"heard" a loud-ticking clock stop suddenly in a quiet room, and then
have noticed the clock and the ticking noise, of which we seemed until
then quite unconscious. So in the same way the fact was suddenly
brought home to all in the ship that the engines--that part of the
ship that drove us through the sea--had stopped dead. But the stopping
of the engines gave us no information: we had to make our own
calculations as to why we had stopped. Like a flash it came to me: "We
have dropped a propeller blade: when this happens the engines always
race away until they are controlled, and this accounts for the extra
heave they gave"; not a very logical conclusion when considered now,
for the engines should have continued to heave all the time until we
stopped, but it was at the time a sufficiently tenable hypothesis to
hold. Acting on it, I jumped out of bed, slipped on a dressing-gown
over pyjamas, put on shoes, and went out of my cabin into the hall
near the saloon. Here was a steward leaning against the staircase,
probably waiting until those in the smoke-room above had gone to bed
and he could put out the lights. I said, "Why have we stopped?" "I
don't know, sir," he replied, "but I don't suppose it is anything
much." "Well," I said, "I am going on deck to see what it is," and
started towards the stairs. He smiled indulgently at me as I passed
him, and said, "All right, sir, but it is mighty cold up there." I am
sure at that time he thought I was rather foolish to go up with so
little reason, and I must confess I felt rather absurd for not
remaining in the cabin: it seemed like making a needless fuss to walk
about the ship in a dressing-gown. But it was my first trip across the
sea; I had enjoyed every minute of it and was keenly alive to note
every new experience; and certainly to stop in the middle of the sea
with a propeller dropped seemed sufficient reason for going on deck.
And yet the steward, with his fatherly smile, and the fact that no one
else was about the passages or going upstairs to reconnoitre, made me