"Where, Cadogan?"
"Right aboard this ship. How? Here we are tearing through the iceberg country trying to make a record. If ever we piled up head on to one of those icebergs, where would we be?"
"But it is a clear night. And the lookouts."
"Never mind the clear night—or the lookouts if they are not looking out."
"But this ship can't sink."
"No? But suppose she can sink, and that she is sinking. There are four thousand people aboard—and down she goes. Wouldn't that be an experience?"
With meditative eyes directed down to the ashes at the end of his cigar, Meade mulled over the question. "A great adventure it surely would be," he at length emitted from behind a puff of smoke. "The right man, a great writer, for instance, if he could live through that, would make a world's epic of it."
Cadogan wondered what the man on the transom was thinking of. He put his next question directly to him. "There would be some great deaths in such an event, don't you think, sir?" His own eyes were glowing.
"Some great deaths, surely—and some horrible ones, doubtless, too."
"Oh, but men would die like gods at such a time!"