I used
to wonder how Robinson and Friday did it. Since taking an ocean
trip I understand perfectly. I could do it myself now.
There certainly were a lot of things to think over. I do not
recall now exactly the moment when I ceased thinking them over.
A blank that was measurable by hours ensued. I woke from a dream
about a scrambled egg, in which I was the egg, to find that morning
had arrived and the ship was behaving naughtily.
Here was a ship almost as long as Main Street is back home, and
six stories high, with an English basement; with restaurants and
elevators and retail stores in her; and she was as broad as a
courthouse; and while lying at the dock she had appeared to be
about the most solid and dependable thing in creation--and yet in
just a few hours' time she had altered her whole nature, and was
rolling and sliding and charging and snorting like a warhorse. It
was astonishing in the extreme, and you would not have expected it
of her.
Even as I focused my mind on this phenomenon the doorway was
stealthily entered by a small man in a uniform that made him look
something like an Eton schoolboy and something like a waiter in a
dairy lunch. I was about to have the first illuminating experience
with an English manservant. This was my bedroom steward, by name
Lubly--William Lubly. My hat is off to William Lubly--to him and
to all his kind.
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