"Cap," says I, "welcome words from the boss."
"Sailing orders?" he asks.
"Yep!" says I. "You're to tie her loose from Florida as quick as you
know how, and head her straight for the wet end of Broadway. Get me?
Broadway! Say, but don't that listen good?"
CHAPTER XVII
A LITTLE SPEED ON THE HOME STRETCH
And, speakin' of thrills, what beats gettin' back to your own home
town? Why, say, that mornin' when we unloads from the _Agnes_ after a
whole month of battin' around, New York looked to me like it had been
touched up with gold leaf and ruby paint. Things seemed so fresh and
crisp, and all so sort of natural and familiar. And the sounds and the
smells! It's all good.
Course, there wasn't any pelicans floatin' around in the North River,
nor any cocoanut palms wavin' over West Thirty-fourth Street. As our
taxis bumped us along, we dodged between coffee-colored heaps of slush
that had once been snow, and overhead all that waved in the breeze was
dingy blankets hung out on the fire-escapes. Also we finds Broadway
ripped up in new spots, with the sewer pipes exposed jaunty.
But somehow them things are what you expect. And you feel that, after
all, there's only one reg'lar place on the map--here, where you can
either pay a nickel for a hot-dog breakfast off a pushcart, or blow in
ninety cents for a pair of yesterday's eggs in a Fifth Avenue grill:
where you can see lovely lady plutesses roll by in their heliotrope
limousines, or watch little Rosie Chianti sail down the asphalt on one
roller skate.
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