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. I thumbed through it, with a mental note to memorize all key facts before I left this room - if I was still aboard when the ship sailed - then put it aside, as I had found the ship's newspaper:
The King's Skald it was headed and Graham, bless him, had saved all of them from the day he had boarded the ship... at Portland, Oregon, as I deduced from the place and date line of the, earliest issue. That suggested that Graham was ticketed for the entire cruise, which could be important to me. I had expected to go back as I had arrived, by airship - but, even if the dirigible liner Admiral Moffett existed in this world or dimension or whatever, I no longer had a ticket for it and no money with which to buy one. What do these French colonials do to a tourist who has no money? Burn him at the stake? Or merely draw and quarter him? I did not want to find out. Graham's roundtrip ticket (if he had one) might keep me from having to find out.
(If he didn't show up in the next hour and have me kicked off the ship.)
I did not consider remaining in Polynesia. Being a penniless beachcomber on Bora-Bora or Moorea may have been practical a hundred years ago but today the only thing free in these islands is contagious disease.
It seemed likely that I would be just as broke and just as much a stranger in America but nevertheless I felt that I would be better off in my native land. Well, Graham's native land
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