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"That is the true spirit of greatness," Father said, thoughtfully. And when the Titanic went down in mid-ocean with such a loss of life, and the order was for the women and children first to the lifeboats, men to keep back, Father said: "That took real grit. I hope I'll never have to face such a crisis."
That perils may arise at almost any point in mid-ocean even, far away from any land of course we recognise; but Americans can hardly fail to see, with the map before them, that England cannot seek them, but must earnestly desire to avoid them as she has avoided them with any European Power for this last century. To borrow a happy phrase, Great Britain is in truth a "Saturated Power."
The smile on the lips added only beauty to the strength of the face. He arose, shook himself as if to get rid of all past unpleasantness and weakness, and faced the east as though he were meeting the world with new power. Then the smile changed to a merry laugh as he ran to the railing and cried: "See, sure enough, there is a school of porpoises!" The ship was in mid-ocean.
A large barque was once in mid-ocean homeward bound, and was beating against strong head-winds under whole topsails, courses, lower staysails, and jib. It was the starboard watch on deck from eight p.m. until midnight. The captain had retired for the night and left the second mate in charge.
The surface of the country is undulating; its stony waves recall forcibly to the mind the heavy swell of mid-ocean. It seems as if, in times long gone by, the soil was upheaved, en masse, from the bottom of the sea, by volcanic forces.
When he retraced his steps he could no longer distinguish land. Two searchlights playing on the surface of the water revealed a cruiser steaming silently out to sea. A feeble star appeared in the sky. Mid-ocean.
Mafferton, even for literary purposes, and Peter Corke's suggestion, that I should cast myself overboard in mid-ocean at the mere idea of living anywhere out of England for the future, was autobiographically impossible even if I had felt so inclined. So I committed the indiscretion.
No novelist would dare to picture such an array of beautiful climatic conditions, the rosy dawn, the morning star, the moon on the horizon, the sea stretching in level beauty to the sky-line, and on this sea to place an ice-field like the Arctic regions and icebergs in numbers everywhere, white and turning pink and deadly cold, and near them, rowing round the icebergs to avoid them, little boats coming suddenly out of mid-ocean, with passengers rescued from the most wonderful ship the world has known.
I was put in charge of the captain of the North German Lloyd S. S. "Donau," and after a most terrific cyclone in mid-ocean, in which we nearly foundered, I landed in Hoboken, sixteen days from Bremen. My brother, Harry Dunham, met me on the pier, saying, as he took me in his arms, "You do not need to tell me what sort of a trip you have had; it is enough to look at the ship that tells the story."
But finally the spot in the waste and middle of the Atlantic was reached, the sea was still, and the vessels steamed away from each other slowly uncoiling into the sea their two halves of the second cable. It parted again, and the two ships returned to Ireland. In July they again met in mid-ocean. Europe and America were both charitably deriding the splendid enterprise. All faith was lost.
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