It looked like a piratical division of loot; but Tom Platt came out of it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of chewing and smoking tobacco.

Then those jovial mariners swung off into the mist, and the last Harvey heard was a gay chorus: "Par derriere chez ma tante, Il y a un bois joli, Et le rossignol y chante Et le jour et la nuit...

Que donneriez vous, belle, Qui I'amenerait ici?
Je donnerai Quebec, Sorel et Saint Denis." "How was it my French didn't go, and your sign-talk did ?" Harvey demanded when the barter had been distributed among the "We're Heres".
"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed.

"Well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a heap older'n your French, Harve.

Them French boats are chock-full o' Freemasons, an' that's why." "Are you a Freemason, then ?" "Looks that way, don't it ?" said the man-o'war's man, stuffing his pipe; and Harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood upon..