Lower Decks Quotes

Sure deck your lower limbs in pants; Yours are the limbs, my sweeting. You look divine as you advance– Have you seen yourself retreating?

I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South, No wraith, but utterly—as still more alone The Southern Cross takes night And lifts her girdles from her, one by one— High, cool, wide from the slowly smoldering fire Of lower heavens,— vaporous scars! Eve! Magdalene! or Mary, you? Whatever call—falls vainly on the wave. O simian Venus, homeless Eve, Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever; Finally to answer all within one grave! And this long wake of phosphor, iridescent Furrow of all our travel—trailed derision! Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spell Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell. I wanted you . . . The embers of the Cross Climbed by aslant and huddling aromatically. It is blood to remember; it is fire To stammer back . . . It is God—your namelessness. And the wash— All night the water combed you with black Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished. Water rattled that stinging coil, your Rehearsed hair—docile, alas, from many arms. Yes, Eve—wraith of my unloved seed! The Cross, a phantom, buckled—dropped below the dawn. Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds. Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

No wife ever cleared a man’s character, not without a great deal of trouble on the lower decks. So

We must have received our share of startled looks from the crew and other passengers—this seven-member family emerging from their third-class lower deck and climbing into a waiting chauffeur-driven limousine.

The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, serious trouble with the mainmast-- unaccountable headwinds by night-- and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizentop, teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. 'Try a piece of this, old cock,' he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. 'It might put a little heart into you.' The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again. Some minutes later he felt a touch upon his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon as the drum had beat the retreat, the sloth would meet him, hurrying toward the door on its uneven legs: it was given its own bowl, and it would grip it with its claws, lowering its round face into it and pursing its lips to drink (its tongue was too short to lap). Sometimes it went to sleep in this position, bowed over the emptiness. 'In this bucket,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin, 'in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London, and Paris combined: these animalculae-- what is the matter with the sloth?' It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep. Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.

Trust me. I’ve seen it in London and I’ve seen it with shipwreck. Death by scurvy is worse. It would be better if the Thing took us all tonight. And with that we went below to the flame-flickering Darkness of the lower deck and to a cold almost the equal of the Dante-esque Ninth Circle Arctic Night without.

Ellen turned away from them impatiently, and went to the rail once again. Her mother’s friends were all the same—affected and insincere, their conversation a continual mockery of people and things. The poor family on the lower deck had no claim upon their sympathy.

The old intergenerational give-and-take of the country-that-used-to-be, when everyone knew his role and took the rules dead seriously, the acculturating back-and-forth that all of us here grew up with, the ritual post-immigrant struggle for success turning pathological in, of all places, the gentleman farmer's castle of our superordinary Swede (a character). A guy stacked like a deck of cards for things to unfold entirely differently. In no way prepared for what is going to hit him. How could he, with all his carefully calibrated goodness, have known that the stakes of living obediently were so high? Obedience is embraced to lower the stakes. A beautiful wife. A beautiful house. Runs his business like a charm... This is how successful people live. They're good citizens. They feel lucky. They feel grateful. God is smiling down on them. There are problems, they adjust. And then everything changes and it becomes impossible. Nothing is smiling down on anybody. And who can adjust then? Here is someone not set up for life's working out poorly, let alone for the impossible. ... the tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy -- that is every man's tragedy.

On the Titanic, there were 20 lifeboats. To save all the passengers, the ship needed twice as many. But with all the confusion on board, a number of the lifeboats were not even full when they left the ship. Many third-class passengers did not have a chance to get into any of the lifeboats because they were on the lower decks and didn’t know where to go.

servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables.  The heat was insufferable and I thought with joy of the morrow, of the deck of the steamer, the freshening breeze, the sense of getting out to sea.  I was even glad of what I had learned in the afternoon at the office of the company—that at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard of speed had been put

weather forecast that it was going to be rough and had taken a pill. Miss Abbott was tramping up and down the narrow lower deck, having, perhaps instinctively, hit upon that part of the ship which after the first few hours is deserted by almost everyone. In the plan shown to passengers it was called the promenade deck. It was Jemima who first noticed the break in the weather. A kind of thin warmth fell across the page of her book;

The keel scraped the sharp rocks. Shrieking as if in pain, the keel split open and the sea swarmed over the decks, flooding into the lower part of the boat, bringing it down, the craft pitching and bobbing even as it sank into the hurtling depths.

Lucy has been given a whole room on deck to herself, almost a nice room compared with the rest of this place. C. says that’s because she’s a girl. I tried to make him see what Alberta says, that all that sort of thing is really lowering girls but he was too dense.

EVERYTHING SMELLED LIKE POISON. Two days after leaving Venice, Hazel still couldn’t get the noxious scent of eau de cow monster out of her nose. The seasickness didn’t help. The Argo II sailed down the Adriatic, a beautiful glittering expanse of blue; but Hazel couldn’t appreciate it, thanks to the constant rolling of the ship. Above deck, she tried to keep her eyes fixed on the horizon—the white cliffs that always seemed just a mile or so to the east. What country was that, Croatia? She wasn’t sure. She just wished she were on solid ground again. The thing that nauseated her most was the weasel. Last night, Hecate’s pet Gale had appeared in her cabin. Hazel woke from a nightmare, thinking, What is that smell? She found a furry rodent propped on her chest, staring at her with its beady black eyes. Nothing like waking up screaming, kicking off your covers, and dancing around your cabin while a weasel scampers between your feet, screeching and farting. Her friends rushed to her room to see if she was okay. The weasel was difficult to explain. Hazel could tell that Leo was trying hard not to make a joke. In the morning, once the excitement died down, Hazel decided to visit Coach Hedge, since he could talk to animals. She’d found his cabin door ajar and heard the coach inside, talking as if he were on the phone with someone—except they had no phones on board. Maybe he was sending a magical Iris-message? Hazel had heard that the Greeks used those a lot. “Sure, hon,” Hedge was saying. “Yeah, I know, baby. No, it’s great news, but—” His voice broke with emotion. Hazel suddenly felt horrible for eavesdropping. She would’ve backed away, but Gale squeaked at her heels. Hazel knocked on the coach’s door. Hedge poked his head out, scowling as usual, but his eyes were red. “What?” he growled. “Um…sorry,” Hazel said. “Are you okay?” The coach snorted and opened his door wide. “Kinda question is that?” There was no one else in the room. “I—” Hazel tried to remember why she was there. “I wondered if you could talk to my weasel.” The coach’s eyes narrowed. He lowered his voice. “Are we speaking in code? Is there an intruder aboard?” “Well, sort of.” Gale peeked out from behind Hazel’s feet and started chattering. The coach looked offended. He chattered back at the weasel. They had what sounded like a very intense argument. “What did she say?” Hazel asked. “A lot of rude things,” grumbled the satyr. “The gist of it: she’s here to see how it goes.” “How what goes?” Coach Hedge stomped his hoof. “How am I supposed to know? She’s a polecat! They never give a straight answer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got, uh, stuff…” He closed the door in her face. After breakfast, Hazel stood at the port rail, trying to settle her stomach. Next to her, Gale ran up and down the railing, passing gas; but the strong wind off the Adriatic helped whisk it away. Hazel

Jukes thought, “This is no joke.” While he was exchanging explanatory yells with his captain, a sudden lowering of the darkness came upon the night, falling before their vision like something palpable. It was as if the masked lights of the world had been turned down. Jukes was uncritically glad to have his captain at hand. It relieved him as though that man had, by simply coming on deck, taken most of the gale’s weight upon his shoulders. Such is the prestige, the privilege, and the burden of command.

The Radaune pounded along against the muddy tide that knew but one direction, deftly avoiding sandbanks with the aid of constantly changing pilots. To right and left, beyond the dikes, the same flat landscape with occasional hills, already harvested. Hedges, sunken lanes, a hollow basin with broom, a level plain between the scattered farms, just made for cavalry attacks, for a division of uhlans to wheel in from the left onto the sand table, for hedge-vaulting hussars, for the dreams of young cavalry officers, for battles long past and battles yet to come, for an oil painting: tartars leaning forward, dragoons rearing up, Brethren of the Sword falling, grandmasters staining their noble robes, not a button missing from their cuirasses, save for one, struck down by the Duke of Mazowsze, and horses, no circus has horses so white, nervous, covered with tassels, sinews rendered with precision, nostrils flaring, crimson, snorting small clouds impaled by lowered lances decked with pennants, and parting the heavens, the sunset’s red glow, the sabers, and there, in the background—for every painting has a background—clinging tightly to the horizon, with smoke rising peacefully, a small village between the hind legs of the black stallion, crouching cottages, moss-covered, thatched, and inside the cottages, held in readiness, the pretty tanks, dreaming of days to come when they too would be allowed to enter the picture, to come out onto the plain beyond the Vistula’s dikes, like slender colts among the heavy cavalry.

we saw something swimming in the water, and pulled toward it, thinking it a coyote; but we soon recognized a large grizzly bear, swimming directly across the channel. Not having any weapon, we hurriedly pulled for the schooner, calling out, as we neared it, “A bear! a bear!” It so happened that Major Miller was on deck, washing his face and hands. He ran rapidly to the bow of the vessel, took the musket from the hands of the sentinel, and fired at the bear, as he passed but a short distance ahead of the schooner. The bear rose, made a growl or howl, but continued his course. As we scrambled up the port-aide to get our guns, the mate, with a crew, happened to have a boat on the starboard-aide, and, armed only with a hatchet, they pulled up alongside the bear, and the mate struck him in the head with the hatchet. The bear turned, tried to get into the boat, but the mate struck his claws with repeated blows, and made him let go. After several passes with him, the mate actually killed the bear, got a rope round him, and towed him alongside the schooner, where he was hoisted on deck. The carcass weighed over six hundred pounds. It was found that Major Miller’s shot had struck the bear in the lower jaw, and thus disabled him. Had it not been for this, the bear would certainly have upset the boat and drowned all in it. As it was, however, his meat served us a good turn in our trip up to Stockton.

