particularly struck me. I was not to be out-done.
“Have a cigarette?” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Do you happen to know what all this business is?” I asked him.
“It’s a collision,” he said. “We were struck on the port paddle-box. That saved us for the moment.”
“How did it occur?”
“Don’t know.”
“And where’s the ship that struck us?”
“Oh, somewhere over there — two or three miles away.” He pointed vaguely to the northeast. “You see, half the paddle-wheel was knocked off, and when that sank, of course the port side rose out of the water. I believe those paddle-wheels weigh a deuce of a lot.”