the oil-burning destroyers, a smell which suggests that a giant oil lamp somewhere in the distance has need of turning down.

The supper hour takes them to their club.

Night divides them between the movies and the nightly promenade in the gloom.

The glories of this base as a mercantile port, if there ever were any, and the Queenstown folk labor mightily to give you the impression that it was the only serious rival to London, are now over with the glories of Nineveh and Tyre.

A few Cunard lithographs of leviathans, now for the most part at the bottom of the sea, a few dusty showcases full of souvenirs, pigs and pipes of black bog oak, bilik china, a fragile and vanilla candy kind of ware, and lace kerchiefs made by the nuns alone remains to recall the tourist traffic that once centered here.

The start for the West Indies.

Put back to Queenstown.

A terrific gale.

Arrival at Nassau.

Here, however, through the carelessness of the engineers, the water was allowed to get so low in the boilers that the crowns to the furnaces of one of them were brought down.

This means that only by a miracle was an explosion escaped and that the dispatch was entirely incapacitated from proceeding on her voyage.

There was nothing to do but to put back for repairs under one boiler, and we laid her head for Queenstown, thanking our stars it was no worse.

It was three weeks before we could get to sea again, and then it was only to find ourselves once more on the brink of destruction.

So here was the prize crew at last.

A load fell from all our hearts, for there was an excellent prospect that we might escape during the night while Fastnet or Queenstown waited for us in vain.

When I shouted down to the deck, look out, prize crew coming, the mate grinned all over his face, and others grinned with him, for now, as they said, there was a chance of doing something at last.

During this time, the chief engineer was busy forward repairing a steam winch, and in order to see if it was working again, he let it run for a moment.

While the cruiser slowly approached again, I signaled, please inform me why.

This time, there was a long pause before the reply came, and a very unpleasant reply it was.

Follow me to Queenstown.

Course south, 63 degrees east.