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In fact, obviously the liner's speed mattered but little; it was the rate at which the Earth was revolving upon its axis and journeying around the sun with which I had to contend. Through the telescope this was not discernible, but now that I had come into such close visual contact with the Earth's surface, I realized the terrific speed with which it rushed through space.
A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his Ray. The mate assures him that he will find a nice new Ray all ready in the liner's engine-room. The bandaged head goes up wagging excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers hollowly above us, and we see the passengers' faces at the saloon colloid. "That's a pretty girl.
What's the fool waiting for now?" says Captain Purnall. The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns at which we little human beings in the void cheer louder than ever with the ship's kitten. Up fly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody crashes home and she hurtles away again. The dial shows less than 3000 feet.
You can see that she's sorry for the dirty little beggars. They don't look as if they'd had a happy time; and a liner's crowded steerage isn't a luxurious place." Mrs. Keith smiled as Millicent came toward her with a few of the small children clustered round her. "I have some English letters to write," she said; "and I think we'll go in." The Challoners did not leave for the West the next day.
The mass of people below now took on the shape of a funnel, its spout resting on the edge of the gangplank, from out which poured a steady stream of people up and over the Liner's side. Two decks below where Miss Jennings and her fellow-travellers were leaning over the steamer's rail craning their necks, other sights came into view.
Outside the harbor mouth, the liner's long, black hull cut against the dusky blue, the flowing curve of her sheer picked out by a row of lights. Over this rose three white tiers of passenger decks, pierced by innumerable bright points, with larger lights in constellations outside, while masts and funnels ran up, faintly indicated, into the gloom above.
I felt as though encased and insulated, in some curious way, from the everyday life about me. And this mood possessed me all through that day. Through all the customary bustle of an ocean liner's departure, I moved slowly, silently, aloofly, as a somnambulist. It was a singular outsetting, this start upon my 'way out.
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