Page:Women Wanted.djvu/85

 dense fog and a white snow-storm. The sea-gulls are screaming shrilly above us like birds of prey. And we who look into each other's eyes are facing we know not whither, it may be America or the Farthest Country of all.

Three men pace the wind-swept captain's bridge, scanning the horizon, and there are always two clinging in the crow's nest in the icy gale. This boat is manned by a pedigreed crew. From the captain to the last cabin-boy, everybody has been torpedoed at least once. The Marconi operator never smiles. He sits at his instrument with a grey, drawn look about his young boyish mouth. He was on the Lusitania when she went down. He was the last man off the Laconia the other day. The wrinkled suit he's wearing is the one they picked him up in out of the sea.

For two days out, we have the little destroyers with us, and then we are left to our luck and the gun in front and the watching men aloft. The lifeboats are always swung out on their davits for the siren's sudden call. The doors of the upper deck stand open, waiting beside each a preparedness exhibit, boxes of biscuit, flasks of brandy, and a pile of blankets we are to seize as we run. We two women have filled the pockets of our steamer-coats with safety-pins, hairpins and a comb, first aid that no one remembers to bring when they pick you up from the open boat. My fellow traveller is huddling very close to her six-foot husband, to be tucked safely under his arm at the emergency moment. It