High above the visible cloud deck, at about 70 kilometers altitude, there is a continuous haze of small particles. At 60 kilometers, we plunge into the clouds, and find ourselves surrounded by droplets of concentrated sulfuric acid. As we go deeper, the could particles tend to get bigger. The pungent gas, sulfur dioxide, SO2, is present in trace amounts in the lower atmosphere. It is circulated up above the clouds, broken down by ultraviolet light from the Sun and recombined with water there to form sulfuric acid- which condenses into droplets, settles, and at lower altitudes is broken down by heat into SO2 and water again, completing the cycle. It is always raining sulfuric acid on Venus, all over the planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface. p79

And, before long, he'd got fat and his stall was decked out with chrome and plate glass, and glittering automats had been installed. Getting hog-fat on pfennigs, getting bossy though only a few months before he'd been forced to obsequiously lower the price of a lemonade by two pfennigs, meanwhile whispering anxiously, 'But don't tell anyone else.' No feelings would come to him as he went rocking on in No. 11 through the old town, the new town, past allotment gardens and gravel pits to Blessenfeld. He had heard the names of the stops four thousand times: Boisserée Street, North Park, Bleisscher Station, Inner Ring. They sounded strange, the names, as if out of dreams which others had dreamed and vainly tried to let him share; they sounded like calls for help in a heavy fog, while the almost empty streetcar went on toward the end of the line in the afternoon summer sun.

Ahoy!” a seaman called out. “The English frigate Polaris, ten days out from Antigua, bound for Portsmouth.” “Ahoy, yerself!” It was O’Shea’s rough brogue. She’d never heard sweeter music. “This be the clipper Sophia, of no particular country at the moment. Seven days out from Tortola, bound for…well, bound for here. Captain requests permission to board.” Gray. It had to be Gray. The officers of the Polaris exchanged wary looks. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake.” Sophia pushed forward to the ship’s rail and cupped her hands around her mouth, calling, “Permission to board granted!” A cheer rose up from the other ship’s deck. “It’s her, all right!” a voice called. Stubb’s, Sophia thought. Oh, but she hardly cared who was on the other deck. She cared only for the strong figure swinging across the watery divide as the two ships came abreast. Turning back toward the center of the ship, she pushed her way through the sweaty throng of sailors, desperate to get to him. Her foot caught on a rope, and she tripped- But it didn’t matter. Gray was there to catch her. And he was still wearing those sea-weathered, fire-scarred boots. No doubt for sentimental reasons. “Steady there,” he murmured, catching her by the elbows. She looked up to meet his beautiful blue-green eyes. “I have you.” “Oh, Gray.” She launched herself into his arms, clinging to his neck as he laughed and spun her around. “You’re here.” “I’m here.” And he was. Every strong, solid, handsome inch of him. Sophia buried her face in his throat, breathing in his scent. Lord, how she’d missed him. She pulled away, bracing her hands on his shoulders to study his face. “I can’t believe you came after me.” “I can’t believe you actually left.” He lowered her to the deck, and her hands slid to his arms. “I thought you were bluffing with that bit. I’d have never allowed you to go.

Let me have a bucket, Rynelf,” said Drinian. It was handed him and he lowered it and up it came again. The water shone in it like glass. “Perhaps your Majesty would like to taste it first,” said Drinian to Caspian. The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but everything about him seemed to be brighter. “Yes,” he said, “it is sweet. That’s real water, that. I’m not sure that it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen--if I’d known about it till now.” “What do you mean?” asked Edmund. “It--it’s like light more than anything else,” said Caspian. “That is what it is,” said Reepicheep. “Drinkable light. We must be very near the end of the world now.” There was a moment’s silence and then Lucy knelt down on the deck and drank from the bucket. “It’s the loveliest thing I have ever tasted,” she said with a kind of gasp. “But oh--it’s strong. We shan’t need to eat anything now.

Standing at the prow of the pitching deck of the trawler, unscrewing the top of his flask, Frank Fontaine asked himself: Am I after fish—or a wild goose? Sure, he always dreamed about a big-paying long con, but this one was threatening to go on indefinitely—and though it was afternoon and supposedly summer, it was cold as a son of a bitch out here. Made a witch’s tit seem like a hot toddy. Was it worth giving up Gorland—becoming Fontaine? A city under the sea. It was becoming an obsession. Fontaine looked up at the streaming charcoal-colored clouds, wondered if it was going to storm again. Just being on this damn tub was too much like work. Talking to the men who picked up the fish for Rapture’s food supply, Fontaine had confirmed that Ryan had indeed built some gigantic underwater habitat, a kind of free-market utopia—and Fontaine knew what happened with utopias. Look at the Soviets—all those fine words about the proletariat had turned into gulags and breadlines. But a “utopia” was pure opportunity for a man like him. When this undersea utopia fell apart, he’d be there, with a whole society to feast on. Long as he didn’t step too hard on Ryan’s toes, he could build up an organization, get away with a pile of loot. But he had to get down to Rapture first … The trawler lurched, and so did Fontaine’s stomach. A small craft was being lowered over the side of the platform ship—a thirty-foot gig. Men descended

She didn’t turn around. She put her foot on the bottom step, then felt herself being whirled around. She shrieked as her world tilted. Richard’s shoulder in her stomach robbed her of any air and her forehead bumping against his lower back made her slightly sick. It was Archie’s hoisting trick all over again, only Richard seemed to be more adept at taking circular stairs. She thought she just might barf. “Put me down, you jerk!” she gasped. He ignored her. She saw, grudgingly, how he might have become a little annoyed by the practice. He slammed the bedroom door behind them and dumped her to her feet. He took her by the arms and held her immobile. She had the feeling that he wanted to shake her. His hands were trembling. “I am finished with your silence,” he bellowed. “Damn you, woman, speak!” “Fine,” she snapped, jerking away from him. “I’ve had a bellyful of you, too, buddy. I’m not your servant, I’m not your squire, and I’m not your damned horse to just take orders and swallow them. I’m sick to death of being treated like a second-class citizen. I’m just as smart as you are and I’ve had it with you treating me like I’m not!” He blinked. “Of course you aren’t. You’re a wo—” “Don’t say it,” she said, through gritted teeth. “If you tell me one more time that I’m inferior to you because I’m a woman, I’m going to haul off and deck you!” “Deck me?” he echoed. “Take my fist and slam it into your face!” Richard took a step back and folded his arms over his chest. “You’re powerfully outspoken. Are all the maids so in your time?

That man,” she announced huffily, referring to their host, “can’t put two words together without losing his meaning!” Obviously she’d expected better of the quality during the time she was allowed to mix with them. “He’s afraid of us, I think,” Elizabeth replied, climbing out of bed. “Do you know the time? He desired me to accompany him fishing this morning at seven.” “Half past ten,” Berta replied, opening drawers and turning toward Elizabeth for her decision as to which gown to wear. “He waited until a few minutes ago, then went of without you. He was carrying two poles. Said you could join him when you arose.” “In that case, I think I’ll wear the pink muslin,” she decided with a mischievous smile. The Earl of Marchman could scarcely believe his eyes when he finally saw his intended making her way toward him. Decked out in a frothy pink gown with an equally frothy pink parasol and a delicate pink bonnet, she came tripping across the bank. Amazed at the vagaries of the female mind, he quickly turned his attention back to the grandfather trout he’d been trying to catch for five years. Ever so gently he jiggled his pole, trying to entice or else annoy the wily old fish into taking his fly. The giant fish swam around his hook as if he knew it might be a trick and then he suddenly charged it, nearly jerking the pole out of John’s hands. The fish hurtled out of the water, breaking the surface in a tremendous, thrilling arch at the same moment John’s intended bride deliberately chose to let out a piercing shriek: “Snake!” Startled, John jerked his head in her direction and saw her charging at him as if Lucifer himself was on her heels, screaming, “Snake! Snake! Snnnaaaake!” And in that instant his connection was broken; he let his line go slack, and the fish dislodged the hook, exactly as Elizabeth had hoped. “I saw a snake,” she lied, panting and stopping just short of the arms he’d stretched out to catch her-or strangle her, Elizabeth thought, smothering a smile. She stole a quick searching glance at the water, hoping for a glimpse of the magnificent trout he’d nearly caught, her hands itching to hold the pole and try her own luck. Lord Marchman’s disgruntled question snapped her attention back to him. “Would you like to fish, or would you rather sit and watch for a bit, until you recover from your flight from the serpent?” Elizabeth looked around in feigned shock. “Goodness, sir, I don’t fish!” “Do you sit?” he asked with what might have been sarcasm. Elizabeth lowered her lashes to hide her smile at the mounting impatience in his voice. “Of course I sit,” she proudly told him. “Sitting is an excessively ladylike occupation, but fishing, in my opinion, is not. I shall adore watching you do it, however.” For the next two hours she sat on the boulder beside him, complaining about its hardness, the brightness of the sun and the dampness of the air, and when she ran out of matters to complain about she proceeded to completely spoil his morning by chattering his ears off about every inane topic she could think of while occasionally tossing rocks into the stream to scare off his fish.

Noah and the Flood 9These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. 10And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. 13And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, [3] for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. [4] Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, [5] its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. 16Make a roof [6] for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. 18But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. 20Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. 21Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” 22Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

The men standing on deck now were not surprised by the order to abandon ship. They had been called up and assembled for it. There were only about twenty-five Terrors present this morning; the rest were at Terror Camp two miles south of Victory Point or sledging materials to the camp or out hunting or reconnoitering near Terror Camp. An equal number of Erebuses waited below on the ice, standing near sledges and piles of gear where the Erebus gear-and-supply tents had been pitched since the first of April when that ship had been abandoned. Crozier watched his men file down the ice ramp, leaving the ship forever. Finally only he and Little were left standing on the canted deck. The fifty-some men on the ice below looked up at them with eyes almost made invisible under low-pulled Welsh wigs and above wool comforters, all squinting in the cold morning light. “Go ahead, Edward,” Crozier said softly. “Over the side with you.” The lieutenant saluted, lifted his heavy pack of personal possessions, and went down first the ladder and then the ice ramp to join the men below. Crozier looked around. The thin April sunlight illuminated a world of tortured ice, looming pressure ridges, countless seracs, and blowing snow. Tugging the bill of his cap lower and squinting toward the east, he tried to record his feelings at the moment. Abandoning ship was the lowest point in any captain’s life. It was an admission of total failure. It was, in most cases, the end of a long Naval career. To most captains, many of Francis Crozier’s personal acquaintance, it was a blow from which they would never recover. Crozier felt none of that despair. Not yet. More important to him at the moment was the blue flame of determination that still burned small but hot in his breast—I will live.

