And don't you run away with that notion that landsmen take about ships.

A society actress don't go around more publicly than what a ship does, nor is more interviewed, nor more humbugged, nor more run after by all sorts of little fussinesses in brass buttons.

And more than an actress, a ship has a deal to lose; she's capital, and the actress only character--if she's that.

The ports of the world are thick with people ready to kick a captain into the penitentiary if he's not as bright as a dollar and as honest as the morning star; and what with Lloyd keeping watch and watch in every corner of the three oceans, and the insurance leeches, and the consuls, and the customs bugs, and the medicos, you can only get the idea by thinking of a landsman watched by a hundred and fifty detectives, or a stranger in a village Down East." "Well, but at sea ?" I said.
"You make me tired," retorted the captain.

"What's the use--at sea?
Everything's got to come to bearings at some port, hasn't it?
You can't stop at sea for ever, can you ?--No; the Flying Scud is rubbish; if it meant anything, it would have to mean something so almighty intricate that James G.Blaine hasn't got the brains to engineer it; and I vote for more axeing, pioneering, and opening up the resources of this phenomenal brig, and less general fuss," he added, arising.