After the train journey there was the ship. To William, only confusion lay in between, though later he was to remember vaguely the enormous piles of luggage in the customs shed, a hundred times taller than himself, and the white faces of strangers looming all around him. He knew, of course, that they were going aboard a ship, and expected it to be riding splendidly at anchor somewhere where he could really see it. He thought he could smell the sea, and looked about hopefully, pictures in his mind of sand and shells, buckets and spades, but he couldn’t see through or around all the trousered legs and fur coats surrounding him. Hanging on tightly to his mother’s hand, he was swept along passages and corridors, up and down, and the smell of the sea was overcome by the smell of fresh paint and varnish. At the end of all the passages was a quiet white room that William’s mother called “our cabin.” She had told him the story of Robinson Crusoe, who had built himself a cabin and had a goat, but this was not a bit like what William had imagined. It was just another, an ordinary, room. His mother took her hat off, and tossed it on one of the beds.
“Well, we’re on our way at last,” she said. “Goodbye, New York!”
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