In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody could understand what he was saying. “He’ll blurt the whole thing out if we don’t shut him up,” cried Drinian. To prevent this he rushed to the side and lowered a rope himself, shouting to the sailors, “All right, all right. Back to your places. I hope I can heave a mouse up without help.” And as Reepicheep began climbing up the rope--not very nimbly because his wet fur made him heavy--Drinian leaned over and whispered to him, “Don’t tell. Not a word.” But when the dripping Mouse had reached the deck it turned out not to be at all interested in the Sea People. “Sweet!” he cheeped. “Sweet, sweet!” “What are you talking about?” asked Drinian crossly. “And you needn’t shake yourself all over me, either.” “I tell you the water’s sweet,” said the Mouse. “Sweet, fresh. It isn’t salt.” For a moment no one quite took in the importance of this. But then Reepicheep once more repeated the old prophecy: “Where the waves grow sweet, Doubt not, Reepicheep, There is the utter East.” Then at last everyone understood. “Let me have a bucket, Rynelf,” said Drinian. It was handed him and he lowered it and up it came again. The water shone in it like glass. “Perhaps your Majesty would like to taste it first,” said Drinian to Caspian. The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but everything about him seemed to be brighter. “Yes,” he said, “it is sweet. That’s real water, that. I’m not sure that it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen--if I’d known about it till now.

In the very midst of this panic came the news that the steamer Central America, formerly the George Law, with six hundred passengers and about sixteen hundred thousand dollars of treasure, coming from Aspinwall, had foundered at sea, off the coast of Georgia, and that about sixty of the passengers had been providentially picked up by a Swedish bark, and brought into Savannah. The absolute loss of this treasure went to swell the confusion and panic of the day. A few days after, I was standing in the vestibule of the Metropolitan Hotel, and heard the captain of the Swedish bark tell his singular story of the rescue of these passengers. He was a short, sailor-like-looking man, with a strong German or Swedish accent. He said that he was sailing from some port in Honduras for Sweden, running down the Gulf Stream off Savannah. The weather had been heavy for some days, and, about nightfall, as he paced his deck, he observed a man-of-war hawk circle about his vessel, gradually lowering, until the bird was as it were aiming at him. He jerked out a belaying pin, struck at the bird, missed it, when the hawk again rose high in the air, and a second time began to descend, contract his circle, and make at him again. The second time he hit the bird, and struck it to the deck. . . . This strange fact made him uneasy, and he thought it betokened danger; he went to the binnacle, saw the course he was steering, and without any particular reason he ordered the steersman to alter the course one point to the east. After this it became quite dark, and he continued to promenade the deck, and had settled into a drowsy state, when as in a dream he thought he heard voices all round his ship. Waking up, he ran to the side of the ship, saw something struggling in the water, and heard clearly cries for help. Instantly heaving his ship to, and lowering all his boats, he managed to pick up sixty or more persons who were floating about on skylights, doors, spare, and whatever fragments remained of the Central America. Had he not changed the course of his vessel by reason of the mysterious conduct of that man-of-war hawk, not a soul would probably have survived the night.

The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till the lighter, slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out between almost invisible headlands into the still deeper darkness of the gulf. For a time the lantern on the jetty shone after them. The wind failed, then fanned up again, but so faintly that the big, half-decked boat slipped along with no more noise than if she had been suspended in the air. ‘We are out in the gulf now,’ said the calm voice of Nostromo. A moment after he added, ‘Señor Mitchell has lowered the light.’ ‘Yes,’ said Decoud; ‘nobody can find us now.’ A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat. The sea in the gulf was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo, after striking a couple of matches to get a glimpse of the boat-compass he had with him in the lighter, steered by the feel of the wind on his cheek. It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysteriousness of the great waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been crushed by the weight of that dense night. The Placido was sleeping profoundly under its black ponho. The main thing now for success was to get away from the coast and gain the middle of the gulf before day broke. The Isabels were somewhere at hand. ‘On your left as you look forward, señor,’ said Nostromo suddenly. When his voice ceased, the enormous stillness, without light or sound, seemed to affect Decoud’s senses like a powerful drug. He didn’t even know at times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man lost in slumber, he heard nothing, he saw nothing. Even his hand held before his face did not exist for his eyes. The change from the agitation, the passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of the shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, shuddered a bit, though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had the strangest sensation of his soul having just returned into his body from the circumambient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the mountains, and the rocks were as if they had not been.

Carolina walked over to the private deck and turned on the Jacuzzi, the bubbles starting to bounce in the water. Enrique followed her and brushed his hand through the water. "That looks nice, but I don't have a swimsuit." "Neither do I," she said with a smile. She held his gaze as her sundress fell to her toes. She was standing there in nothing but the new bra and panties and heels he'd purchased at the store. The yellow lace barely covered her nipples, and the thong accentuated her perfect ass. Enrique wanted to fuck her against the hot tub until she screamed his name. But again, he reminded himself that he needed to go slow. "You sure? I can run down to the gift shop and buy us swimsuits." She shook her head. "No, Enrique. I just don't want to hold back anymore, I want you." She unhooked her bra and took off her panties, revealing dark curls between her legs. The sight of this beautiful naked woman caused his cock to spring to attention. She carefully slipped out of her shoes, stepped into the tub, and sat down. He'd assumed she would be shy, but apparently that girl was gone. Well then! Enrique stripped down, his cock at full attention. Her mouth opened at the sight of his naked body. He grinned and then slipped into the bubbles and sat next to her. Enrique was about to kiss her when she straddled his thighs. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. She kissed him. "I'm sure." "Carolina... you're so beautiful." He kissed her neck, and she tossed back her hair. His cock was pressed up against her soft belly. He so desperately wanted to be inside of her. Her hands rubbed all over his body, and she hesitantly touched his throbbing cock underwater. Her delicate fingers felt incredible with the current from the jets. Her nipples were glistening from the water, and he sucked on one. She moaned as he touched her pussy, sliding a finger inside of her while thumbing her clit. God, she was tight. "Enrique. That feels so good." He smirked. "You haven't seen anything yet." He lifted her to sit on the edge of the tub, spreading her legs as he knelt on the seat inside. She shook her head and closed her legs. "Oh, I don't know if I'll like that." He laughed. "Yeah, you will." She bit her lower lip. "Do you like doing it?" "Babe, I've been dying to eat your pussy since I met you." Her jaw dropped and her cheeks seemed redder, but maybe that was from the heat of the spa. "Enrique! That mouth!" He grinned. "My dirty mouth speaks the truth. Now spread your legs and relax." She cautiously opened her legs.

He adopted his standard mocking approach. “Having trouble getting out of the pool, Lily? There’s a ladder on the side for the old ladies who come and do aqua aerobics.” Everything inside her stilled. That condescending wretch. She felt him come closer, and was careful not to stir an inch, not even a hair. “You should get out of the pool and take a long hot shower. It’ll make you feel better,” he suggested, not ungently. His brow furrowed with worry. She ignored the thread of concern in his voice and concentrated on not moving too suddenly. Slowly, as if in unbearable agony, she lifted her head. He was dressed once more in his khakis and shirt, his sneakers were in one hand, his gear bag in the other. Good. She let her face crumble, her expression slip into wretchedness. Her lower lip trembled, a special added effect. “I—I’m not sure I can even make it to the ladder,” she confessed haltingly. “My whole body’s shot.” Damn, she must be hurting worse than he’d imagined. Trying not to stare at her lush lower lip quivering helplessly, Sean dropped his gear bag and stepped forward. “Here,” he said, leaning over, stretching out his hand. “Grab my hand. I’ll pull you out.” She’d braced her feet against the wall of the pool, knowing she’d have to strike fast. They grasped hands. The second his tightened about her forearm, she jerked backward with all her strength. Physics were on her side. Caught off balance, Sean somersaulted through the air, with only enough time to yell, “Shit!” before he landed with a cannonball-sized splash. Lily braced her arms on the pool deck. She’d intended to jump out and make a mad dash for the ladies’ locker room but her efforts were hampered by her convulsive laughter. A surprised “Oof!” flew from her lips. Sean’s arm had snaked out and wrapped around her waist, dumping her backward into the water. She pushed to the surface to find Sean glowering menacingly. He was sopping wet and just as furious. Lily’s laughter redoubled, then died away when his hands took her by the shoulders and pulled her close. Mere inches separated their bodies. “What are you doing?” Her voice came out an alarmed squeak. Her eyes flew to his. They sparkled with green and gold lights. “Payback time, Lily. You’ve pushed me once too often. I had my cell phone in my pocket. I don’t think it’s waterproof. My leather wallet is in my rear pocket, crammed with pictures of my adorable niece and nephew. Basically, Banyon, you owe me. Big time.” His tanned face, with drops of water still clinging to its chiseled planes, descended. He was going to kiss her, she realized, panic-stricken at the thought. “Don’t, Sean, don’t!” “I think I have to. It’s been a long time coming. Oh, by the way, I like lots of tongue.” Indignant, her mouth opened, ready to skewer him. But Sean was quicker. He shut Lily up the way he’d been dreaming of for so long. For years she’d driven him mad, made him crazed with desire. Now, by God, he was going to taste her. The passion and frustration inside him erupted. He seized her mouth, molding her lips to his own. Carnal fantasies gave way to a reality a thousand times sweeter. Starved for her, Sean’s lips plundered, boldly claiming her as his.

