The effect of the _Lusitania_ on Sabinsport was much deeper and more general than Dick had dared dream. For the first time since the war began he sensed a feeling of personal responsibility abroad--in the banks, at the grocery, on the street, around the dinner tables. There was a growing consciousness that this was something which did concern her, something that she must see through. There were a few, but only a few in the town, who insisted that we should plunge in immediately and avenge the outrage. Sabinsport was not ready to do that. The world was full of wrongs calling for vengeance, was the _Lusitania_ the one out of all these many where Sabinsport must act? The town reeked with discussion. Dick found indignation, however, qualified strongly by the suspicion that the _Lusitania_ was armed. The doubt was a hang-over from her inherited mistrust of English ways and English dealings. "Probably was carrying munitions," men would say. "Probably did have guns." Then, too, Sabinsport found it hard to believe that it was necessary, and therefore right, for Americans to go to Europe during the war, unless they went to enlist or on errands of mercy. You see, Sabinsport's idea of business was limited, provincial. She had never quite grasped the fact that men ran back and forth to London and Paris and Berlin now-a-days on legitimate business quite as freely as a few of her own citizens ran back and forth to New York. Going to Europe was still an adventure. There had been a time when Sabinsport numbered so few people that had been to Europe that she had formed a society, "The Social Club of Those Who Have Been to Europe." It had not lasted long, for she had a sense of humor which saved her from keeping alive that which savored of snobbery, and the Social Club of Those Who Have Been to Europe died a quiet and early death. Going abroad was now common enough, but it had not yet assumed the proportions of legitimate business. In spite of all this, however, there was not from the first a doubt in Sabinsport's mind, if you got down to the bottom of it, that whatever laws there were must be observed; whatever rights we had must be defended. Here she followed Captain Billy, who said, "By the Jumping Jehosophat, we'll go where we have a right to." One would have thought, to hear Captain Billy, that he made at least two trips across the ocean a year, though, as a matter of fact, he had never laid his eyes on that water. "Do you suppose, if my business calls me to London," said he, "and that the laws allow me, an American citizen, to travel on an English vessel that I'm going to keep off that ship? It has a legal right to carry me. Of course they can come aboard and see if that ship has contraband and guns, and if they find them they can take me off; but they can't blow her up until they have me safe. That's all they can do under the law, and that they have got to do. I'm going to travel wherever the law says I may."