The more I considered what bits of information I had gleaned already, the more I disliked what lay before me. In the first blazing light of returned memory and knowledge, the first joy of meeting my sister, the hope of seeing home again, I had not distinguished very sharply between what was new to my bewildered condition and what was new indeed--new to the world as well as to me. But now a queer feeling of disproportion and unreality began to haunt me. As my head cleared, and such knowledge as I was now gathering began to help towards some sense of perspective and relation, even my immediate surroundings began to assume a sinister importance. Any change, to any person, is something of a shock, though sometimes a beneficial one. Changes too sudden, and too great, are hard to bear, for any one. But who can understand the peculiar horror of my unparalleled experience? Slowly the thing took shape in my mind. There was the first, irrevocable loss--my life! Thirty years--_the_ thirty years in which a man may really live--these were gone from me forever. I was coming back; strong to be sure; well enough in health; even, I hoped, with my old mental vigor--_but not to the same world_. Even the convict who survives thirty years imprisonment, may return at length to the same kind of world he had left so long. But I! It was as if I had slept, and, in my sleep, they had stolen my world. I threw off the thought, and started in to action. Here was a small world--the big steamer beneath me. I had already learned much about her. In the first place, she was not a "steamer," but a thing for which I had no name; her power was electric. "Oh, well," I thought, as I examined her machinery, "this I might have expected. Thirty years of such advances as we were making in 1910 were sure to develop electric motors of all sorts." The engineer was a pleasant, gentlemanly fellow, more than willing to talk about his profession and its marvellous advances. The ship was well manned, certainly; though the work required was far less than it used to be, the crew were about as numerous. I had made some acquaintances among the ship's officers--even among the men, who were astonishingly civil and well-mannered--but I had not at first noticed the many points of novelty in their attitude or in my surroundings. Now I paced the deck and considered the facts I had observed--the perfect ventilation of the vessel, the absence of the smell of cooking and of bilge water, the dainty convenience and appropriate beauty of all the fittings and furnishings, the smooth speed and steadiness of her.