As the long night of merriment wanes, and the early hints of a new dawn color the fringes of the wide bay beyond the shores of the Mudcat Funhouse, Boardwalk and Capo Carnivale, the ringing of zithers and autoharps, banjos and twelve-strings fades as the rowdy celebrants succumb to their night's indulgence in brown stuff, Reisling, Shiraz, single-malt, and bluegrass. Out on the pier a lone banjo-player watches the dawn begin its promises, and the thin but strong notes of his slow-plucked banjo drift over scores of sleeping folkies.

Amaaaaaaaazing grace!
How sweet the sound.
That saved a wretch like meeeeeee!....

Around the Point of Sharps, a slow chuffing sound begins to make itself heard. An early lobsterman out on his rounds? A herd of blue whales drawn to the merrymaking?

As the first rays of sunlight break over the horizon, shifting the sea's broad surface from a midnight purple through a silvered blue to the pale transparent aquamarine of its day job, the faint outlines of a broad, squat vessel can be seen plowing a furrow in the waters a few miles off the Point.

Her outline is unmistakeable to the lonely banjoplayer, who lights a small cigar, sips from a silvered flask, and smiles in recognition.

Her giant stacks unleashing clouds of white smoke and her giant side-wheels churning a broad foamy wake behind her, she chuffs slowly into the bay. You can barely make out the figures on her -- a Gambler leaning lazily against the promenade deck rail, a sweaty boilerman just outside the engine room hatch on the quarter, a bevy of lovely belles of assorted hues gathering outside the salon to watch the merry Mudcat shoreline heave into view.

The steamboat Albert J. Hansell has come to join the party.