Come! Let us paddle to it. Ha! See the pale-skinned men;
They beckon, smiling on us. They must be friendly, then.”
HENRY HUDSON:
DISCOVERER OF HUDSON BAY AND EXPLORER
OF THE MAGNIFICENT RIVER
WHICH BEARS HIS NAME
(15??-1611)
WE had been plowing along over the great Atlantic on a clear and starlit night. The Mauretania was as steady as a pier in the East River, so we were expecting no disaster, yet, when we tumbled from our cots upon the day following, we were startled to see that the great, steel hulk had ceased to move with her accustomed vigor. The resounding poom, poom, of her giant propeller-shaft was no longer heard, and she was only just drifting along through the gray-green waters. Every now and again her massive fog-whistle would roar out its leonine warning:
“O-o-o-o-o-m! O-o-o-o-o-m!”
We stumbled to the deck, only to be chilled and dampened by a shroud of mist, which had shut down upon our steel-clad home like a giant pall. It curled, rolled and settled upon us as if it were a blanket saturated with dank sea-water; it cut off the view, so that one peered at the swishing ocean in vain; and it benumbed one, so that one’s voice was stifled and choked, as if a huge overpowering hand were grasping at one’s throat. And even from above came that soul-deadening roar of the steam siren: