of whom appeared to be ladies and very young children;
and in the big saloons, ornamented in white and gold,
which followed each other in surprising succession,
beneath the swinging gaslight, and among the small side
passages where the Negro domestics of both sexes assembled
with an air of philosophic leisure, everyone was moving
to and fro and exchanging loud and familiar observations.
Eventually, at the instance of a discriminating black,
our young men went and had some "supper" in a wonderful
place arranged like a theater, where, in a gilded gallery,
upon which little boxes appeared to open, a large orchestra
was playing operatic selections, and, below, people were
handing about bills of fare, as if they had been programs.
All this was sufficiently curious; but the agreeable thing, later,
was to sit out on one of the great white decks of the steamer,
in the warm breezy darkness, and, in the vague starlight,
to make out the line of low, mysterious coast. The young
Englishmen tried American cigars--those of Mr. Westgate--
and talked together as they usually talked, with many
odd silences, lapses of logic, and incongruities of transition;
like people who have grown old together and learned to
supply each other's missing phrases; or, more especially,
like people thoroughly conscious of a common point of view,
so that a style of conversation superficially lacking in finish
might suffice for reference to a fund of associations in the light
of which everything was all right.

"We really seem to be going out to sea," Percy Beaumont observed.
"Upon my word, we are going back to England. He has shipped us off again.
I call that 'real mean.'"