And all along her lines were lines of faces thick as dahlia-rows in June--globe-trotters; captains of industry; children; the Wall Street operator who plotted a stroke in Black-Sea wool, and to him time was money--I guess; commercial travellers, all-modern, spinning, prone, to whom the sea was an insignificant and conquered thing; engineers; capped enthusiastic Germans, going forth to conquer; publishers, ladies, lords, all the nondescript prosperous: and all ran there blithe, sublime, and long drawn-out; and they toyed with oranges, nuts; and they looked abroad to see the _Boodah_--ship's-surgeons and officers with them--jesting, as they munched or sucked. But the Captain who had often seen the _Boodah_, was log-writing in the chart-room... As her ensign of greeting ran up her main, her clocks struck twelve, the full noon--like an omen--come; she not then three miles from the _Boodah_. And simultaneously with the hoisting of that ensign, and the striking of those clocks, the old-worn wheels of Roman Civilization stopped dead. The _Boodah_ ran up the signal: “_Stop!_” Those who understood rubbed their eyes: it was like a vision at high noon; they could not believe. At that news the Captain, a handsome fair-bearded man, rushed like a madman from pilot-house to bridge, and the startled passengers saw his lighted eyes. He had some moments of indecision; then down he, too, rang that word: “_Stop_”. The engines left off; the _Kaiser's_ speed, as from heart-failure, gave in, died away. By this time all the passengers knew, in a state of tremor saw confused runnings to and fro, and face caught from face dismay; the voyage was spoiled, the record! What, then, had happened to the world? And now again the _Boodah_ is signalling: “_Let the Captain come_”. The Captain's hands were shaking; he could not speak, could only gasp to the first-officer: “By God, no; O, by God, no”. Then, as great quantities of black-grey reek, wheeling all convolved, were now enveloping the vessel, resting on the sea, reaching away in thinner fog even to the _Boodah_, and as, the day being calm, there was a difficulty in reading the flags, the Captain gasped: “Take the trumpet--ask them--But don't they pay for this...?” So out brayed the trumpeted query, and back the inexorable trumpeted answer: “_Let the Captain come_”. So, then, the _Kaiser_ would never reach Sandy Hook? To put out boats!--to parley!--while the earth span with quick-panting throbs, every second worth seven thousand pounds! “But don't they _pay_ for it...?” so, with a painful face of care, the Captain questioned space. But he would be mild and patient as a lamb that day! His order went forth: the ship forged ahead; a longboat, hurriedly lowered to starboard, was manned for the first-officer to put off in her, while every heart of the passengers thumped, every face an ecstasy of emotions. Then a wretched, long interval...