The Library

Sitting in the library on deck eight forward and just slightly starboard there is very little sense of being on a ship. The propeller pods far behind and below in the muffled salt sea, the diesel engines amidships just above the keel, the turbines on top deck behind the stack could not penetrate to the library. The thick glass of the large windows could not reveal the cold, blustery, foreboding of the deep. The green carpet gives away the reality with a pattern of little gray and white propellers. But the carpet muffled any sounds that might penetrate and with the mahogany glass door bookcases and desks, it put one into a trance of solitude with the world of writing and reading.

Looking through the large rectangular portholes, one is brought back to reality. The dark gray overcast of clouds hung low and melded into the distant horizon with the gray-black sea. A soft swell and small waves with the occasional whitecap stretched out the meet the clouds. We were now on the high seas, four thousand meters from the nearest land mass below us on the ocean bottom. The only sensation is the slow side to side rolling interspersed with a sporadic shudder. The only sound is the creaking of the interior furnishings against the massive steel structure accompanied by the frequent turning of pages from the otherwise silent patrons. The only thought was contemplating how one hundred and fifty thousand tons of mostly steel could float and lumbar in such solitude over an endless expanse of grayness. The only reality was quiet contemplation and wonder.

And now there came the great chattering. It is eight-thirty and the official opening of the library - the clack of the key in the large keyhole of each upper right-hand mahogany-framed glass door. Each right-hand door was swung open perpendicular to the shelf of books and slid back into its slot. When the four and one-half such cabinets on each side of each shelf where thus swung open on one side, the librarian returned to push a little cog in each left-hand door to free it into its perpendicular position and thusly slide it back into its slot. The upper doors thus freed to allow air and hands to the volumes, by magic the lower doors, both left and right, could now be swung to attention and pushed back into their daytime resting positions. Now the books, the literary, the words, the ideas, the romances, the tragedies; now revealed from behind framed glass walls, could enlighten the day and the mind. Silent melancholy returned and the enlightenment of the soul began.