Yeller.... Pleased to know you, sir,” said the Second Officer; “step into the smoke-room, this way. Bar-steward, a brandy cocktail for me, and you, sir, order whatever you are most in the habit of hoisting. Whisky straight! Now, sir, happy to afford you what information I can!”

“I presume,” observed the young gentleman of the 2Press, settling himself on the springy morocco cushions and accepting the Second Officer’s polite offer of a green Havana of the strongest kind, “that you have had a smooth passage, considerin’ the time of year?”

2

“Smooth....” The Second Officer carefully reversed in his reply the Pressman’s remark: “Well, yes, the time of year considered, a smooth passage, I take it, we have had.”

“No fogs?” interrogated the young gentleman, clicking the elastic band of a notebook which projected from his breast-pocket.

“Fogs?... No!” said the Second Officer.

“You didn’t chance,” pursued the young gentleman of the Press, taking his short drink from the steward’s salver and throwing it contemptuously down his throat, “to fall in with a berg off the Bank, did you?”

“Not a smell of one!” replied the Second Officer with decision.

“Ran into a derelict hencoop, perhaps?” persisted the young gentleman, concealing the worn sole of a wearied boot from the searching glare of the electric light by tucking it underneath him, “or an old lady’s bonnet-box? ... or a rubber doll some woman’s baby had lost overboard? No?” he echoed, as the Second Officer shook his head. “Then, how in thunder did you manage to lose twenty feet of your port-rail?”

“Carried away,” said the Second Officer, offering the young Press gentleman a light.

“No, thanks. Always eat mine,” said the young Press gentleman gracefully.

“Matter of taste,” observed the Second Officer, blowing blue rings.

“I guess so; and I’ve a taste for knowing how you came,” said the young Pressman, “to part with that twenty foot of rail.”

“Carried away,” said the Second Officer.

3“I kin see that,” retorted the visitor.

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