feel guilty in an undefined way of breaking some code of a ship's
régime--an Englishman's fear of being thought "unusual," perhaps!

I climbed the three flights of stairs, opened the vestibule door
leading to the top deck, and stepped out into an atmosphere that cut
me, clad as I was, like a knife. Walking to the starboard side, I
peered over and saw the sea many feet below, calm and black; forward,
the deserted deck stretching away to the first-class quarters and the
captain's bridge; and behind, the steerage quarters and the stern
bridge; nothing more: no iceberg on either side or astern as far as we
could see in the darkness. There were two or three men on deck, and
with one--the Scotch engineer who played hymns in the saloon--I
compared notes of our experiences. He had just begun to undress when
the engines stopped and had come up at once, so that he was fairly
well-clad; none of us could see anything, and all being quiet and
still, the Scotchman and I went down to the next deck. Through the
windows of the smoking-room we saw a game of cards going on, with
several onlookers, and went in to enquire if they knew more than we
did. They had apparently felt rather more of the heaving motion, but
so far as I remember, none of them had gone out on deck to make any
enquiries, even when one of them had seen through the windows an
iceberg go by towering above the decks. He had called their attention
to it, and they all watched it disappear, but had then at once resumed
the game. We asked them the height of the berg and some said one
hundred feet, others, sixty feet; one of the onlookers--a motor
engineer travelling to America with a model carburetter (he had filled
in his declaration form near me in the afternoon and had questioned
the library steward how he should declare his patent)--said, "Well, I
am accustomed to estimating distances and I put it at between eighty
and ninety feet." We accepted his estimate and made guesses as to what