Shaking her head, she would say: "Well, I'm sorry I can't stay any longer with you.

I'm going North," and would sidle off, halting suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging.

"As I was just going to observe," she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man addressing a lamp-post.

The rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the sea took her.
"See her sayin' her piece.

She's Patrick Henry naow," said Dan.
She swung sideways on a roller, and gesticulated with her jib-boom from port to starboard.
"But-ez-fer me, give me liberty-er give me-death!" Wop! She sat down in the moon-path on the water, courtesying with a flourish of pride impressive enough had not the wheel-gear sniggered mockingly in its box.
Harvey laughed aloud.