CHAPTER I 

LARRY AND HIS FRIENDS 

"Unless I miss my guess, Luke, we are going to have a storm." 

"Jest what I was thinking, Larry. And when it comes I allow as how it will be putty heavy," replied Luke Striker, casting an eye to the westward, where a small dark cloud was beginning to show above the horizon. 

"Well, we can't expect fine weather all the time," went on Larry Russell, inspecting the cloud with equal interest. "We want some wind anyway," he added. "We are not making this return trip to Nagasaki nearly as fast as we made the trip to Manila." 

Luke Striker, a bronzed and weather-beaten Yankee sailor, rubbed his chin reflectively. "I was jest thinking o' the day I spied the old _Columbia_ in Manila harbor," he said, meditatively. "Tell ye, Larry, the sight 'most struck me dumb. 'The _Columbia_,' sez I to myself. An' then I thought I must be a-dreamin'. I wanted to find this ship ag'in in the worst way." 

"The ship certainly seems like a home to me, Luke--and I reckon she always will seem that way. I've traveled a good many miles in her, since I first struck her at Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands," responded Larry Russell. 

"Yes--both of us have. But we never took no trip like this afore--carryin' a cargo for the Japanese Government, with that government at war with Russia." Luke Striker lowered his voice. "What's the outlook? Does the old man reckon to fall in with a Russian warship afore we can reach Nagasaki?" 
does he think of it as home?
The ship certainly seems like a home to me