and eternal music of the wind and sea.

Shirley stood at the rail under the bridge of the ocean greyhound
that was carrying her back to America with all the speed of which
her mighty engines were capable. All day and all night, half naked
stokers, so grimed with oil and coal dust as to lose the slightest
semblance to human beings, feverishly shovelled coal, throwing it
rapidly and evenly over roaring furnaces kept at a fierce white
heat. The vast boilers, shaken by the titanic forces generating in
their cavern-like depths, sent streams of scalding, hissing steam
through a thousand valves, cylinders and pistons, turning wheels
and cranks as it distributed the tremendous power which was
driving the steel monster through the seas at the prodigious speed
of four hundred miles in the twenty-four hours. Like a pulsating
heart in some living thing, the mammoth engines throbbed and
panted, and the great vessel groaned and creaked as she rose and
fell to the heavy swell, and again lurched forward in obedience to
each fresh propulsion from her fast spinning screws. Out on deck,
volumes of dense black smoke were pouring from four gigantic smoke
stacks and spread out in the sky like some endless cinder path
leading back over the course the ship had taken.

They were four days out from port. Two days more and they would
sight Sandy Hook, and Shirley would know the worst. She had caught
the North German Lloyd boat at Cherbourg two days after receiving
the cablegram from New York. Mrs. Blake had insisted on coming
along in spite of her niece's protests. Shirley argued that she
had crossed alone when coming; she could go back the same way.
Besides, was not Mr. Ryder returning home on the same ship? He
would be company and protection both. But Mrs. Blake was bent on
making the voyage. She had not seen her sister for many years and,
moreover, this sudden return to America had upset her own plans.
She was a poor sailor, yet she loved the ocean and this was a good
excuse for a long trip. Shirley was too exhausted with worry to
offer further resistance and by great good luck the two women had
been able to secure at the last moment a cabin to themselves
amidships. Jefferson, less fortunate, was compelled, to his
disgust, to share a stateroom with another passenger, a fat German
brewer who was returning to Cincinnati, and who snored so loud at
night that even the thumping of the engines was completely drowned
by his eccentric nasal sounds