“Stew’d, I ashidently turn’ over m’ drink—­bring me nozher brand’ ‘n’ sozza.” ...  “Just a minute, Mr. Blosser, I want to tell my husband about it—­he’ll be awful interested.  Say, listen, Poppa, this gentleman here knows Maxie Hockstein out in Grand Rapids.” ...  “Do you think so, really?  A lot of people have said that very same thing to me.  They come up to me and say ’I know you must be a Southerner because you have such a true Southern accent.’  I suppose I must come by it naturally, for while I was born in New Jersey, my mother was a member of a very old Virginia family and we’ve always been very strong Southern sympathizers and I went to a finishing school in Baltimore and I was always being mistaken for a Southern girl.” ...  “Well, I sure had enough of it to do me for one spell.  I seen the whole shootin’ match and I don’t regret what it cost me, but, believe me, little old Keokuk is goin’ to look purty good to me when I get back there.  Why, them people don’t know no more about makin’ a cocktail than a rabbit.” ...  “That’s her standing yonder talking to the captain.  Yes, that’s what so many people say, but as a matter of fact, she’s the youngest one of the two.  I say, ‘These are my daughters,’ and then people say, ‘You mean your sisters.’  Still I married very young—­at seventeen—­and possibly that helps to explain it.” ...  “Oh, is that a shark out yonder?  Well, anyway, it’s a porpoise, and a porpoise is a kind of shark, isn’t it?  When a porpoise grows up, it gets to be a shark—­I read that somewhere.  Ain’t nature just wonderful?” ...  “Raymund Walter Pelham, if I have to speak to you again, young man, I’m going to take you to the stateroom and give you something you won’t forget in a hurry.” ...  “Stew’d, hellup me gellup.”

Thus the lazy hours slip by and the spell of the sea takes hold on you and you lose count of the time and can barely muster up the energy to perform the regular noonday task of putting your watch back half an hour.  A passenger remarks that this is Thursday and you wonder dimly what happened to Wednesday.

Three days more—­just three.  The realization comes to you with a joyous shock.  Somebody sights a sea-gull.  With eager eyes you watch its curving flight.  Until this moment you have not been particularly interested in sea-gulls.  Heretofore, being a sea-gull seemed to you to have few attractions as a regular career, except that it keeps one out in the open air; otherwise it has struck you as being rather a monotonous life with a sameness as to diet which would grow very tiresome in time.  But now you envy that sea-gull, for he comes direct from the shores of the United States of America and if so minded may turn around and beat you to them by a margin of hours and hours and hours.  Oh, beauteous creature!  Oh, favored bird!

Comes the day before the last day.  There is a bustle of getting ready for the landing.  Customs blanks are in steady demand at the purser’s office.  Every other person is seeking help from every other person, regarding the job of filling out declarations.  The women go about with the guilty look of plotters in their worried eyes.  If one of them fails to slip something in without paying duty on it she will be disappointed for life.  All women are natural enemies to all excise men.  Dirk, the Smuggler, was the father of their race.