Difference between revisions of "S.S. Stupendica"
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| − | '''''Against the Day'', pages | + | '''''Against the Day'', pages 510-517 of the original edition:''' |
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| + | "FOURTH CLASS was separated from the weather decks by only the flimsiest of glass-and-sashwork partitions, a space long and narrow as a passenger coach in a train, rows and rows of bench seats and racks overhead for luggage. There were stewards just like in the other classes, who brought blankets with ''Stupendica'' insignia woven into them, Triestine coffee in mugs, newspapers in several languages, Viennese pastry, ice bags for hungover heads. A whole collection of | ||
| + | American students bound for study in Europe were traveling in fourth class, gathering regularly in the saloon to smoke cigarettes and insult each other, and Kit found himself preferring the environment here over his palatial accommodations a couple-three decks up and forward of the stacks. | ||
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| + | [...] | ||
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| + | "IT HAD BEGUN to seem as if she and Kit were on separate vessels, distinct versions of the ''Stupendica'', pulling away slowly on separate courses, each bound to a different destiny. | ||
"Nor as it turned out was ''S.S. Stupendica'' all she seemed. She had another name, a secret name, which would be made known to the world at the proper hour, a secret identity, latent in her present conformation, though invisible to the average passenger. What she would turn out to be, in fact, was a participant in the future European war at sea which everyone was confident would come. Some liners, after 1914, would be converted to troop carriers, others to hospital ships. The Stupendica’s destiny was to reassume her latent identity as the battleship S.M.S. Emperor Maximilian — one of several 25,000 - ton dreadnoughts contemplated by Austrian naval planning but, so far as official history goes, never built. The Slavonian steamship line that currently owned and operated her seemed mysteriously to have sprung, overnight, from nowhere. Even identifying its board of directors offered occasion for lively dispute in ministries throughout Europe. In shipping circles, nobody had heard of any of them. British naval intelligence was flummoxed. Though her boilers appeared to be of the Schultz-Thorneycroft design favored by Austria-Hungary, the engines were modified cousins of the same Parsons turbines to be found these days among the more sizable British men-o'-war, capable of twenty-five knots and more, should the occasion demand, for as long as the coal supply lasted. Root Tubsmith had discovered this much this from nosing around in the 516 lower spaces of the vessel, despite signs posted in all major tongues warning of the dire fate awaiting any who trespassed. He found shell-rooms-to-be and giant powder magazines fore and aft, not to mention, several decks up, located symmetrically about the ship, some very curious circular cabins, which seemed intended for gun-turrets—kept retracted to just below the main deck for the moment but ready, if needed, to be raised hydraulically to operating height, and their twelve-inch barrels, stored far below, brought up by hoist and fitted in a matter of minutes. | "Nor as it turned out was ''S.S. Stupendica'' all she seemed. She had another name, a secret name, which would be made known to the world at the proper hour, a secret identity, latent in her present conformation, though invisible to the average passenger. What she would turn out to be, in fact, was a participant in the future European war at sea which everyone was confident would come. Some liners, after 1914, would be converted to troop carriers, others to hospital ships. The Stupendica’s destiny was to reassume her latent identity as the battleship S.M.S. Emperor Maximilian — one of several 25,000 - ton dreadnoughts contemplated by Austrian naval planning but, so far as official history goes, never built. The Slavonian steamship line that currently owned and operated her seemed mysteriously to have sprung, overnight, from nowhere. Even identifying its board of directors offered occasion for lively dispute in ministries throughout Europe. In shipping circles, nobody had heard of any of them. British naval intelligence was flummoxed. Though her boilers appeared to be of the Schultz-Thorneycroft design favored by Austria-Hungary, the engines were modified cousins of the same Parsons turbines to be found these days among the more sizable British men-o'-war, capable of twenty-five knots and more, should the occasion demand, for as long as the coal supply lasted. Root Tubsmith had discovered this much this from nosing around in the 516 lower spaces of the vessel, despite signs posted in all major tongues warning of the dire fate awaiting any who trespassed. He found shell-rooms-to-be and giant powder magazines fore and aft, not to mention, several decks up, located symmetrically about the ship, some very curious circular cabins, which seemed intended for gun-turrets—kept retracted to just below the main deck for the moment but ready, if needed, to be raised hydraulically to operating height, and their twelve-inch barrels, stored far below, brought up by hoist and fitted in a matter of minutes. | ||
