“You understand about this matter, Willie, don’t you?” replied Roy, ignoring his friend’s remark. “I’m just as sorry as I can be that I have to leave you. It’ll take me an hour or two with the purser. Just make yourself at home. As soon as I get done, I’ll show you the wireless outfit, as you asked me to. Ought to have done it right off, anyway. You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Willie?” “Beat it,” said Willie. “You don’t owe me any excuses. I’m a million times obliged to you merely for the opportunity to be here, let alone being entertained. I’ll take a stroll while you’re helping the purser. I’ll be back in a couple of hours or so.” Roy accompanied his guest to the pier, made sure that the men on guard would know him so that Willie would have no difficulty in getting back aboard the ship, and hurried away to the purser’s office. Once on land, Willie drew a little to one side, out of the way of the traffic, to take a good look about him. Wonderful was the scene that greeted his eye. Although Willie lived in central Pennsylvania, the scene was familiar enough to him. As Roy had said, Willie was one of the four members of the Wireless Patrol who had spent some time in New York during the war, running down the secret wireless of a German spy. During that visit he had become well acquainted with New York—he had to become well acquainted with it, in fact, as part of the preparation for the work to be done. So now he felt entirely at home. Yet always he was thrilled by the sight of the teeming activities of this great, roaring city. Being from an inland town, he especially liked the water-front, and all its suggestive activities. The coming and going of huge, laden drays and trucks, with their mysterious bales and boxes, always fired his imagination. What was in these commonplace containers, and whence had it come or whither might it be going? To what strange lands might not some of these packages of merchandise eventually come, and in what curious ways might they not travel? Chinese sampans might eventually bear some of these goods up brawling Chinese rivers; camel trains might carry them over the burning desert; elephants might convey a portion of this merchandise through Indian jungles or long safaris of African porters struggle through the dark continent with some part of these products on their heads. Always it fired Willie’s imagination to see this stirring life along the water-front. And a powerful imagination was one of Willie’s most precious gifts. It was this imagination that had given him the power Roy ascribed to him of being able to interpret things correctly, for Willie did possess that ability in an astonishing degree. Constantly his imagination was at play, working upon anything that caught his eye; just as now, in the things that most of those passing near him saw only as boxes or bundles, he was seeing camel trains crossing the desert, and other sights equally delightful.