Cadogan said
hesitatingly and shyly: "I've often thought I'd like to be a writer." He
meant that for Lavis, but it was Meade who took it to himself to ask him
why.

"If I were a writer, I'd have hope right now of taking part in one of
the greatest adventures that could befall a man."

"Where, Cadogan?"

"Right aboard this ship. How? Here we are tearing through the iceberg
country trying to make a record. If ever we piled up head on to one of
those icebergs, where would we be?"

"But it is a clear night. And the lookouts."

"Never mind the clear night--or the lookouts if they are not looking
out."

"But this ship can't sink."

"No? But suppose she can sink, and that she is sinking. There are four
thousand people aboard--and down she goes. Wouldn't that be an
experience?"

With meditative eyes directed down to the ashes at the end of his cigar,
Meade mulled over the question. "A great adventure it surely would be,"
he at length emitted from behind a puff of smoke. "The right man, a
great writer, for instance, if he could live through that, would make a
world's epic of it."

Cadogan wondered what the man on the transom was thinking of. He put his
next question directly to him. "There would be some great deaths in such
an event, don't you think, sir?" His own eyes were glowing.

"Some great deaths, surely--and some horrible ones, doubtless, too."

"Oh, but men would die like gods at such a time!"

"No doubt--and like dogs also."

Meade did not relish losing control of the conversation to an
undistinguished outsider. "Look here, Cadogan," he interjected; "could a
man live through that--go down with the ship and survive?"

"He could survive the sinking--yes; but he would not live long--not in
water near icebergs. The numbness soon creeps up to your heart, and
then----"

"But how could a man do it and live?"

"Why, sir, do you insist that he should live?" It was Lavis who had
spoken.

Meade's eyebrows rose above the tops of his horn glasses. "Eh!" Cadogan,
too, stared at Lavis.

"To live after it would be only to half complete the adventure. We began
by speaking of an adventure in the spirit. To make a real, a great
adventure of it, should not the man die?"

Meade now smiled with obvious tolerance. "But a man dead and buried in
the depths of the sea!"

"That would only be his body, and we were speaking of an adventure of
the spirit--of the soul. The man should experience every physical dread,
ever