either side were the doors leading to the officers' quarters;
behind them again, the Marconi room--a mysterious temple full of
glittering machines of brass, vulcanite, glass, and platinum, with
straggling wires and rows of switches and fuse boxes, and a high priest,
young, clean-shaven, alert and intelligent, sitting with a telephone
cap over his head, sending out or receiving the whispers of the ether.
Behind this opened the grand staircase, an imposing sweep of decoration
in the Early English style, with plain and solid panelling relieved here
and there with lovely specimens of deep and elaborate carving in the
manner of Grinling Gibbons; the work of the two greatest wood-carvers in
England. Aft of this again the white pathway of the deck led by the
doors and windows of the gymnasium, where the athletes might keep in
fine condition; and beyond that the white roof above ended and the rest
was deck-space open to the sun and the air, and perhaps also to the
smoke and smuts of the four vast funnels that towered in buff and black
into the sky--each so vast that it would have served as a tunnel for a
railway train.

But the ship has gathered way, and is sliding along past the Needles,
where the little white lighthouse looks so paltry beside the towering
cliff. The Channel air is keen, and the bugles are sounding for lunch;
and our traveller goes down the staircase, noticing perhaps, as he
passes, the great clock with its figures which symbolize Honour and
Glory crowning Time. Honour and Glory must have felt just a little
restive as, having crowned one o'clock, they looked down from Time upon
the throng of people descending the staircase to lunch. There were a few
there who had earned, and many who had received, the honour and glory
represented by extreme wealth; but the two figures stooping over the
clock may have felt that Success crowning Opportunity would have been a
symbol more befitting the first-class passengers of the _Titanic_.
Perhaps they looked more kindly as one white-haired old man passed
beneath--W. T. Stead, that untiring old warrior and fierce campaigner in
peaceful causes, who in fields where honour and glory were to be found
sought always for the true and not the false. There were many kinds of
men there--not every kind, for it is not every man who can pay from fifty
to eight hundred guineas for a four days' journey; but most kinds of men
and women who can afford to do that were represented there.

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