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"The shelter deck proved to be concealing a magazine full of torpedoes. Lighter decks topside were designed to fold upward and in other intricately hinged directions, to become armor-plating and casemates for the smaller-caliber guns. At the same time, the ''Stupendica'' was also able somehow to collapse, as she lost her upper decks, into classic battleship profile, till she was crouching upon the sea with no more freeboard than necessary, wide and low and looking for a fight. Deckhands were intensively drilled in the rapid rigging of stages, over the lifelines and onto which they were to leap, when ordered, nimbly as aerial artistes, and begin swiftly to paint the ship’s sides in 'dazzle' camouflage the colors of sea, sky, and storm cloud, in two-shaded false dihedrals to look like ships’ prows, or running at angles close to the slopes of the waves, eventually to fade into and out of invisibility as the patterns tangled with and untangled from the clutter of whitecaps. 'Something out there, Fangsley, I can feel it.' 'Can’t make much out, sir...' 'Oh? Well what the bloody hell’s that then?' 'Ah. Appears to be a torpedo, actually, and headed straight for midships too.' 'I can see that, you idiot, I know what a torpedo looks like–' at which point the interesting exchange is abruptly curtailed. | "The shelter deck proved to be concealing a magazine full of torpedoes. Lighter decks topside were designed to fold upward and in other intricately hinged directions, to become armor-plating and casemates for the smaller-caliber guns. At the same time, the ''Stupendica'' was also able somehow to collapse, as she lost her upper decks, into classic battleship profile, till she was crouching upon the sea with no more freeboard than necessary, wide and low and looking for a fight. Deckhands were intensively drilled in the rapid rigging of stages, over the lifelines and onto which they were to leap, when ordered, nimbly as aerial artistes, and begin swiftly to paint the ship’s sides in 'dazzle' camouflage the colors of sea, sky, and storm cloud, in two-shaded false dihedrals to look like ships’ prows, or running at angles close to the slopes of the waves, eventually to fade into and out of invisibility as the patterns tangled with and untangled from the clutter of whitecaps. 'Something out there, Fangsley, I can feel it.' 'Can’t make much out, sir...' 'Oh? Well what the bloody hell’s that then?' 'Ah. Appears to be a torpedo, actually, and headed straight for midships too.' 'I can see that, you idiot, I know what a torpedo looks like–' at which point the interesting exchange is abruptly curtailed. | ||
| − | "AS KIT AND ROOT descended ladder by ladder into the engine spaces of the ''Stupendica'', they found the ship deeper than they had imagined, and much less horizontally disposed. Faces turned to watch them. Eyes bright as the flames inside the furnaces blinked open and shut. The boys were sweating torrents before they got below the waterline. Down at the bottom of the ship, men worked skids full of coal across the deck to be dumped in piles in front of the boilers. Pulses of Hell-colored light lit up the blackened bodies of the stokers each time the firedoors were opened. From what Root had been able to learn earlier, the passenger liner ''Stupendica'', this peaceful expression of high-bourgeois luxury, had been constructed in Trieste, at the Austrian Lloyd Arsenale. At the same time, in parallel, also in Trieste at the neighboring Stabilimento Tecnico, the Austrian navy had 517 apparently been building their dreadnought Emperor Maximilian. At some point in the construction schedule, the two projects... it was difficult for any of Root’s sources to convey ... merged. How? At whose behest? No one was quite sure of much, except that one day there was only the single ship. But in which shipyard? Different witnesses recalled different yards, others swore she was no longer 'in' either, simply appearing unforeseen one morning off the Promontorio, fresh from some dead-of-night christening, not a soul visible on deck, silent, tall, surrounded by a haze of somehow defective light." | + | "AS KIT AND ROOT descended ladder by ladder into the engine spaces of the ''Stupendica'', they found the ship deeper than they had imagined, and much less horizontally disposed. Faces turned to watch them. Eyes bright as the flames inside the furnaces blinked open and shut. The boys were sweating torrents before they got below the waterline. Down at the bottom of the ship, men worked skids full of coal across the deck to be dumped in piles in front of the boilers. Pulses of Hell-colored light lit up the blackened bodies of the stokers each time the firedoors were opened. From what Root had been able to learn earlier, the passenger liner ''Stupendica'', this peaceful expression of high-bourgeois luxury, had been constructed in Trieste, at the Austrian Lloyd Arsenale. At the same time, in parallel, also in Trieste at the neighboring Stabilimento Tecnico, the Austrian navy had 517 apparently been building their dreadnought ''Emperor Maximilian''. At some point in the construction schedule, the two projects... it was difficult for any of Root’s sources to convey ... ''merged''. How? At whose behest? No one was quite sure of much, except that one day there was only the single ship. But in which shipyard? Different witnesses recalled different yards, others swore she was no longer 'in' either, simply appearing unforeseen one morning off the Promontorio, fresh from some dead-of-night christening, not a soul visible on deck, silent, tall, surrounded by a haze of somehow defective light." |
| + | |||
| + | [...] | ||
| + | |||
| + | "'No, mister, no no — he does not understand — there are no staterooms, it is no longer the ''Stupendica'' up there. That admirable vessel has sailed on to its destiny. Abovedecks now you will find only His Majesty’s dreadnought, ''Emperor Maximilian''. It is true that for a while the two ships did share a common engine room. A ‘deeper level’ where dualities are resolved. A Chinese sort of situation, ''nicht wahr'''?" | ||
Latest revision as of 14:09, 7 November 2025
Against the Day, pages 510-517 of the original edition:
"FOURTH CLASS was separated from the weather decks by only the flimsiest of glass-and-sashwork partitions, a space long and narrow as a passenger coach in a train, rows and rows of bench seats and racks overhead for luggage. There were stewards just like in the other classes, who brought blankets with Stupendica insignia woven into them, Triestine coffee in mugs, newspapers in several languages, Viennese pastry, ice bags for hungover heads. A whole collection of American students bound for study in Europe were traveling in fourth class, gathering regularly in the saloon to smoke cigarettes and insult each other, and Kit found himself preferring the environment here over his palatial accommodations a couple-three decks up and forward of the stacks.
