Slowly the thing took shape in my mind.
There was the first, irrevocable loss—my life!
Thirty years—the thirty years in which a man may really live—these were gone from me forever.
I was coming back; strong to be sure; well enough in health; even, I hoped, with my old mental vigor—but not to the same world.
Even the convict who survives thirty years imprisonment, may return at length to the same kind of world he had left so long.
But I! It was as if I had slept, and, in my sleep, they had stolen my world.
I threw off the thought, and started in to action.
Here was a small world—the big steamer beneath me. I had already learned much about her. In the first place, she was not a "steamer," but a thing for which I had no name; her power was electric.
"Oh, well," I thought, as I examined her machinery, "this I might have expected. Thirty years of such advances as we were making in 1910 were sure to develop electric motors of all sorts."
The engineer was a pleasant, gentlemanly fellow, more than willing to talk about his profession and its marvellous advances. The ship was well manned, certainly; though the work required was far less than it used to be, the crew were about as numerous. I had made some acquaintances among the ship's officers—even among the men, who were astonishingly civil and well-mannered—but I had not at first noticed the many points of novelty in their attitude or in my surroundings.