A Most Extraordinary Pursuit by Juliana Gray Read Free Book Online Page B

squealed lightly, and the automobile came to a delicate stop. William climbed stiffly from his seat and opened the door of the cab, charging the interior with dank marine air. No escape now. I took his outstretched hand and levered myself free to step on the dock, one unsteady foot after another, and I thought,
This is the last time these feet will tread on English boards,this is my last sight of England for many weeks
. Only twelve hours ago I was sitting in a pew of solid English heart of oak, and the choir sang “Abide with Me.”
    The water slapped restlessly against the harbor walls, and from somewhere nearby came a groan of metal, the immense strain of rivets and joints. A few greasy tendrils of mist swirled past the pilings and drifted into my lungs, laden with the sting of salt and of coal smoke, and as I stretched back my neck and looked up and up along the black steel hull before me, I imagined it was actually alive, a thoroughly modern monster waiting to gobble me up and bear me away.
    Something brushed my sleeve: Lord Silverton, stretching his arms, shedding sleepy warmth into the fog. “There she bobs,” he said. “The faithful
Isolde
.”

    I will confess to your ears alone: I have had a terror of steamships since I was a young girl. Why, I can’t say. Perhaps news of some great marine disaster appeared in the papers, and the story made a terrifying impression on me as my parents discussed it over the breakfast table, unaware that I could comprehend them. Such things happen, and we don’t even remember them. I do recall a painting that used to hang in the duke’s morning room in London, depicting a frigate as it climbed toward the crest of an impossibly massive wave, its decks nearly vertical, a plaything in the foamy hands of God. I was only five years old when I came to live under the duke’s roof, and used to play in that room when no one else was there.
    Now, I quite understand that a modern steamship is not a Napoleonic frigate, and I have studied the design andconstruction of a twin-screw propeller and the system of bulkheads that renders a vessel almost impervious to the dangers of moderate collision. Moreover, the Marconi wireless has made it possible for a ship in distress to communicate her emergency to a dozen waiting ears in an instant, thus improving the ordinary passenger’s chances for survival.
    But I simply cannot overcome, in my logic, the extreme fragility of a ship on the ocean. The vessels of today may be larger by many multiples than those of a century ago, built of steel instead of wood, propelled by machine instead of wind and sail, but to the ocean itself, this difference is beneath notice. Against the infinity of nature, we remain but grains of sand. It is folly—hubris—to imagine our machines can prevail against God’s will.
    Nevertheless, I had been ordered to take ship in search of the Duke of Olympia’s missing heir, so to the
Isolde
I repaired, disappearing like an ant into that massive steel hull, to be greeted by the respectful captain and shown to a stateroom by a white-clothed steward. The cabin itself was new and luxurious, having (as the duchess informed me) just benefited from a thorough refitting, and I fell asleep soon afterward on my brass-railed bed, not even noticing our grinding departure from England until I woke, some hours later, to the gray morning light in the porthole, and was promptly sick over a large portion of the expensive new carpet.

    If you have had the good fortune never to suffer the misery of seasickness, I congratulate you.
    You can then only guess my vexation at missing the entirety of the ship’s passage through the famously temperamental waters of the Bay of Biscay, and the debilitating sense of physical malaisethat accompanied my confinement to my cabin. Let me assist you. Imagine that your stomach has been replaced by a butter-churn, and your brain has been removed from its stem and