When he lifted his head, Savannah nearly pulled him back to her. He watched her face, her eyes cloudy with desire, her lips so beautiful, bereft of his. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Savannah? There is such beauty in your soul, I can see it shining in your eyes.” She touched his face, her palm molding his strong jaw. Why couldn’t she resist his hungry eyes? “I think you’re casting a spell over me. I can’t remember what we were talking about.” Gregori smiled. “Kissing.” His teeth nibbled gently at her chin. “Specifically, your wanting to kiss that orange-bearded imbecile.” “I wanted to kiss every one of them,” she lied indignantly. “No, you did not. You were hoping that silly fop would wipe my taste from your mouth for all eternity.” His hand stroked back the fall of hair around her face. He feathered kisses along the delicate line of her jaw. “It would not have worked, you know. As I recall, he seemed to have a problem getting close to you.” Her eyes smoldered dangerously. “Did you have anything to do with his allergies?” She had wanted someone, anyone, to wipe Gregori’s taste from her mouth, her soul. He raised his voice an octave. “Oh, Savannah, I just have to taste your lips,” he mimicked. Then he went into a sneezing fit. “You haven’t ridden until you’ve ridden on a Harley, baby.” He sneezed, coughed, and gagged in perfect imitation. Savannah punched his arm, forgetting for a moment her bruised fist. When it hurt, she yelped and glared accusingly at him. “It was you doing all that to him! The poor man— you damaged his ego for life. Each time he touched me, he had a sneezing fit.” Gregori raised an eyebrow, completely unrepentant. “Technically, he did not lay a hand on you. He sneezed before he could get that close.” She laid her head back on the pillow, her ebony hair curling around his arm, then her arm, weaving them together. His lips found her throat, then moved lower and found the spot over her breast that burned with need, with invitation. Savannah caught his head firmly in her hands and lifted him determinedly away from her before her treacherous body succumbed completely to his magic. “And the dog episode?” He tried for innocence, but his laughter was echoing in her mind. “What do you mean?” “You know very well what I mean,” she insisted. “When Dragon walked me home.” “Ah, yes, I seem to recall now. The big bad wolf decked out in chains and spikes, afraid of a little dog.” “Little? A hundred-and-twenty-pound Rottweiler mix? Foaming at the mouth. Roaring. Charging him!” “He ran like a rabbit.” Gregori’s soft, caressing voice echoed his satisfaction. He had taken great pleasure in running that particular jackass off. How dare the man try to lay a hand on Savannah? “No wonder I couldn’t touch the dog’s mind and call him off. You rotten scoundrel.” “After Dragon left you, I chased him for two blocks, and he went up a tree. I kept him there for several hours, just to make a point. He looked like a rooster with his orange comb.” She laughed in spite of her desire not to. “He never came near me again.” “Of course not. It was unacceptable,” he said complacently, with complete satisfaction, the warmth of his breath heating her blood.

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel - forbidding - now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop. Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there. Ahab turned. "Starbuck!" "Sir." "Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much such a sweetness as this - I struck my first whale - a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty - forty - forty years ago! - ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! - when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before - and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare - fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul - when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts - away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow - wife? wife? - rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey - more a demon than a man! - aye, aye! what a forty years' fool - fool - old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God! - crack my heart! - stave my brain! - mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board! - lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!

1. The future is not a “point”—a single scenario that we must predict. It is a range. We should bookend the future, considering a range of outcomes from very bad to very good.     •  Investor Penstock bet on Coinstar when his bookend analysis showed much more upside than downside. • Our predictions grow more accurate when we stretch our bookends outward. 2. To prepare for the lower bookend, we need a premortem. “It’s a year from now. Our decision has failed utterly. Why?” • The 100,000 Homes Campaign avoided a legal threat by using a premortem-style analysis. 3. To be ready for the upper bookend, we need a preparade. “It’s a year from now. We’re heroes. Will we be ready for success?”     •  The producer of Softsoap, hoping for a huge national launch, locked down the supply of plastic pumps for 18 to 24 months. 4. To prepare for what can’t be foreseen, we can use a “safety factor.”     •  Elevator cables are made 11 times stronger than needed; software schedules include a “buffer factor.” 5. Anticipating problems helps us cope with them. • The “realistic job preview”: Revealing a job’s warts up front “vaccinates” people against dissatisfaction.     •  Sandra rehearsed how she would ask her boss for a raise and what she’d say and do at various problem moments. 6. By bookending—anticipating and preparing for both adversity and success—we stack the deck in favor of our decisions.

Hoffman looked down at the body bag. The order had come directly from the Führer’s senior field officer, Reichsmarschall Haas to Hoffman’s commanding officer. Der Führer had asked to inspect this curious body for himself… and to ask the men who’d seen what happened to explain directly to him what they’d witnessed. The clattering from above had grown much louder. He looked up, carefully shading his eyes, to see the yawning loading bay was now only twenty or thirty feet above them. The freight platform finally jerked to a halt inside the bay where Hoffman saw a couple of SS Leibstandarte guards standing to attention, dressed crisply in ceremonial black. For an unhappy moment he thought they were going to take possession of the body bag and send Hoffman and his two men back down. But, with a perfunctory nod from one of them, they beckoned Hoffman and the others to follow. A stairwell guarded by two more men took them to the upper deck. The battleship-grey walls that Hoffman and his men had grown used to on the way over – living like battery chickens on the lower decks as Das Mutterschiff sailed gracefully south from the conquered area around New York – now gave way to dark oak panels. The floor no longer metal grilles but a soft maroon carpet that whispered beneath his muddied combat boots. Ahead of them, double doors guarded by two more SS Leibstandarte standing to attention. ‘Oberleutnant Hoffman, to see the Führer,’ announced one of the guards who’d escorted them up from the bay. One of the two standing guard announced their arrival into an intercom. A moment later a young smartly dressed adjutant appeared

I had a spot on one of the open lower decks, jammed with men, but my height granted me a view of the Statue of Liberty receding in the golden light, a sentimental sight that nevertheless provoked my sentiments. How many crimes, I wonder now—how many blunders worse than crimes—get committed in her name?

Four of the ship’s lifeboats were virtually useless because of their position alone. They were the first two forward on either side. In an emergency lowering, they would come down outside the enclosed promenade deck. It might well be impossible, during an emergency, to open the heavy glass windows in order to get into the boats.

But it’s the mind analogy that bothers Crozier the most. Haunted and plagued by melancholia much of his life, knowing it as a secret weakness made worse by his twelve winters frozen in arctic darkness as an adult, feeling it recently triggered into active agony by Sophia Cracroft’s rejection, Crozier thinks of the partially lighted and occasionally heated but livable lower deck as the sane part of himself. The brooding mental lower world of the orlop deck is where he spends too much of his time these days — listening to the ice scream, waiting for the metal bolts and beam fastenings to explode from the cold. The bottom hold deck below, with its terrible smells and its waiting Dead Room, is madness.

found each wave, instead of the big, smooth glossy mountain it looks from shore or from a vessel’s deck, was for all the world like any range of hills on dry land, full of peaks and smooth places and valleys. The coracle, left to herself, turning from side to side, threaded, so to speak, her way through these lower parts and avoided the steep slopes and higher, toppling summits of the wave. “Well, now,” thought I to myself, “it is plain I must lie where I am and not disturb the balance; but it is plain also that I can put the paddle over the side and from time to time, in smooth places, give her a shove or two towards land.” No sooner thought upon than done. There I lay on my elbows in the most trying attitude, and every now and again gave a weak stroke or two to turn her head to shore.

Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck: under the management, too, of reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months’ standing: one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be safely made.

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. My memory of Diana is not her at an official function, dazzling with her looks and clothes and the warmth of her manner, or even of her offering comfort among the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed. What I remember best is a young woman taking a walk in a beautiful place, unrecognized, carefree, and happy. Diana increasingly craved privacy, a chance “to be normal,” to have the opportunity to do what, in her words, “ordinary people” do every day of their lives--go shopping, see friends, go on holiday, and so on--away from the formality and rituals of royal life. As someone responsible for her security, yet understanding her frustration, I was sympathetic. So when in the spring of the year in which she would finally be separated from her husband, Prince Charles, she yet again raised the suggestion of being able to take a walk by herself, I agreed that such a simple idea could be realized. Much of my childhood had been spent on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, a county in southern England approximately 120 miles from London; I remembered the wonderful sandy beaches of Studland Bay, on the approach to Poole Harbour. The idea of walking alone on miles of almost deserted sandy beach was something Diana had not even dared dream about. At this time she was receiving full twenty-four-hour protection, and it was at my discretion how many officers should be assigned to her protection. “How will you manage it, Ken? What about the backup?” she asked. I explained that this venture would require us to trust each other, and she looked at me for a moment and nodded her agreement. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her.

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her. She set off at once, a tall figure clad in a pair of blue denim jeans, a dark-blue suede jacket, and a soft scarf wrapped loosely around her face to protect her from the chilling, easterly spring wind. I stood and watched as she slowly dwindled in the distance, her head held high, alone apart from busy oyster catchers that followed her along the water’s edge. It was a strange sensation watching her walking away by herself, with no bodyguards following at a discreet distance. What were my responsibilities here? I kept thinking. Yet I knew this area well, and not once did I feel uneasy. I had made this decision--not one of my colleagues knew. Senior officers at Scotland Yard would most certainly have boycotted the idea had I been foolish enough to give them advance notice of what the Princess and I were up to.

As he forced himself to retreat from the world of his sketch, Elijah realized the boys were trying to start a squabble over some lower order of card—a three? “I-unts” became increasingly vocal, interspersed with “It’s not your turn,” until Elijah had to set his drawing aside and scoop William up in his arms. “What you want,” he informed the child, “is a stout tickling.” He scratched lightly at the boy’s round tummy, provoking peals of merriment. William’s laughter, surprisingly hearty coming from so small a body, sounded to Elijah exactly as Prudholm’s had when that worthy was still small enough to tease and tickle like this. “Elijah…” Jenny’s tone bore patience and a warning. Don’t get the little ones all wound up, Elijah. You’re the oldest, and they look to you for an example of proper decorum. He lifted the happy little fellow up over his head and slowly lowered him. “Enough, my lad. Time to go with nurse and have some bread and jam. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Or maybe some of your mama’s delicious stollen. Mmmm.” “I want some of Mama’s Christmas bread too,” Kit announced. “Come along, Aunt Jen. We’ll share.” Elijah stood, passed Sweet William off to his nurse, and took Aunt Jen by the hand. “I’m sure your aunt longs to accompany you, Kit, but she must stay here and help me clean up this awful mess.” Kit’s gaze darted to the scattering of cards on the rug. To a small child, a deck held thousands of cards, none of which little hands found easy to stack. Such a pity, that. “I’ll save you a piece of stollen, Aunt Jen.” Kit took his nurse’s hand and towed her toward the door. “’Bye, Aunt, ’bye, Mr. Harrison.” “Au revoir,” Elijah murmured.

