again.
There is very little to relate from the time of leaving Queenstown on
Thursday to Sunday morning. The sea was calm,--so calm, indeed, that
very few were absent from meals: the wind westerly and
southwesterly,--"fresh" as the daily chart described it,--but often rather
cold, generally too cold to sit out on deck to read or write, so that many
of us spent a good part of the time in the library, reading and writing. I
wrote a large number of letters and posted them day by day in the box
outside the library door: possibly they are there yet.
Each morning the sun rose behind us in a sky of circular clouds,
stretching round the horizon in long, narrow streaks and rising tier upon
tier above the sky-line, red and pink and fading from pink to white, as
the sun rose higher in the sky. It was a beautiful sight to one who had
not crossed the ocean before (or indeed been out of sight of the shores
of England) to stand on the top deck and watch the swell of the sea
extending outwards from the ship in an unbroken circle until it met the
sky-line with its hint of infinity: behind, the wake of the vessel white
with foam where, fancy suggested, the propeller blades had cut up the
long Atlantic rollers and with them made a level white road bounded on
either side by banks of green, blue, and blue-green waves that would
presently sweep away the white road, though as yet it stretched back to
the horizon and dipped over the edge of the world back to Ireland and
the gulls, while along it the morning sun glittered and sparkled. And
each night the sun sank right in our eyes along the sea, making an
undulating glittering path way, a golden track charted on the surface of
the ocean which our ship followed unswervingly until the sun dipped
below the edge of the horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster
than we could steam and slipped over the edge of the skyline,--as if the
sun had been a golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too
quickly for us to follow.
From 12 noon Thursday to 12 noon Friday we ran 386 miles, Friday to
Saturday 519 miles, Saturday to Sunday 546 miles. The second day's
run of 519 miles was, the purser told us, a disappointment, and we
should not dock until Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday night, as
we had expected; however, on Sunday we were glad to see a longer run
had been made, and it was thought we should make New York, after all,
on Tuesday night. The purser remarked: "They are not pushing her this
trip and don't intend to make any fast running: I don't suppose we shall
do more than 546 now; it is not a bad day's run for the first trip." This
was at lunch, and I remember the conversation then turned to the speed
and build of Atlantic liners as factors in their comfort of motion: all
those who had crossed many times were unanimous in saying the
Titanic was the most comfortable boat they had been on, and they
preferred the speed we were making to that of the faster boats, from the
point of view of lessened vibration as well as because the faster boats
would bore through the waves with a twisted, screw-like motion
instead of the straight up-and-down swing of the Titanic. I then called
the attention of our table to the way the Titanic listed to port (I had
noticed this before), and we all watched the sky-line through the
portholes as we sat at the purser's table in the saloon: it was plain she
did so, for the sky-line and sea on the port side were visible most of the
time and on the starboard only sky. The purser remarked that probably
coal had been used mostly from the starboard side. It is no doubt a
common occurrence for all vessels to list to some degree; but in view
of the fact that the Titanic was cut open on the starboard side and
before she sank listed so much to port that there was quite a chasm
between her and the swinging lifeboats, across which ladies had to be
thrown or to cross on chairs laid flat, the previous listing to port may be
of interest.
Returning for a moment to the motion of the Titanic, it was interesting
to stand on the boat-deck, as I frequently did, in the angle between
lifeboats 13 and 15 on the starboard side (two boats I have every reason
to remember, for the first carried me in safety to the Carpathia, and it
seemed likely at one time that

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