he gods, stirring up the
implacable bitterness and hatred of winter, had gone down suddenly
in ruin and death. I remember well the evening of the change. I had
spent a tiring day in New York, working gradually up Broadway as
far as Twenty-third Street. Seen through the windows of the Jersey
City ferryboat, the prow-like configuration of lower Manhattan
seemed to be plunging stubbornly against the gale of sleet that was
tearing up from the Narrows. The hoarse blast of the ferry-whistle
was swept out of hearing, the panes resounded with millions of
impacts as the sleet, like thin iron rods, drove against them. An
ignoble impulse led me to join the scurrying stampede of commuters
towards the warmth and shelter of the waiting-room. There is
something personally hostile in a blizzard. In the earthquake at
San Francisco there was a giant playfulness in the power that shook
the brick front from our frame-house and revealed our intimate
privacies to a heedless mob. There was a feeling there, even at the
worst, when the slow shuddering rise of the earth changed to a
swift and soul-shattering subsidence, a feeling that one was yet in
the hands of God. But in a blizzard one apprehends an anger puny
and personal. There is no sublimity in defying it; one runs to the
waiting-room. And once there, nodding to Confield, who sat in a
corner nursing his cosmopolitan bag, pressing through the little
crowd about the news-stand, I found myself urging my body past a
man wearing a Derby hat and smoking a corn-cob pipe. I had a
momentary sense of gratification that even a seasoned seafarer like
Mr. Carville should feel no shame in taking shelter from the
inclement weather.

"Good evening, sir," he said imperturbably. "Homeward bound?"

"Sure," I said, putting down a cent and taking up the _Manhattan
Mail_, an evening journal of modest headlines. "I suppose you are
coming out, too?"

"Yes," he said, as we turned away, "I've come up from the ship. We
only got in this morning."

"You are late," I agreed. "Mrs. Carville said you might be in on
Saturday, and here it is Wednesday."

He gave me a quick glance.

"Oh! Did she tell you? Yes, we had several bad days after passing
Fastnet. The Western ocean is bad all over just now."

"I suppose you were sorry to leave the Mediterranean."

"It was Bremerhaven this time," he replied, striking a match. "Near
Hamburg, you know. They change us about now and again."

"What is your cargo?" I asked.