It was worse for Mam, who discovered on the boat she was again with child and could hardly keep any food down. But even with all of this, as I stood on the lower deck outside our dark, cramped rooms in steerage, watching the oily water churn beneath the Agnes Pauline, I felt my spirits lift. Surely, I thought, we would find a place for ourselves in America.

Benefits of high rise apartments High rise flats have been on high demand for a very long time because of the invaluable benefits which are related to them. All evidence level to the truth that a better majority of tenants desire to stay in these sorts of residences regardless that only some could possibly afford them. This pattern is nevertheless altering due to the low price high rise apartments that are mushrooming. A number of the advantages are as outlined under. Conventionally, excessive rise flats are usually positioned in decent, fascinating urban centers with a purpose to meet the ever rising demand. The urban setting of those residences provides the tenants with limitless and quick access to quite a lot of life-style features together with however not limited to handy public transport, shopping as well as nightlife. There are lots of facilities located round excessive rise apartments. These include services comparable to fitness centers, swimming pools, rooftop decks, a door particular person, safety techniques, managed entry and 24-hour maintenance. Some high rise residences even present visitors with free drinks saving them the money spent on morning tea or coffee. Other kinds of flats do charge for utility services. Dwelling in Excessive Rises does end in lowered utility costs. Due to the bulk services, the rates which might be paid scale back. Even when every particular person pays their very own rates, the ultimate costs are comparatively lower. Most of the flats provide free Wi-Fi companies and for those who plan to use web extra regularly, then it signifies that you will have something to save. Moreover dwelling in High Rise flats makes one feel some sense of community particularly once you understand nicely all your neighbors. This makes someone really feel at a house away from home.

Sometimes I feel like I have the spines of a hedgehog. They are a spiky barrier I just can’t retract. I thought I’d managed to lower them a little over the last few months, or at least to thin them out. But then, this week, there they were again: abrupt, prickly, impenetrable. I’ve had a weird, frustrated, angry week. Nothing in particular has happened, but it’s hot, I’m insanely busy at work and not everyone’s being co-operative. But more than that, I feel as though my body’s drawn in on itself. Everything feels and smells wrong. Quite often, just the sound of the radio has been too much for me. If Herbert has tried to talk to me at the same time that it’s on, I’ve barked at him. I can’t bear to be touched. I feel like my skin is too thin. Twice this week I’ve rushed out of bed in the middle of the night, convinced I’ve felt a glut of blood surge out over my legs. Twice I’ve realised I was only dreaming. The mind is slow to catch up with the body. Mine, it seems, is fearfully protective of it. I’m a meditator, and I know that these phases are necessary. Meditation is like the slow action of water on rock. Gradually, it wears through layers and layers of sediment, and every now and then something unknown is exposed to the light, a deposit of ancient bones. These too are eased away in time, but they must be revealed to be soothed away. Over the years, I’ve learned how my body holds an imprint of my fears, a physical defence against them that over the years becomes an immovable ache. This morning, for example, I went to yoga class, only the second one since my gynaecological problems made me give up. Once, I could fold myself in half like a deck-chair, not because of my yogi prowess, but because I had double-jointed hips. Today, I was shocked to discover that I couldn’t bend at all, that my pelvic girdle had tightened itself into a rigid knot. Once I’d got over the flush of humiliation (a seventy-year-old woman was performing a perfect forward bend next to me), I saw just how much I’ve been imagining my body as a fragile thing in need of protection. I have been curled inwards like that hedgehog, and even the parts of my body that I can’t command have joined in. But even realising this, what do I do with the information? It is one thing to understand that my body has rolled up to protect itself, but how can I make it unfurl?

Not many Ruminarii warships had ever been captured intact by any enemy, and so for those the Ruminarii “invited” aboard their vessels, this was usually a one-way sight-seeing trip. For those who really want to know, Ruminarii Hammerheads have an extensive corridor network, the interior walls are heavily decorated, savagely militaristic and inevitably, close together. He strode down one. Lesser ranks seeing him, fell to the deck and groveled like their fingernails depended on it. There was a chorus of shrieks and whimpers as he passed. When he arrived on the bridge, everyone was face down on the deck, each endeavoring to grovel lower than the next. Nothing like discipline to keep the crew in its place.

The pilot put the helicopter in a sideways crab over the bow, enabling him to see the superstructure out his right side window and maintain the same relative position to the ship as he matched its forward speed. The crew in the helicopter cabin opened the big sliding door on the right, and I swung out in the horse collar. As I was lowered to the ship, I saw hundreds of passengers lining the rails and windows on all the forward decks with cameras and binoculars trained on me. This was probably the most exciting moment of the cruise for those folks!" (Page 273)

less than 300 yards. With Eagle beam-on and at this point-blank range, U73 could not miss. The time was 1315. Aboard Eagle, at 1317, no one had yet thought of jumping over the side from the quarterdeck. Even with dead engines, Eagle’s 21,000 tons momentum still took her through the water at about four knots, two minutes after being hit. If anyone dived over now, they would fall astern and not be rescued. In any case I had no Mae West yet. It was hopeless trying to get to the Island by the normal route. There was only one way. I had used it once before. This was the batsman’s escape route from the flight deck to the main deck, a vertical distance of about 50 feet. It was a pipeshaft, about three feet in diameter, with a rusty ladder fixed inside. It was entirely dark inside and as its lower level on the port side was by now under water and at about 40 degrees from the vertical, once I had started up the ladder, there would be no turning back. Just as I bent down to get into the tube, with my feet already in the water on the low side of the heeling ship, I looked above me. I could see an officer trying to organise the launching of the ship’s whaler. As

The lower deck had its own glassed-in room, and at the rear, spot-lit from a dozen angles, was an honest to Jesus helicopter, white and gold to match the boat itself. Was that intentional or a happy accident? I rolled my eyes. Of course it was intentional. Who wouldn’t colour coordinate their helicopter to their yacht? What were we, savages?

tug her hand in mine and guide her to the lower deck. She follows, practically walking on my heels in her excitement. As soon as we reach the downstairs and her eyes fall on her present, she stops walking, her smile growing bigger. “Where’d you get this?” she asks. “It was actually a favor called in from a friend. Apparently, this one has raped numerous girls up and down the coast, but his father’s diplomatic immunity status has prohibited anyone from being able to touch him. They were in the process of getting that status revoked when his father sent him back to Columbia.” Her eyes flash with excitement, as Juan Alvarez’s eyes widen, and he struggles, cursing us through his gag. Lana tilts her head, watching him as he jerks against the chains. “And you trust the source?” she asks, looking Juan over, her fingers itching to take action. “Leonard’s the one who called. The last girl was just fifteen, and he slit her throat. I trust Leonard, and I reviewed the file myself. They have enough physical evidence to prove it, and he hasn’t bothered denying it. They just can’t touch him.” She gets up on her toes, smiling as she kisses me. Juan continues to struggle in vain. “Thank you,” she murmurs as I hand her the knife.

The Twin Alders is the only Card of its kind,” the Nightmare continued. “It gives its user the power to speak to our deity, the Spirit of the Wood. And it is she who guards it. She will have a price for the last Card of the Deck. Nothing comes free.” “I’m prepared to pay whatever price she asks.” Ravyn pressed against the bars, his voice lowering. “And when I do pay, Nightmare, the Twin Alders Card will be mine. Not the King’s, not yours. Mine.

Eliana stepped into her room and turned to face him. Anticipation usurped amusement’s place as Dagon stared down at her, waiting for her nightly hug. Perhaps tonight he would linger and— “Greetings, Eliana,” CC said in her serene voice. Blinking, she glanced over her shoulder, then up at the ceiling. “Hi, CC.” Dagon hid his amusement at her tendency to look up whenever she addressed the computer. “You have one communication awaiting your attention,” CC announced. Eliana looked at Dagon. “Is that like a phone message?” He considered his translator’s definition of PHONE. “Yes.” “Did YOU send it?” “No.” “Who did?” A good question. Who on this ship believed they knew Eliana well enough to message her privately? His brows drew down. “I don’t know.” “Maybe Anat has reconsidered giving me flight lessons.” He stared at her. After Dagon, Anat was the most experienced and highest-ranked fighter pilot on the ship. Dagon knew that most of the men stationed on the RANASURA thought their commander grim and foreboding. But Dagon appeared downright ebullient when compared to Anat. “You asked Anat to give you flight lessons?” To borrow one of Eliana’s Earth terms: that had been ballsy. “Yes.” She wrinkled her nose. “But he said no. The other pilots warned me he’d refuse, but I figured I’d give it a try anyway.” He tried to hold back his next question but failed. “Why didn’t you ask me?” Her brow furrowed. “You mean ask your permission? Was I supposed to do that first?” “No. Why didn’t you ask ME to give you flight lessons?” He understood her fierce drive to learn everything she possibly could that might aid her in the future but inwardly balked at the image of Eliana and Anat crowded together in a flight simulator. “Oh. Because you’re . . . you know.” She motioned to his uniform. “The commander. You run the ship. You have more important things to do.” She nibbled her lower lip. “Aaaaand I didn’t want to wear out my welcome.” Confused, he glanced down at the deck. “Why are you looking at my boots?” she asked. “According to my translator, WEAR OUT MY WELCOME means eroding through frequent use the surface of a mat with the word WELCOME printed on it that Earthlings place outside their doors.” She grinned. “Your translator got it wrong. Wear out my welcome means . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Make a nuisance of myself, I guess. I’ve already insinuated myself into a significant portion of your day, Dagon.” Her smile dimmed a bit as uncertainty crept into her features. “I didn’t want you to get tired of having me around all the time.” So while he had sought any and every excuse to spend MORE time with her, she had worried he might want LESS? He took a step closer to her. “I believe the likelihood of that is nonexistent.” Her eyes dilated as his shadow fell over her. “Really?” she asked softly. “Really.

