The man did not, however, count his change when it was brought him, but shovelled it into his seal-skin tobacco pouch, a coin or two short, without looking at it. He then filled carefully, drank, and pondered with an air of grave and imposing reflection. Long before his measure was finished a second guest entered the tap-room, whose manners, gait, and gestures were an exact counterpart of the first. He was taller, however, and thinner, altogether less robust and prosperous-looking, showing a sallow face and withered skin, that denoted he had spent much of his life in hot climates. Though he looked younger than the other, his bearing was more staid and solemn, nor did he at once vociferate for something to drink. Beer seemed his weakness less than ’baccy, for he placed a small copper coin on a box ingeniously constructed so that, opening only by such means, it produced exactly the money’s worth of the fragrant weed, and loading a pipe with a much-tattooed hand, proceeded to puff volumes of smoke through the apartment. Butter-faced Bob, entering, cheerfully proffered all kinds of liquids as a matter of course, but was received with surly negatives, and retired to speculate on the extreme of wealth or poverty denoted by this abstinence. A man, he thought, to be proof against such temptations must be either so rich, and consequently so full of liquor that he was unable to drink any more, or so poor that he couldn’t afford to be thirsty. So the last comer smoked in silence at a little table of his own, which he had drawn into a corner, and his predecessor drank at _his_ table, looking wiser and wiser, while each glanced furtively at the other without opening his lips. Presently the eyes of the elder man twinkled: he had got an idea—nay, he actually launched it. Filling his glass, and politely handing it to the smoker, but reserving the jug to drink from himself, he proposed the following comprehensive toast— “All ships at sea!” They both drank it gravely and without farther comment. It was a social challenge, and felt to be such; the smoker pondered, put out the glass he had drained to be refilled, and holding it on a level with his eyes, enunciated solemnly— “All ships in port!” When equal justice had been done to this kindred sentiment, and the navies of the world were thus exhausted, they came to a dead-lock and relapsed into silence once more.