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And when every rhymester has walked the plank, shall we still put up with our relations? True members of the “stupid party,” who never believe in us, who know (and never forget) the follies of our adolescence; who are always wanting us not to do things; who are lavish of advice, yet angered by the faintest suggestion of a small advance in cash: shall the idle singers perish and these endure? No: as soon as the last poet has splashed over the side, to the sharks with our relations!

The old barkey is lightening famously: who shall be next to go? The Sportsman of intolerable yarns: who slays twice over — first, his game, and then the miserable being he button-holes for the tedious recital. Shall we suffer him longer? Who else? Who is that cowering under the bulwarks yonder? The man who thinks he can imitate the Scottish accent! Splash! And the next one? What a crowd is here! How they block the hatchways, lumber the deck, and get between you and the purser’s room — these fadmongers, teetotallers, missionaries of divers isms! Overboard with them, and hey for the Fortunate Isles! Then for tobacco in a hammock ‘twixt the palms! Then for wine cooled in a brooklet losing itself in silver sands! Then for — but O these bilboes on our ankles, how mercilessly they grip! The vertical sun blisters the bare back: faint echoes of Olympian laughter seem to flicker like Northern Lights across the stark and pitiless sky. One earnest effort would do it, my brothers! A little modesty, a short sinking of private differences; and then we should all be free and equal gentlemen of fortune, and I would be your Captain! “Who? you? you would make a pretty Captain!” Better than you, you scurvy, skulking, little galley-slave! “Galley-slave yourself, and be — Pull together, boys, and lie low! Here’s the Master coming with his whip!”