As 1:00 a.m. approached, Second Officer Lightoller was feeling frustrated. None of the lifeboats on the port side had yet been launched, despite his best efforts. He had managed to get Lifeboat 4 swung out and lowered half an hour ago, even though Chief Officer Wilde had twice told him to wait. Both times Lightoller had jumped rank and gone directly to Captain Smith to get the go-ahead to proceed. The captain had also suggested that Lifeboat 4 be lowered to A deck since he thought it would be easier for the passengers to board from there. But a crewman had just shouted up that the A-deck windows were locked. (Smith may have forgotten that, unlike the Olympic, the Titanic had a glassed-in forward promenade.) Lightoller sent someone to unlock the windows and to recall the passengers who had been sent down there. Meanwhile, he moved aft to prepare Lifeboats 6 and 8, ordering that the masts and sails be lifted out of them. Just then the roaring steam was silenced and Lightoller was slightly startled by the sound of his own voice. Arthur Peuchen overheard the order and, ever handy around boats, jumped in to help cut the lashings and lift the masts out onto the deck. After that the call went out for women and children to come forward. The “women and children only” order would be more strictly enforced here than on the starboard side where men were being allowed into boats. When a crowd of grimy stokers and firemen suddenly appeared carrying their dunnage bags, Chief Officer Wilde was spurred into action. “Down below, you men! Every one of you, down below!” he bellowed in a stern, Liverpool-accented voice. Major Peuchen was very impressed with Wilde’s commanding manner as he drove the men right off the deck, and thought it “a splendid act.” Helen Candee, however, felt sympathy for the stokers whom she later described as a band of unknown heroes who had accepted their fate without protest. She was waiting by Lifeboat 6 with Hugh Woolner, who had been by her side ever since he had gone down to her cabin from the smoking room after the collision. “The Two” had then walked together on the boat deck, amid the roar of venting steam, and had noticed that the ship was listing to starboard. They went into the lounge to escape the cold and the noise, and there a young man came over to them with something in his hand. “Have some iceberg!” he said with a smile as he dropped a piece of ice into Helen’s palm. The ice soon chilled Helen’s fingers, so Woolner dashed it from her and rubbed her hand and then kept it clasped in his.

When the fourth officer entered the post office on G deck, the mail clerks were hastily pulling armfuls of envelopes out of the sorting racks. On looking down into the lower storage room, he saw mailbags floating in water. When Boxhall reported this to the bridge, the captain gave the order for the lifeboats to be uncovered and went below to see the damage for himself. The ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews, was already making his own inspection tour of the lower decks. He went into the post office and soon dispatched a mail clerk to find the captain. The clerk hurried along the corridor and returned with Captain Smith and Purser McElroy. After they had viewed the damage, Andrews was overheard saying to Smith, “Well, three have gone already, Captain.” Andrews was undoubtedly referring to three of the ship’s bulkheads that divided the ship into the watertight compartments that gave the Titanic its reputation for unsinkability. With only three compartments flooded, however, there was a chance that the pumps could stay ahead of it. The captain then returned to the bridge and gave the order for women and children to go up on deck with lifebelts. Thomas Andrews, meanwhile, continued his inspection. At around twelve-twenty-five William Sloper saw Andrews racing up the staircase with a deeply worried look on his face. As the ship’s designer passed by Dorothy Gibson, she put her hand on his arm and asked him what had happened. Andrews simply brushed past the prettiest girl and continued upward three stairs at a time. He had just discovered that two more watertight compartments had been breached. Andrews knew how serious this was. The bulkhead between the fifth and sixth compartments extended only as high as E deck. As the ship was pulled down at the bow, the water would spill over it into the next compartment, and then the next, until the ship inevitably sank. In all his planning at Harland and Wolff, he had never imagined a scenario such as this. Andrews informed the captain that the ship had only an hour left to live—an hour and a half at best. Smith immediately told Fourth Officer Boxhall to calculate the liner’s position and take it to the Marconi Room so the call for assistance could be sent out. He also gave orders to muster the passengers and crew.

That is why she is the Cultivator, as much a custodian of living things as inert materials. One day, far into the future, the entire ship will be a single amorphous organism. She is helping to make this a reality, to coax and to nurture. It is hard work, back-breaking and relentless, but it gives her a certain measure of pride. She has sons and daughters growing up in the lower decks, already learning to grasp a ratchet and siphon a fuel sump. If they survive the mutations and the plagues, one of them might one day become Cultivator. And if they are blessed with fertility, in centuries to come one of their progeny might be there, on that mystical and long-awaited day when Solace speaks for the first time, not in hisses of steam or scrapes of iron but in a real voice with real words.

Lowering the definition would help the national economy, he said. It was not just to clear the decks or because the founding fathers were Puritans. Blinder, equipped with slides, flashed on the wall a chart entitled “THE LONG-RANGE BENEFITS.” A lower deficit, Blinder said, meant the federal government was borrowing less from the pool of national savings - the money of all its citizens that was invested rather than consumed. Most of the freed-up savings could then go to private investments such as new plants and equipment or better worker training. These investments would eventually yield more efficiency and greater productivity per worker. And increased productivity - and here was the key - would eventually mean an increase in the standard of living for most Americans.

Solid-steel fire doors had been built into entrances to the public rooms to deal with just such an emergency. It would have taken Hackney only a few moments to isolate the writing room from the rest of B deck by lowering its fire door. Clarence Hackney did not take that preventive measure. Smoke billowed after him as he ran for the telephone near the door connecting the first-class lounge to the smoking room. He dialed the bridge.

The captain and executive officer were the last to go. They had paced the flight deck one last time, looking for stragglers. Finding none, they stood above one of the knotted lines on the Lexington’s stern for a moment, both apparently unwilling to take the final step. Sherman ordered Seligman to go down ahead of him, as it was the captain’s “duty and privilege” to be the last man to leave the ship. As Seligman lowered away, an explosion went up amidships, throwing flames and airplanes high into the air, and Sherman ducked under the edge of the flight deck to get cover from falling debris. Seligman shouted at the skipper to come down the line. “I was just thinking,” Sherman replied: “wouldn’t I look silly if I left this ship and the fires went out?” The captain later wrote that abandoning the Lexington was “heartbreaking,” and “the hardest thing I have ever done.” But the venerable old carrier had run her race, and it was Sherman’s duty to deliver himself, physically intact, into the continuing service of the U.S. Navy. He went down the line and dropped into the warm dark water of the Coral Sea.

It was as wild a morning as I have ever seen. The sky presented an extraordinary appearance, being of a cold green colour, while high up masses of cirrus clouds traversed it in parallel white threads, following the direction of the wind. The lower strata of clouds seemed to have been blown right out of the heavens. We were battened down all this day, for not only spray, but solid lumps of water hurled right across the haven, and fell upon our decks. We were wetter than we had ever been at sea.

I got the winning end, and a small plastic object rolled on to the floor. I was glad to see that it was not a hat. Major Charge leapt at it and gave a snort of laughter as merciless as a nose-blowing. He put it to his mouth and breathed hard, making a sound like a raspberry. Then I saw that it was shaped like a tiny po with a whistle in the handle. ‘Lower-deck humour,’ Miss Truman said in a kindly way. ‘It’s the festive season,’ Major Charge said. He blew another raspberry. ‘Hark! the herald-angels sing,’ he said in a tone of savagery, as though he were taking some kind of revenge on Christmas Eve and all its impediments of holy families and managers and wise men, a revenge on love, a revenge for some deep disappointment.

A raking shot, which entered in the lower deck, had glanced along the beams and through the thickest of the people,

With that, Thengill went to the lower deck. Rig called out to him, alarmed at being left alone, but Thengill did not answer. Rig blew out an angry sigh and turned his back to the railing and sat down. He gave his best effort for the next hour and then he grew frustrated and impatient again. He began to curse and shout until in a rage, pulling at his own hair with curled fingers. It was at this point that William came up with Namir, who

The captain walked the deck at a rapid stride, looked aloft at the sails, and then to windward; the mate stood in the gangway, rubbing his hands, and talking aloud to the ship—“Hurrah, old bucket! the Boston girls have got hold of the tow-rope!” and the like; and we were on the forecastle, looking to see how the spars stood it, and guessing the rate at which she was going,—when the captain called out—“Mr. Brown, get up the topmast studding-sail! What she can’t carry she may drag!” The mate looked a moment; but he would let no one be before him in daring. He sprang forward—“Hurrah, men! rig out the topmast studding-sail boom! Lay aloft, and I’ll send the rigging up to you!”—We sprang aloft into the top; lowered a girt-line down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards, as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will. Some indeed, looked as though they thought the “old man” was mad, but no one said a word.

Bandmaster Wallace Henry Hartley had assembled his men, and the band was playing ragtime. Just now they stood in the First Class lounge, where many of the passengers waited before orders came to lower the boats. Later they moved to the Boat Deck forward, near the entrance to the grand staircase. They looked a little nondescript—some in blue uniform coats, some in white jackets—but there was nothing wrong with the music.

By now there was no lack of people willing to leave the Titanic, but a new problem arose. The officers in charge of launching the boats were afraid to put too many passengers in them for fear they might buckle and pitch everyone into the sea. Actually, there was no danger of this. Harland & Wolff had designed all the boats on the Olympic and Titanic to be lowered with their full complement of people. In a test on May 9, 1911, the shipyard even loaded one of the Olympic’s boats with weights corresponding to 65 persons, then raised and lowered it six times without any sign of strain. Neither Captain Smith nor his officers seem to have been aware of the test. Harland & Wolff never told them that the boats could be lowered fully loaded; the builders simply assumed they knew this as “a matter of general knowledge.” If they ever knew, nobody remembered it that night. Boat 6 rowed off with a maximum of 28 people; Boat 8 with 39; Boat 2 with 26. Acting on his own, Lightoller decided he might get more people into the boats by utilizing the portside lower deck gangway. He sent six seamen down to open the doors, and ordered the boats, once afloat, to row down to the opening and receive additional passengers. It didn’t work. The doors were never opened; the men sent down were never seen again. They were probably trapped by some sudden inflow of water before they could get the job done.

In the cool of evening people gather on deck to watch stars emerge from the twilight—at first single pinpricks and then a swarm, uncountable. The sky tilts steadily night by night, revealing new parts of itself as our changed latitude tips old constellations below the horizon and hoists new ones aloft. Soon there is a thrilling first glimpse of the Southern Cross, its iconic quadrangle pointing toward the antipodes, just below the shadow of Corvus the crow. The North Star sinks lower, steadfast pivot of the heavens until a day at the equator when it will dip to the horizon and vanish. In the northern hemisphere, Polaris will always make an angle with the horizon equal to your latitude—a cosmic geometry first revealed to me in magic diagrams by an astronomy professor, rocketing across the blackboard in a cloud of chalk dust.

