of the Swiss navy would wear--if the Swiss had any navy--and holding
a speaking trumpet in his hand. This person is not excited, for
he sends thirty-odd-thousand-ton ships off to Europe at frequent
intervals, and so he is impressively and importantly blase about
it; but everybody else is excited. You find yourself rather that
way. You wave at persons you know and then at persons you do not
know.

You continue to wave until the man alongside you, who has spent
years of his life learning to imitate a siren whistle with his
face, suddenly twines his hands about his mouth and lets go a
terrific blast right in your ear. Something seems to warn you
that you are not going to care for this man.

The pier, ceasing to be a long, outstretched finger, seems to fold
back into itself, knuckle-fashion, and presently is but a part
of the oddly foreshortened shoreline, distinguishable only by the
black dot of watchers clustered under a battery of lights, like a
swarm of hiving bees. Out in midstream the tugs, which have been
convoying the ship, let go of her and scuttle off, one in this
direction and one in that, like a brace of teal ducks getting out
of a walrus' way.

Almost imperceptibly her nose straightens down the river and soon
on the starboard quarter--how quickly one picks up these nautical
terms!--looming through the harbor mists, you behold the statue
of Miss Liberty, in her popular specialty of enlightening the
world. So you go below and turn in. Anyway, that is what I did;
for certain of the larger ships of the Cunard line sail at midnight
or even later, and this was such a ship.