He had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and effect the music he played whist there, always with the same partner and opponents, until the ladies' bedtime.

The electric lights burned there as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven.

There were many laws on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced.

The captain explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick.

I did not see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort in the solid intervening bulkhead.