[...]
"IT HAD BEGUN to seem as if she and Kit were on separate vessels, distinct versions of the Stupendica, pulling away slowly on separate courses, each bound to a different destiny.
"Nor as it turned out was S.S. Stupendica all she seemed. She had another name, a secret name, which would be made known to the world at the proper hour, a secret identity, latent in her present conformation, though invisible to the average passenger. What she would turn out to be, in fact, was a participant in the future European war at sea which everyone was confident would come. Some liners, after 1914, would be converted to troop carriers, others to hospital ships. The Stupendica’s destiny was to reassume her latent identity as the battleship S.M.S. Emperor Maximilian — one of several 25,000 - ton dreadnoughts contemplated by Austrian naval planning but, so far as official history goes, never built. The Slavonian steamship line that currently owned and operated her seemed mysteriously to have sprung, overnight, from nowhere. Even identifying its board of directors offered occasion for lively dispute in ministries throughout Europe. In shipping circles, nobody had heard of any of them. British naval intelligence was flummoxed. Though her boilers appeared to be of the Schultz-Thorneycroft design favored by Austria-Hungary, the engines were modified cousins of the same Parsons turbines to be found these days among the more sizable British men-o'-war, capable of twenty-five knots and more, should the occasion demand, for as long as the coal supply lasted. Root Tubsmith had discovered this much this from nosing around in the 516 lower spaces of the vessel, despite signs posted in all major tongues warning of the dire fate awaiting any who trespassed. He found shell-rooms-to-be and giant powder magazines fore and aft, not to mention, several decks up, located symmetrically about the ship, some very curious circular cabins, which seemed intended for gun-turrets—kept retracted to just below the main deck for the moment but ready, if needed, to be raised hydraulically to operating height, and their twelve-inch barrels, stored far below, brought up by hoist and fitted in a matter of minutes.
"The shelter deck proved to be concealing a magazine full of torpedoes. Lighter decks topside were designed to fold upward and in other intricately hinged directions, to become armor-plating and casemates for the smaller-caliber guns. At the same time, the Stupendica was also able somehow to collapse, as she lost her upper decks, into classic battleship profile, till she was crouching upon the sea with no more freeboard than necessary, wide and low and looking for a fight. Deckhands were intensively drilled in the rapid rigging of stages, over the lifelines and onto which they were to leap, when ordered, nimbly as aerial artistes, and begin swiftly to paint the ship’s sides in 'dazzle' camouflage the colors of sea, sky, and storm cloud, in two-shaded false dihedrals to look like ships’ prows, or running at angles close to the slopes of the waves, eventually to fade into and out of invisibility as the patterns tangled with and untangled from the clutter of whitecaps. 'Something out there, Fangsley, I can feel it.' 'Can’t make much out, sir...' 'Oh? Well what the bloody hell’s that then?' 'Ah. Appears to be a torpedo, actually, and headed straight for midships too.' 'I can see that, you idiot, I know what a torpedo looks like–' at which point the interesting exchange is abruptly curtailed.
"AS KIT AND ROOT descended ladder by ladder into the engine spaces of the Stupendica, they found the ship deeper than they had imagined, and much less horizontally disposed. Faces turned to watch them. Eyes bright as the flames inside the furnaces blinked open and shut. The boys were sweating torrents before they got below the waterline. Down at the bottom of the ship, men worked skids full of coal across the deck to be dumped in piles in front of the boilers. Pulses of Hell-colored light lit up the blackened bodies of the stokers each time the firedoors were opened. From what Root had been able to learn earlier, the passenger liner Stupendica, this peaceful expression of high-bourgeois luxury, had been constructed in Trieste, at the Austrian Lloyd Arsenale. At the same time, in parallel, also in Trieste at the neighboring Stabilimento Tecnico, the Austrian navy had 517 apparently been building their dreadnought Emperor Maximilian. At some point in the construction schedule, the two projects... it was difficult for any of Root’s sources to convey ... merged. How? At whose behest? No one was quite sure of much, except that one day there was only the single ship. But in which shipyard? Different witnesses recalled different yards, others swore she was no longer 'in' either, simply appearing unforeseen one morning off the Promontorio, fresh from some dead-of-night christening, not a soul visible on deck, silent, tall, surrounded by a haze of somehow defective light."
[...]
"'No, mister, no no — he does not understand — there are no staterooms, it is no longer the Stupendica up there. That admirable vessel has sailed on to its destiny. Abovedecks now you will find only His Majesty’s dreadnought, Emperor Maximilian. It is true that for a while the two ships did share a common engine room. A ‘deeper level’ where dualities are resolved. A Chinese sort of situation, nicht wahr'?"
