Excerpt from The Broken Shaft: Tales in Mid-Ocean Tun good ship Bavaria lay at anchor in Queenstown Harbor waiting for the mails, and only the little cloud of white steam curling from her escape-pipe gave sign of the huge forces hidden beneath her placid exterior. Her decks were almost deserted, for her passengers had yielded as usual to that ridiculous fascination of a few more hours on land, which forms apparently the staple industry of the city of Queenstown, and is probably re sponsible for more sea-sickness than all other causes put together. But the Eminent Tragedian was far too wary to leave the ship at the one mom out of the whole f ort night when her decks were reasonably still, and as he leaned over the rail of the upper deck an d watched the little waves lapping musically round the black sides of the great Liner, he was almost the only figure visible. He took off his eye-glasses, wiped them, and replaced them with admirable accuracy. He removed his peaked cap for a moment, and ran his long, grace ful fingers through his hair. He drew a dainty ciga rette case from his pocket, lighted a cigarette, and. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.