No need to narrate the history of that voyage nor dwell upon the trivial particulars of our life on board. Suffice it to say that in mid-Atlantic our engines had a breakdown. The Peterhof came to a standstill.
If it has ever happened to you during a big voyage you will know that there is something portentous about the cessation of a steamer's machinery in mid-ocean. To be becalmed on a sailing ship may be boring: to be becalmed—if such an expression can be used on a steamer-is almost too odd to be boring. Day and night the engines have throbbed until their throbbing has penetrated into your very marrow, and when the throbbing abruptly dies you are sensible of a shock. When the Peterhof halted I ran up on deck as speedily as though we had had a collision. I saw, all round, nothing but sea, sea, sea, and it was far more amazing than if I had beheld an island or an iceberg or a raft of shipwrecked mariners, or any of the other picturesque phenomena which my fertile fancy had hastened to invent as an explanation for our stoppage.

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