It Seemed To Be
Decided That She Might - Just Might - Pull Through By The Skin Of Her
Teeth As A Nation - If (But This Was Doubtful) England Did Not Help
Others To Hammer Her.
Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any
of this sort of thing.
If it sounds a little mad, remember that the
Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics.
Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred
steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a
confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting
ritual. For the fifth time - and four times in just such weather - I heard
the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township
wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the
bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the
poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see
nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and
quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell
and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily
through the escapes. Then we went ahead.
The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The
maples along its banks had turned - blood red and splendid as the banners
of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the
maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more
happy.
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