“I know it. I’m an Americann first, last, and all the time. I’ll show ’em that when I strike Europe. Piff! My cig’s out. I can’t smoke the truck the steward sells. Any gen’elman got a real Turkish cig on him?”
The chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet.
“Say, Mac,” cried Harvey cheerfully, “how are we hitting it?”
“Vara much in the ordinary way,” was the grave reply. “The young are as polite as ever to their elders, an’ their elders are e’en tryin’ to appreciate it.”
A low chuckle came from a corner. The German opened his cigar-case and handed a skinny black cigar to Harvey.
“Dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt,” he said. “You vill dry it? Yes? Den you vill be efer so happy.”
Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was getting on in grown-up society.
“It would take more ’n this to keel me over,” he said, ignorant that he was lighting that terrible article, a Wheeling “stogie.”
“Dot we shall bresently see,” said the German. “Where are we now, Mr. Mactonal’?”
“Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer,” said the engineer. “We’ll be on the Grand Bank tonight; but in a general way o’ speakin’, we’re all among the fishing-fleet now. We’ve shaved three dories an’ near scalped the boom off a Frenchman since noon, an’ that’s close sailin’, ye may say.”
“You like my cigar, eh?” the German asked, for Harvey’s eyes were full of tears.