Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion

Conversation not general; drones along between couples. One catches a sentence here and there. Like this, from Bermudian of thirteen years’ absence: “It is the nature of women to ask trivial, irrelevant, and pursuing questions – questions that pursue you from a beginning in nothing to a run-to-cover in nowhere.” Reply of Bermudian of twenty-seven years’ absence: “Yes; and to think they have logical, analytical minds and argumentative ability. You see ’em begin to whet up whenever they smell argument in the air.” Plainly these be philosophers.

Twice since we left port our engines have stopped for a couple of minutes at a time. Now they stop again. Says the pale young man, meditatively, “There! – that engineer is sitting down to rest again.”

Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws cease to work, and whose harpooned potato stops in midair on its way to his open, paralyzed mouth. Presently he says in measured tones, “Is it your idea that the engineer of this ship propels her by a crank turned by his own hands?”