A couple of dozen backpackers stand, inside the lower deck’s muted light, like an army of extraterrestrials. Paros is refilling with English, German, French, Italian, Scandinavian, Australian, and South African tourists.

The front ramp is gradually lowered, in slow electronic increments. A couple of dozen backpackers stand, inside the lower deck’s muted light, like an army of extraterrestrials. Paros is refilling with English, German, French, Italian, Scandinavian, Australian, and South African tourists. The town remains in motion. Some come. Some go. The cycle appears endless. The entire world appears to wash up on Paros.

He suddenly thrust. Amanda blocked the blow, but barely. He thrust again and again, driving her back across the ship before she even knew what was happening. In mere seconds, she had her back at the rail and sweat was pouring down her body, pooling between her breasts and legs. She was even more furious than before at his display of skill. He smiled. “Come now, darling. I have no wish to fight with you, especially as your blade is not blunted. Besides, we both know you cannot best me.” But she would try. She would make him sit up and take real notice of her. She was not a fancy lady, but she could match him in every other way. Amanda growled and attacked. She thrust hard and he met her, taking a step back, a step aside, until they were moving rapidly in a vicious circle of hard blow after hard blow. Iron rang. Sweat burned in her eyes. Of course he was master here. She hadn’t expected to win. But she wanted to somehow hurt him. There was nothing she wanted more—she wanted him to feel what she had felt, damn him! Her arm was aching now. She was at her physical limit, but she would not give up. “Damn you!” she gasped, and she halted, pretending to be exhausted and ready to submit to his mercy. He bought her game, a grin appearing on his handsome face. “Well done,” he began. Amanda feinted, thrust and sliced off the rest of his shirt buttons. He was so surprised he simply stared down at his shirt, now shredded in two. Then, slowly, he looked up at her. His blue eyes were brilliant, hot, and he slowly, boldly smiled. He wasn’t angry. She understood the heat, and a savage sense of triumph rose up in her. He might not want her with his fine intellectual mind, but just now, she had provoked him so thoroughly that he wanted her right then. She knew, beyond any doubt, that reason had been conquered by lust. “What’s wrong, de Warenne?” she murmured seductively. “Maybe it isn’t a fancy lady that you really want.” Before she had even delivered this last call to arms, he attacked. He had the edge of both shirt and chemise hooked over his blade, and with one flick of his wrist, blunted tip or no, her clothes would be ripped in two. She stilled, breathing hard, her body pulsing in frenzied excitement. “Go ahead,” she managed. “Take my clothes.” His face hardened. He slowly lowered the big blunted tip of his sword between her breasts. “I believe we are done,” he said harshly. She stared at the tip, then lifted her gaze. “I am not done.” His brows lifted. “I have my blade against your heart, darling. In actual battle, you would be dead.” “Most men would prefer me warm and alive in their beds,” she challenged tauntingly. His eyes blazed. He removed the sword, tossing it aside and it clattered across the deck. “You have won, Amanda,” he said. “I concede defeat.” He was turning to walk away. Amanda thrust, catching the buttons of his breeches, and cut them free. He froze. “Maybe,” she said softly, “my opponent would be as easily deceived as you have been and throw his sword aside too soon, falsely thinking himself in no further danger. Maybe, in a real battle, skill will have little to do with the victory. Turn around,” she ordered.

Suddenly his mind played a trick on him. He imagined her, not on the deck beside him, but in a ballroom, in a beautiful ball gown. His heart turned over hard, then thundered. Good God, she would be so beautiful . . . For a moment, speech failed him. She would have a dozen suitors, he realized, still stunned. “Amanda,” he heard himself say, his gaze holding hers “when you come out, I must insist on the first dance.” “You want the first dance?” she gasped. He tore his gaze away, shaken by the possessive desire that had arisen. “I do. In fact, I will make certain to be in London for your first ball—if you promise me that dance.” She turned away, incredulous, but the rope between them went taut. “Of course,” she said breathlessly. Then she faced him, still surprised. “But why?” “Are you not my protégée?” he asked, trying to sound casual. But he knew that she would be too beautiful to resist in a ball gown, whirling about the floor in a gentleman’s arms. It flashed through his mind that he might not be that pleased when she was introduced into society, because no gentleman would be immune to her beauty. And suddenly he wanted that first dance very badly—suddenly he ached for it. He glanced at her through his lashes. “Is it not my right to dance with you before all others?” he asked softly, unable to help himself. He could not control himself. They were standing near the helm in gale winds, the deck rocking heavily beneath their feet, and he was thinking of this woman, her beauty, her allure and his passion, not the storm. He knew he would feel as intensely passionate dancing with her as he would if he allowed himself to take her to his bed. She began to smile. “I am clumsy,” she warned. He laughed, relieved by her absurd comment. “Impossible. You are light on your feet—we locked swords, remember? I know you will excel at dancing, just as you will excel at all of your current studies.” She suddenly lowered her dark lashes. “Very well. I will allow you the first dance—if you allow me to ride the storm here with you.” “Absolutely not!” he shouted, aghast. “I do not need you going overboard, either!” She pulled on the rope binding them, then gave him a sideling, seductive look. “I can hardly fall overboard now.” He shook his head, furious with her for daring to use that dance against him, and glanced at the high, white foam of the seas. The horizon ahead was now pitch-black, a sight he did not care for. He turned back to her. “I will not barter for that dance,” he warned. He was going to have it, no matter what she now intended.

Suddenly, as I watched the powerful dynamics of the ocean, I saw a young boy and his sister trying to make their way around the front of the superstructure. Like me, they wanted to get a better view. It was just then that an exceptionally large wave struck, bringing the water crashing over the anchor windlass and the foredeck. The force swept the children off their feet and towards the railing. My first thought was that they were about to be carried overboard, into this unforgiving ocean. Fortunately, they managed to hold fast onto the lower rung of the railing, as the bulk of the water washed over the side or ended up in the scuppers. As the ship started to lift itself from the ocean’s grip, I ran across the foredeck and grabbed both children with one arm. Feeling the ship begin its slide into another trough, I grabbed hold of a stanchion with my free hand. Once more, the vessel shuddered and lifted, trying to break free of the raging ocean. In this wild roller coaster ride, we were all soaked in the cold salt water that flooded around us, but I managed to hold fast. It seemed like an eternity that I lay there trying to prevent the three of us from being washed over the side. Braced against the fishplate, my leg steadied us until the next convulsion lifted us high above the ocean again. At the right moment, we all got up and ran. Slipping and sliding we ran down the sloping deck to the relative safety of the leeward side. The Deck Officer on the Bridge, who had the watch, saw what had happened and recommended me for a “Life Saving award.” I didn’t think that I deserved an award for what I had done, but nevertheless I received one on our return voyage. And when the crew learned what had happened, I was promoted in their estimation from a greenhorn kid, to one of them.

Where is everyone?” Cat asked, looking around the deserted ship. “Shore leave,” he said laconically. “What about us?” “If it’s urgent, we’ll just have to swim.” Cat yawned and stretched languidly, feeling boneless from Travis’s loving and a long, wonderful nap. “Swim? Ha. I’d go down like a brick. Looks like you’re stuck with me.” Travis tilted her face up and kissed her swiftly. “Remember that, witch. You’re mine.” Her eyes widened into misty silver pools. She looked up at him through dense lashes that glinted red and gold. He smiled. “You really are a pirate, aren’t you?” Cat muttered. “Where you’re concerned, yes.” The sensual rasp in Travis’s voice sent echoes of ecstasy shimmering through her. His smile was rakish and utterly male, reminding her of what it was like to have him deep inside her. It was all Cat could do not to simply stand and stare at her lover. In the slanting afternoon light his eyes had a jewel-like purity of color. His skin was taught, deeply bronzed, and his beard was spun from dark gold. Beneath his faded black T-shirt and casual shorts, his body radiated ease and power. “Don’t move,” Cat ordered, heading back to the cabin. “Where are you going?” “Don’t move!” She raced below deck, grabbed the two camera cases she used most often, and ran back on deck. While Travis watched her with a lazy, sexy gleam in his eyes, she pulled out a camera and a small telephoto lens. When she retreated a few feet back along the deck, he moved as though to follow. “No,” she said. “Stay right where you are. You’re perfect.” “Cat,” he said, amusement curling in his voice, “what are you doing?” “Taking pictures of an off-duty buccaneer.” The motor drive surged quickly, pulling frame after frame of film through the camera. “You’re supposed to be taking pictures of the Wind Warrior,” Travis pointed out. “I am. You’re part of the ship. The most important part. Creator, owner, soul.” She caught the sudden intensity of his expression, an elemental recognition of her words. The motor drive whirred in response to her command. After a few more frames she lowered the camera and walked back to him. “Get used to looking into a camera lens.” Cat warned Travis. “I’ve been itching to photograph you since the first time I looked into those gorgeous, sea-colored eyes of yours.” Laughing softly, he snaked one arm around her and pulled her snugly against his side.

Cat worked tirelessly, absorbed in the subtle changes of light and texture and composition. She darted around Travis like a fire, taking photos of the captain and his ship from various angles. Travis didn’t interfere or require her conversation. He could sense the excitement of creation flooding through her as clearly as he felt it in himself when elusive details of hull design would condense in his mind. Smiling, he watched his lover, enjoying her intense concentration on her work. She handled cameras and lenses with the same total familiarity he handled wind and sail. When her determination to catch the sunlight on the rigging made her forget he was alive, he sat cross-legged on the deck and began splicing rope, not at all upset at being ignored. When Cat realized that Travis wasn’t nearby anymore, she lowered her camera and looked around for him. She found him halfway back on the deck, sitting in a pool of sunlight. His head was bent over some task. Sun glinted over his tawny hair like a miser running fingers through gold. Her heart hesitated, then beat with redoubled strength. She set aside her camera and went to Travis. Without a word she took the rope out of his hands and started pulling off his T-shirt. “What are you doing?” he asked, surprised. “Taking off your shirt.” He blinked, then relaxed beneath Cat’s hands with a pirate’s smile of anticipation. She smiled in return, the serene smile of a sorceress, and threw his T-shirt aside. Then she put rope back into the hands that were reaching for her and picked up her camera once more. “Come back here and finish what you started,” Travis said. “I’m finished. “What about my pants?” “They make a nice contrast with the deck.” “Well, damn.” Disappointed, Travis made a face at the camera, then resumed splicing rope. Cat photographed him as he worked, seated like a god in the center of a golden cataract of light. He watched her with intense, blue-green eyes, measuring her progress around him while she climbed the rigging and the sailing in search of a perfect angle. At one point she miscalculated. He came to his feet in a single motion and snatched her off her perch before she could fall. She laughed and let herself slide down his body, her hands savoring his supple, sun-warmed skin.

