The boat begins to move in the Mersey. And the ship’s siren sounds shrilly. It is the summons to shipwreck drill. We assemble quickly in the lounge on the top deck, every one wearing a life-preserver. At a second call of the siren, we file out following the captain’s lead, to stand by our boats in which the crew are already clambering to their oars. So now we know how for the moment of disaster. The whole steamship waits for it. This is a weird voyage that we begin. Mine-sweepers out there ahead of us are cleaning up the seas. A Scandinavian boat has just been sowing mines all over the water. The _Baltic_, here beside us, poked her nose out yesterday, scented danger and returned to the river. We wait now in the Mersey twenty-four hours before the mysterious signal is given that it is the propitious moment for our boat to get away. We steal softly to sea under cover of a 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 is good that we are having rough weather. When the waves are tossing high, the periscopes may not find us. We are sixteen people who wander like disembodied spirits from the gay days of old through these great empty rooms that once rang with the joy of hundreds of tourists on their pleasure-jaunts over the world. There are no games. There is no dancing. There is no band. There are no steamerchairs on deck. At sundown we are closed in tight behind iron shutters. No one may so much as light a cigaret outside.