composer so beautifully expressed. And the sister's sweet withered face
was reminiscent of a missal, one bright with colour, and still shining
faintly. A missal in a library of modern books!

On deck a fine rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a
phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving
the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating
the sinister blackness of the night. We were, apparently, a beacon in
that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters were lurking.

There were on board other elements which in the normal times gone by
would have seemed disquieting enough. The evening after we had left New
York, while we were still off the coast of Long Island, I saw on the poop
a crowd of steerage passengers listening intently to harangues by
speakers addressing them from the top of a pile of life rafts.
Armenians, I was told, on their way to fight the Turks, all recruited in
America by one frenzied woman who had seen her child cut in two by a
German officer. Twilight was gathering as I joined the group, the sea
was silvered by the light of an August moon floating serenely between
swaying stays. The orator's passionate words and gestures evoked wild
responses from his hearers, whom the drag of an ancient hatred had
snatched from the peaceful asylum of the west. This smiling, happy folk,
which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now
transformed, atavistic--all save one, a student, who stared wistfully
through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened,
when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place to
a singer. He had been a bootblack in America. Now he had become a bard.
His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour of that
age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now determined to
avenge. Their conventional costumes were proof that we had harboured