The MS City of New York commanded by Captain George T. Sullivan, maintained a regular schedule between New York City and Cape Town, South Africa until the onset of World War II when on March 29, 1942 she was attacked off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina by the German submarine U-160 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Georg Lassen. The torpedo struck the MS City of New York at the waterline under the ship’s bridge instantly disabling her. Surfacing the U-boat circled the crippled ship making certain that all of the crew had a chance to abandon ship. In all four lifeboats were lowered holding 41 passengers, 70 crewmen and 13 officers. The armed guard stayed behind but considering the fate of those in the lifeboats did not fire on the submarine. At a distance of about 250 yards the submarine fired a round from her deck gun striking the hapless vessel on the starboard side at the waterline, by her number 4 hold. It took 20 minutes for the MS City of New York to sink stern first. The nine members of the armed guard waited until the water reached the ships after deck before jumping into the water. The following day, a U. S. Navy PBY Catalina aircraft was said to have searched the area without finding any survivors. Almost two days after the attack, a destroyer, the USS Roper rescued 70 survivors of which 69 survived. An additional 29 others were picked up by USS Acushnet, formally a seagoing tugboat and revenue cutter, now operated by the U.S. Coast Guard. All of the survivors were taken to the U.S. Naval Base in Norfolk, Virginia. Almost two weeks later, on 11 April, a U.S. Army bomber on its way to Europe, located the forth boat at 38°40N/73°00W having been carried far off shore by the Gulf Stream. The lifeboat contained six passengers, four women, one man and a young girl plus 13 crew members. Two of the women died of exposure. The eleven survivors and two bodies (the mother of the child and the armed guard) were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter CG-455 and were brought to Lewes, Delaware. The final count showed that seven passengers, one armed guard and 16 crewmen died.

I met Ali in the refugee camp while covering the famine and cholera epidemic that erupted in Yemen in 2017. Two years before, Ali decided to leave his homeland “forever.” He managed to get onboard a small boat which took him to a tanker ship that would carry him and three hundred other refugees to Djibouti. The night of his escape, Ali’s skiff pulled next to the towering tanker. The tanker crew lowered a basket to raise him more than forty feet onto the deck. During that hoist, rising vertically above the sea, the basket lifted Ali to an epiphany. “The crazy people do not have the height dimension!” he explained. “They have only two dimensions!” Ali presented his right palm, flat as a drafting table. “The crazy people have only length and width,” he said. He drew the two dimensions in imaginary lines on his outstretched palm. Then, with his left hand, the one holding a phantom pencil, he drew a vertical line up from his palm, stopping at the level of his eyes. “You must have the vertical dimension to be truly human,” he said. The imaginary vertical line stood balanced on his palm. Ali’s eyes crossed slightly as he focused on the point of his invisible pencil. The line rose, like a cable lifting a basket, into a third dimension beyond humanity’s binary divisions: beyond the choice of Sunni or Shiite, Muslim or Christian, political left or right. Ali was mad. Maybe the war pushed him into insanity. Maybe it was the torturing heat. But within insanity, there can be a kind of clarity unavailable to those who consider themselves sane. In his escape from Yemen, swaying in a basket in the night, Ali saw something—something that looked to the rising draftsman like compassion, forgiveness and empathy—a third dimension, the dimension of peace.

Permission?" He whirled in shock at the sound of Amanda's voice. She stood below him on the deck, fighting the winds, but her eyes flashed green with excitement. He didn’t think; he reacted. He leaped to her side and seized her tightly. “You are hardly any bigger than my son! Are you mad to come out on deck now?” “We are hardly in a hurricane,” she shouted. “Twenty-four knots—that’s gale winds.” “I want you below,” he shouted back. “Please!” she cried, and their gazes locked. Only a madman would give in. He took her with him to the quarterdeck, seizing a coil of rope and tying it to her waist, and then to his. “You may stay on deck for a half an hour. I wish to speak with you anyway,” he said, his voice raised in order to fight the winds. “A storm is no place for a lady.” She lowered her lashes, clearly scheming. Then she sent him a sidelong smile. “But I am not a lady,” she murmured, but he heard her anyway. “How perfect—the subject I wish to discuss!” “What?” she asked, cupping her ear. He seized her hand, pushing it down. "I know you can hear me," he said, but he lowered his face to hers.

Hellooo.” The ferry captain shot a thumb at her Jeep. “Gonna get it off ?” “Oh.” She laughed. “Sorry.” Releasing Nicole, she ran back onto the ferry and slid behind the wheel. By the time she revved the engine, Nicole was in the passenger’s seat, sliding a hand over the timeworn dashboard. “I am paying you for this.” Charlotte shot her a startled look and inched forward. “For this car? You are not.” “You wouldn’t have bought it if it weren’t for my book, and you won’t take money for that.” “Because it’s your book. I’m just along for the ride.” She laughed at her own words. “Can you believe, this is the first car I’ve ever owned?” She eased it onto the dock. “Is it real or what?” “Totally real,” Nicole said, though momentarily wary. “Safe on the highway?” “It got me here.” Charlotte waved at the captain. “Thank you!” Still crawling along, she drove carefully off the pier. When she was on firm ground, she stopped, angled sideways in the seat, and addressed the first of the ghosts. “I’m sorry about your dad, Nicki. I wanted to be there. I just couldn’t.” Seeming suddenly older, Nicole smiled sadly. “You were probably better off. There were people all over the place. I didn’t have time to think.” “A heart attack?” “Massive.” “No history of heart problems?” “None.” “That’s scary. How’s Angie?” Nicole’s mother. Charlotte had phoned her, too, and though Angie had said all the right words—Yes, a tragedy, he loved you, too, you’re a darling to call—she had sounded distracted. “Bad,” Nicole confirmed. “They were so in love. And he loved Quinnipeague. His parents bought the house when he was little. He actually proposed to Mom here. They always said that if I’d been a boy, they’d have named me Quinn. She can’t bear to come now. That’s why she’s selling. She can’t even come to pack up. This place was so him.” “Woo-hoo,” came a holler that instantly lifted the mood. “Look who’s here!” A stocky woman, whose apron covered a T-shirt and shorts, was trotting down the stairs from the lower deck of the Chowder House. Dorey Jewett had taken over from her father midway through Charlotte’s summers here and had brought the place up to par with the best of city restaurants. She had the gleaming skin of one who worked over steam, but the creases by her eyes, as much from smiling as from squinting over the harbor, suggested she was nearing sixty. “Missy here

Of all the nouns we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than "myself". It consists of a collage of still images - name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships - which are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another. The defining teaching of the Buddhist tradition, that of non-self, is merely pointing out the limitations of this reflexive view we hold of ourselves. It's not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled together and transient as everything else. [With] the practice of meditation, ... we can begin to see how each artifact of the mind is raised and lowered to view, like so many flashcards. But we can also glimpse, once in a while, the sleight-of-hand shuffling the card and pulling them off the deck. Behind the objects lies a process. Self is a process. Self is a verb.

The man looked at him dispassionately in the gray morning light. With one hand he pinched together the Professor’s nostrils. When the Professor opened his mouth to breathe, the man swiftly seized his tongue and pulled on it with all his might. The Professor was gagging and catching his breath; he did not see what was happening. He could not distinguish the pain of the brutal yanking from that of the sharp knife. Then there was an endless choking and spitting that went on automatically, as though he were scarcely a part of it. The word “operation” kept going through his mind; it calmed his terror somewhat as he sank back into darkness. The caravan left sometime toward midmorning. The Professor, not unconscious, but in a state of utter stupor, still gagging and drooling blood, was dumped doubled-up into a sack and tied at one side of a camel. The lower end of the enormous amphitheater contained a natural gate in the rocks. The camels, swift mehara, were lightly laden on this trip. They passed through single file, and slowly mounted the gentle slope that led up into the beginning of the desert. That night, at a stop behind some low hills, the men took him out, still in a state which permitted no thought, and over the dusty rags that remained of his clothing they fastened a series of curious belts made of the bottoms of tin cans strung together. One after another of these bright girdles was wired about his torso, his arms and legs, even across his face, until he was entirely within a suit of armor that covered him with its circular metal scales. There was a good deal of merriment during this decking-out of the Professor. The Professor was no longer conscious; to be exact, Even when all his wounds had healed and he felt no more pain, the Professor did not begin to think again; he ate and defecated, and he danced when he was bidden, a senseless hopping up and down that delighted the children, principally because of the wonderful jangling racket it made. And he generally slept through the heat of the day, in among the camels.

Relax,” he murmured into her ear, and within her slippers her toes curled as though he were giving attention to them. “I am relaxed.” Liar, liar. “You’re as stiff as a poker. I’m going to position your hands, your stance.” “I think you’re wrong. I think they are exactly as they need to be.” “Not if you wish to beat me.” Turning her head to the side, she met and held his gaze. “Why would you assist me in giving you a sound thrashing and miss out on your kiss? If you truly wanted it—” “Oh, I truly want it,” he said in a silken voice. “And I intend to have it.” Suddenly, one of his hands was cupping her cheek, while his fingers plowed through her hair. He somehow managed to twist and bend her slightly so she was cradled in his other arm. He lowered his head, and his mouth plundered. No soft taking this, but an urgency. He ravished with his tongue as though he would die if he didn’t taste her, as though he would cease to exist if he left anything unexplored. This was exactly what she had imagined kissing him would be like during the months when they had flirted,