After dinner there was a concert. It was a dreary affair. When it was over, I started to go to bed but, it being warm and fresh, I stepped outside. The night was beautiful. There were no fellow passengers on the promenade. All had retired. The sky was magnificent for stars--Orion, the Pleiades, the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. I saw one star, off to my right as I stood at the prow under the bridge, which, owing to the soft, velvety darkness, cast a faint silvery glow on the water--just a trace. Think of it! One lone, silvery star over the great dark sea doing this. I stood at the prow and watched the boat speed on. I threw back my head and drank in the salt wind. I looked and listened. England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany--these were all coming to me mile by mile. As I stood there a bell over me struck eight times. Another farther off sounded the same number. Then a voice at the prow called, “All’s well,” and another aloft on that little eyrie called the crow’s nest, echoed it. “All’s well.” The second voice was weak and quavering. Something came up in my throat--a quick unbidden lump of emotion. Was it an echo of old journeys and old seas when life was not safe? When Columbus sailed into the unknown? And now this vast ship, eight hundred and eighty-two feet long, eighty-eight feet beam, with huge pits of engines and furnaces and polite, veneered first-cabin decks and passengers! CHAPTER II MISS X. It was ten o’clock the next morning when I arose and looked at my watch. I thought it might be eight-thirty, or seven. The day was slightly gray with spray flying. There was a strong wind. The sea was really a boisterous thing, thrashing and heaving in hills and hollows. I was thinking of Kipling’s “White Horses” for a while. There were several things about this great ship which were unique. It was a beautiful thing all told--its long cherry-wood, paneled halls in the first-class section, its heavy porcelain baths, its dainty staterooms fitted with lamps, bureaus, writing-desks, washstands, closets and the like. I liked the idea of dressing for dinner and seeing everything quite stately and formal. The little be-buttoned call-boys in their tight-fitting blue suits amused me. And the bugler who bugled for dinner! That was a most musical sound he made, trilling in the various quarters gaily, as much as to say, “This is a very joyous event, ladies and gentlemen; we are all happy; come, come; it is a delightful feast.” I saw him one day in the lobby of C deck, his legs spread far apart, the bugle to his lips, no evidence of the rolling ship in his erectness, bugling heartily. It was like something out of an old medieval court or a play. Very nice and worth while.