For two days out, we have the little destroyers with us, and then we are left to our luck and the gun in front and the watching men aloft. The lifeboats are always swung out on their davits for the siren’s sudden call. The doors of the upper deck stand open, waiting beside each a preparedness exhibit, boxes of biscuit, flasks of brandy, and a pile of blankets we are to seize as we run. We two women have filled the pockets of our steamer-coats with safety-pins, hairpins and a comb, first aid that no one remembers to bring when they pick you up from the open boat. My fellow traveller is huddling very close to her six-foot husband, to be tucked safely under his arm at the emergency moment. It is good that we are having rough weather. When the waves are tossing high, the periscopes may not find us.
We are sixteen people who wander like disembodied spirits from the gay days of old through these great empty rooms that once rang with the joy of hundreds of tourists on their pleasure-jaunts over the world. There are no games. There is no dancing. There is no band. There are no steamerchairs on deck. At sundown we are closed in tight behind iron shutters. No one may so much as light a cigaret outside.
In the ghastly silence of the days that pass, there is only the strain and quiver of the ship, and the solemn boom, boom of the sea. Death is so near that it seems fitting the glad activities of life should cease, as when a corpse is laid out in the front room of a house. For a while there is a tendency to whisper, as if we were at a funeral, or as if, perchance, the Germans in the sea could hear. But soon we find ourselves functioning quite normally. Not until the sixth day out, it is true, does any one venture to take a bath. You don’t want to be rushed like that, you know, to your drowning. But we are sleeping regularly at night. We eat bacon and eggs for breakfast as usual. We are pleased when there is turkey and cranberry sauce for dinner. One does not maintain an agony of suspense forever. For most of us, I think it began to end when we had committed ourselves to the decision of this voyage. After that, the issue rests with God or with destiny, according to one’s religion.
There is no attempt at dressing for dinner on the Carmania. Evening dress and all the time dress is life-preservers. We do not take them off even at night for a while. We sleep in them. With the new styles, of which there are many, you can. Mine is a garment that buttons up exactly like a man’s vest. Next to the lining is a padded filling, an Indian vegetable matter that will keep one afloat like cork. To-day one desires the latest modern devices against death. A life-preserver costs anywhere from five to fifteen dollars. You carry yours with you as you do your toothbrush and your steamer-rug.
Time ticks off the minutes to life or to death to-morrow. We walk the decks and scan a nearly deserted ocean. Only twice do we sight a steamship on the horizon. At table we discuss as one does usually, oh, immortality and Christian Science and woman suffrage. The Englishman says, “Votes for women are really impossible, don’t you know. Why, if the British women had voted twelve years ago, there might not have been any battleships in 1914. And then where would England have been to-day?”
“But if the German women too had voted twelve years ago, have you thought how much happier the world might be to-day?” I ask. The Englishman does not see the point but the American at my left says, “Guess you handed him one that time.”
On April sixth the Cunard Bulletin, the wireless newspaper, is laid beside our plates at breakfast with the announcement that’s thrilled around a world, “The United States has declared for war.” The Englishman next me says, “That must be a great relief for you.” And I cannot answer for the choking in my throat. My country, oh, my country, too, at the gates of hell to go in regiment by regiment!
On Sunday the English clergyman reads the service including the phrases in brackets: “God save the King (and the President of the United States). Vanquish their enemies and preserve them in felicity.” Down beneath the sea the Germans in their submarines too are praying like that to the same God. But one hopes, oh, one earnestly hopes, that God will not hear them.
After the sixth day out, we have probably escaped the submarines. The American men are no longer kindly asking me in anxious tone, “You’re not nervous, are you?” On the eighth day they get out the shuffleboard. Two mornings later when we awake, the sea is a beautiful blue, all dimpling with sparkling points of golden light. It is real New York sunlight again! The captain comes down from the pilot house smiling: “Well, we got away this time,” he says.
The Statue of Liberty is rising on the horizon. The Manhattan sky-line etches itself against the heavens. Do you know, I’d rather be a door-keeper here at Ellis Island, than a lady-in-waiting anywhere in Europe. The Carmania warps into dock in sight of the Metropolitan Tower. Was Fourteenth Street ever cheap, common, sordid? As my taxicab rolls across town, see how beautiful, oh, see how beautiful is Fourteenth street, a little landscape cross-section right out of Paradise! Nobody here is blinded, nobody maimed, nobody in crêpe, nobody broken-hearted—yet. I have escaped from a nightmare of the Middle Ages. I lift my face to the sunlight again.