“Smoke! Smoke!” repeated he, sadly, dwelling upon the words; “why, it all seems smoke to me;” and he looked wistfully around the deck, and I felt quite ready to agree with him.
“May I ask what you are here for,” inquired I; “perhaps your health, or business of some kind; although I was told it was a pleasure party?”
“That’s just it,” said he; “if I only knew where we were going, I might be able to say something about it. But where are you going?”
“I am going home as fast as I can,” replied I warmly, for I began to be very uncomfortable. The old man’s eyes half closed, and his mind seemed to have struck a scent.
“Isn’t that where I was going? I believe it is; I wish I knew; I think that’s what it is called, Where is home?”
And the old man puffed a prodigious cloud of smoke, in which he was quite lost.
“It is certainly very smoky,” said he, “I came on board this ship to go to—in fact, I meant, as I was saying, I took passage for—.” He smoked silently. “I beg your pardon, but where did you say I was going?”
Out of the mist where he had been leaning over the side, and gazing earnestly into the surrounding obscurity, now came a pale young man, and put his arm in mine.
“I see,” said he, “that you have rather a general acquaintance, and, as you know many persons, perhaps you know many things. I am young, you see, but I am a great traveller. I have been all over the world, and in all kinds of conveyances; but,” he continued, nervously, starting continually, and looking around, “I haven’t yet got abroad.”
“Not got abroad, and yet you have been everywhere?”