"'We thought,' says Dan, 'we'd be rowing a few miles out to sea and back by way of limbering up our slack muscles.' "'There's some people I expect'd bust wide open if they wasn't allowed to be smart,' says Captain John. 'I don' know but what I'll go ashore with you,' and he threw a mug of coffee into himself and jumps in and we start off. "Suddenly Dan stops rowing. 'Isn't this September?' says Dan, and the skipper says yes. 'And a Monday?' asks Dan, and the skipper stops and thinks for a moment and says yes it was. 'And the first Monday?' asks Dan. 'Yes,' says the skipper, 'but what in tarnation of it?' 'Nothing,' says Dan, 'only that if we were home it would be Labor Day.' And the skipper says: 'Well, what o' that?' 'Nothing,' says Dan, 'only it'd be a holiday and all hands celebrating if we were to anchor in some port ashore.' "'But Labor Day ain't no holiday in this country,' says the skipper. "'No,' says Dan, 'but we c'n make a holiday of it.' "'I don' know about that,' says the skipper. 'If it moderates at all, I cal'late to be pullin' out by daybreak.' "'Sure, and we c'n have a celebration that'll reverber-r-ate in history by then,' says Dan. "Now, Dan was a great reader. He'd lie in his bunk of a night when he had no watch to stand and he'd read the morning up sometimes, and now when he starts rowing again he starts talking about things he'd read. "'I used to read about the holidays that some countries have,' says Dan, 'but I never believed it till I was in a vessel running salt fish to Cadiz one time. And the ship-loads o' salt fish they consume in that country, 'twould amaze you. But one night layin' in Cadiz harbor a big whale of a steamer cut into us, and all the topside planking she left of us to starb'd not even this new cook of ours--and God knows he's savin' enough of the raw material!--he couldn't have started a galley fire with it. We had to run her up on the railway and calk her, and after that 'twas the carpenters--nine weeks in all--and 'twas great opportunities we had to study the customs of the country. And there was a country for you! Every once in a quick while a holiday. And the days they did work no one breaking his neck to get the work done. 'Twas proof to me they must be people o' genius to get ahead at all. But then they do say the people that does the least work has the most genius, the most imagination; and imagination, they say, is the first qualification of genius, and too much work it kills the imagination. What d'y'think o' that doctrine, skipper?' says Dan. "'I don't know nothing about imagination,' says the skipper, 'but I alwuz notices that them that does the least work c'n get off the most hot air.' "Just then we bump into the dock, where the skipper, without even waiting to see the painter made fast, hurries up toward the street.