"This man thinks he has a monopoly of the puffing, himself," Pindar whispered into the captain's ear; "whiff away, my dear sir, and you'll soon throw him into the shade."
The captain winked, drew out his box, lighted another cigar, and, by way of reply to the envious remark, he put one in each corner of his mouth, and soon had both in full blast, a state in which he kept them for near a minute.
"This is the very picturesque of social enjoyment," exclaimed Florio, holding up both hands in a glow of rapture. "It is absolutely Homeric, in the way of usages! Ah! the English are a great nation!"
"I should like to know excessively if there was really such a person as Baron Mun-chaw-sen?" said Julietta, gathering courage from the success of her last question.
"There was, Miss," returned the captain, through his teeth, and nodding his head in the affirmative. "A regular traveller, that; and one who knew him well, swore to me that he hadn't related one half of what befel him."
"How very delightful to learn this from the highest quarter!" exclaimed Miss Monthly.
"Is Gatty (Goethe) really dead?" inquired Longinus, "or, is the account we have had to that effect, merely a metaphysical apotheosis of his mighty soul?"
"Dead, marm--stone dead--dead as a door-nail," returned the captain, who saw a relief in killing as many as possible.
"You have been in France, Mr. Truck, beyond question?" observed Lucius Junius Brutus, in the way one puts a question.
"France!--I was in France before I was ten years old. I know every foot of the coast, from Havre de Grace to Marseilles."