Hook....

At the quarantine station I had a surprise. The _Alvina_ was not there.
One old roustabout told me he thought she had gone to sea. I was duly
taken aback. Had I made the two-hour trip for nothing? Then another came
to my aid. "There she is, up in the bight," he said. I followed his
gesture, and saw her--a long, slim white hull, a cream-coloured funnel
with a graceful rake; the Stars and Stripes fresh painted in two places
on her shining side. I hailed a motor boat to take me out. The boatman
wanted three dollars, and I offered one. He protested that the yacht was
interned and he had no right to take visitors out anyway. He'd get into
trouble with "39"--"39" being a United States destroyer lying in the
Narrows a few hundred yards away. After some bickering we compromised on
a dollar and a quarter.

That was a startling adventure for the humble publisher's reader!
Wallowing in an ice-glazed motor boat, in the lumpy water of a
"bight"--surrounded by ships and the men who sail them--I might almost
have been a hardy newspaper man! But Long Island commuters are nurtured
to a tough and perilous his, and I clambered the _Alvina's _side without
dropping hat, stick, or any of my pocketful of manuscripts.

Joe Hogan, the steward, was there in his white jacket. He introduced me
to the cook, the bosun, the "chief," the wireless, and the "second." The
first officer was too heavy with liquor to notice the arrival of a
stranger. Messrs. Haig and Haig, those _Dioscuri_ of seamen, had been at
work. The skipper was ashore. He owns a saloon.

The _Alvina_ is a lovely little vessel, 215 feet long, they told me,
and about 525 tons. She is fitted with mahogany throughout; the