Up to a certain moment, all was still
New York, all was even Hoboken; then amidst the grotesque and monstrous
shows of the architecture on either shore March felt himself at sea and
on the way to Europe.
The fact was accented by the trouble people were already making with the
deck-steward about their steamer chairs, which they all wanted put in the
best places, and March, with a certain heart-ache, was involuntarily
verifying the instant in which he ceased to be of his native shores,
while still in full sight of them, when he suddenly reverted to them, and
as it were landed on them again in an incident that held him breathless.
A man, bareheaded, and with his arms flung wildly abroad, came flying
down the promenade from the steerage. "Capitan! Capitan! There is a
woman!" he shouted in nondescript English. "She must go hout! She must go
hout!" Some vital fact imparted itself to the ship's command and seemed
to penetrate to the ship's heart; she stopped, as if with a sort of
majestic relenting. A tug panted to her side, and lifted a ladder to it;
the bareheaded man, and a woman gripping a baby in her arms, sprawled
safely down its rungs to the deck of the tug, and the steamer moved
seaward again.
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