Outside he plunged through narrow corridors until he came to a stairway. He mounted this to be as far away from the ocean as possible. He came out upon a deck where people were strangely not excited by the impending disaster. Innocent children romped, oblivious to their fate, while callous elders walked the deck or reclined in little old steamer chairs.
He poised a moment, trying to prevent the steamer's deck from mounting by planting one foot firmly upon it. The device, sound enough in mechanical theory, proved unavailing. The vast hulk sank alternately at either end, and to fearsome depths of the sea. There would come a last plunge. He tightened the life-belt.
Then, through the compelling force of associated ideas, there seemed to come to him the faint sweet scent of lilac blossoms ... the vision of a lilac clump revolving both vertically and horizontally ... the noisome fumes of Grammer's own pipe.
"Too much for you, eh? Ha, ha, ha!" It was the scoundrel from Hartford, malignantly cheerful. He was inhaling a cubeb cigarette.
"Lumbago!" said Bean, both hands upon the life-belt.
"'As a man thinketh, so is he!' As simple as that," admonished the other.
Bean groped for the door and for ages fled down blind corridors, vainly seeking that little old stateroom. He did not find it as quickly as he should have; but he was there at last, and a deft steward quickly divested him of the life-belt and other garments for which there no longer seemed to be any need.
He lay weakly reflecting, with a sinister glee, that the boat was bound to sink in a moment. He wanted it to sink. Death was coming too slowly.