As a thoroughbred
horse starts and trembles under the touch of the whip, so she reared and
trembled, only to bury herself again in the roaring Niagara of water.
Oh, you thoroughbred high-tensile steel! blue-blooded aristocrat among
metals; Bethlehem or Midvale may claim you--you are none the less
worthy of the Milan casque, the Damascus blade, your forefathers!
Verily, I believe you hold on by sheer nerve, when by all physical laws
should buckle or bend to the shock!
[Sidenote: Torpedo detonators spilt on deck.]
And so we kept on. Don't you know, how in the stories it is always in a
terrific gale that the caged lion or gorilla or python breaks loose and
terrorizes the ship? We don't sport a menagerie on the ----, but I did
pick up the contents of the dry gun-cotton case, which had broken and
spilt the torpedo detonators around on deck contiguous to the hot
radiator! And, of course, the decks below were knee-deep in books,
clothes, dishes, etc., complicated in some compartments by a foot or two
of oil and water.
[Sidenote: Soundings and landmarks.]
Well, the next day we made a little more, and the seas were only
gigantic, not titanic. The oil was holding out better, too, as we struck
a better grade in some of our tanks, and I saw that we had a fighting
chance of making it. By night I felt almost confident we could, and I
really slept some. Next day I expected to make land, but, of course, had
little idea how far I might really be from my reckoning.
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