We still heard the child's weeping while going down in the elevator. Papa and Mamma looked confused, but unquenchable curiosity lighted up their eyes.

"To go up the Empire State Building for the sixteenth time," muttered Mr. Adams, "is very, very interesting, gentlemen!"

For the last time we rode on top of a Fifth Avenue bus. Mannequins with pink ears looked at us out of the show windows. Between the automobiles passed three circus elephants who were inviting New Yorkers to visit an evening performance. Life proceeded apace.

We went to the top of the Empire State Building.

How many times, passing by, we could not contain ourselves, sighing and muttering: "Ah, the devil!—Well, well! That's something!" or words to that effect. Yet we went up only two hours before our departure from America!

The first elevator lifted us at once to the eighty-sixth story. The rise lasts only one minute. Naturally, one could not see here either stories or landings. We raced in a steel tube, and only the ears, which seemed to have filled with water, and a strange little chill around the region of the abdomen, made us aware of the fact that we were rising at an incredible rate of speed. The elevator did not clang or knock. It moved precipitately, smoothly, noiselessly. Only at the door tiny lamps flared, counting off tens of stories. At the eighty-sixth story landing we stepped out on somewhat weakened legs.

The second elevator brought the passengers to the roof of the building, and through large spyglasses we saw New York. It had snowed the day before. On the streets the snow had already melted. But on the flat roofs of the skyscrapers it still lay in pure, delicate white squares. The mountain air at the top of the buildings kept the snow from melting. An incredible city, winged with the comb of piers, lay below. The grey winter air was slightly golden from the sun. Over the black narrow streets crept tiny automobiles and the trains of the elevated railroad. The noise of the city reached here but faintly. One could not even hear the baying of the police sirens. All around, out of the midday twilight of the New York streets proudly rose the skyscrapers, their countless windows gleaming. They stood like the guards of the city, armed with glittering steel. At the pier of the Cunard-White Star Line could be seen a steamship with three stacks. The stacks were yellow, with black rings. That was the Majestic. Fifty-six thousand tons of steel, wood, rugs, and mirrors—the English steamer on which we were to depart that day. Yet, how small and helpless it seemed from the roof of the Empire State Building!

Two hours later we were on the steamer. The Majestic was making its last trip. After that this steamer, quite young yet, will be junked.1 With the appearance of the Normandie and the Queen Mary, new colossal Atlantic steamers, the Majestic was too modest and too slow-moving, although it crosses the ocean in excellent time—six days.

The huge bulk of the Majestic had already left the walls of the pier, and we heard for the last time:

"Good-bye, gentlemen! Seriously, I hope that you have understood what America is!"

And over the heads of the people at the pier frantically waved the trusty old hat of Mr. Adams and the handkerchief of his wife, the manly driver, who twice drove us across the entire continent, the never tiring, patient, ideal fellow traveller of the road.

When the Majestic sailed past Wall Street, darkness fell and lights appeared in the skyscrapers. In those windows gleamed the gold of electricity, but perhaps also real gold. This last golden vision of America escorted us to the very egress into the ocean.

The Majestic gathered speed. The farewell light of a buoy flashed by, and a few hours later there was not a trace left of America. The cold January wind blew a large ocean wave.

1 The Majestic was overhauled, and on April 23, 1937, it was launched as H.M.S. Caledonia, a training ship of the British Royal Navy. — C. M.