d over a larger area if the
_Titan_ had full headway, and the brunt of the damage would be borne by
the other. Second, that if the _Titan_ was the aggressor she would
certainly destroy the other craft, even at half-speed, and perhaps
damage her own bows; while at full speed, she would cut her in two with
no more damage to herself than a paintbrush could remedy. In either
case, as the lesser of two evils, it was best that the smaller hull
should suffer. A third reason was that, at full speed, she could be more
easily steered out of danger, and a fourth, that in case of an end-on
collision with an iceberg--the only thing afloat that she could not
conquer--her bows would be crushed in but a few feet further at full
than at half speed, and at the most three compartments would be
flooded--which would not matter with six more to spare.

So, it was confidently expected that when her engines had limbered
themselves, the steamship _Titan_ would land her passengers three
thousand miles away with the promptitude and regularity of a railway
train. She had beaten all records on her maiden voyage, but, up to the
third return trip, had not lowered the time between Sandy Hook and
Daunt's Rock to the five-day limit; and it was unofficially rumored
among the two thousand passengers who had embarked at New York that an
effort would now be made to do so.

CHAPTER II

Eight tugs dragged the great mass to midstream and pointed her nose down
the river; then the pilot on the bridge spoke a word or two; the first
officer blew a short blast on the whistle and turned a lever; the tugs
gathered in their lines and drew off; down in the bowels of the ship
three small engines were started, opening the throttles of three large
ones; three propellers began to revolve; and the mammoth, with a
vibratory tremble running through her great frame, moved slowly to sea.

East of Sandy Hook the pilot was dropped and the real voyage begun.
Fifty feet below her deck, in an inferno of noise, and heat, and light,
and shadow, coal-passers wheeled the picked fuel from the bunkers to the
fire-hold, where half-naked stokers, with faces like those of tortured
fiends, tossed it into the eighty white-hot mouths of the furnaces. In
the engine-room, oilers passed to and fro, in and out of the plunging,
twisting, glistening steel, with oil-cans and waste, overseen by the
watchful staff on duty, who listened with strained hearing for a false
note in the confused jumble