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carnage. A boy - and they were all boys - with his lower jaw blasted away. Another boy with both hands burned off. An English lad whose severed legs floated alongside him like jettisoned oars. A German sailor whose sprung intestines encircled his midriff like some grisly life-preserver. The pen trembles in my hand. I can write no more.
     
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    29 October 1914
    Lat. 10°35 ‘S, Long. 38° 11’ W
     
    Every day, fair or foul, the Great War chews up and spits out another ten thousand mothers’ sons, sometimes many more. Were the Ada’s scores of able-bodied Englishmen, Irishmen, Welshmen and Scotsmen to sail home now and repatriate themselves, the majority would probably wind up in the trenches. The beast needs feeding. As for those hundreds of young men who boarded the Titanic intending to settle in New York or Boston or perhaps even the Great Plains, they too are vulnerable, since it’s doubtless only a matter of months before President Wilson consigns several million Yanks to the Western Front.
     
    And so it happens that a consensus concerning the present cataclysm has emerged amongst our population. I suspect we would have come to this view even without our experience of naval warfare. In any event, the Great War is not for us. We sincerely hope that the participating nations extract from the slaughter whatever their hearts desire: honour, glory, adventure, relief from ennui. But I think we’ll sit this one out.
     
    Yesterday I held an emergency meeting with my capable Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Futrelle, my level-headed Minister of State, Mr Andrews, and my astute Minister of War, Major Butt. After deciding that the South Atlantic is entirely the wrong place for us to be, we set a north-westerly course, destination Central America. I can’t imagine how we’re going to get through the canal. Mrs Wilde assures me we’ll think of something. Lord, how I adore my wife. In January we’re expecting our first child. This happy phenomenon, I must confess, caught us completely by surprise, as Mrs Wilde is forty-six years old. Evidently our baby was meant to be.
     
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    15 November 1914
    Lat. 7°10’N, Long. 79°15’W
     
    Mirabile dictu - we’ve done it! Thanks to Mrs Astor’s diamond tiara, Mrs Guggenheim’s ruby necklace, and a dozen other such gewgaws, we managed to bribe, barter and wheedle our way from one side of the Isthmus of Panama to the other. Being a mere 110 feet side to side, the lock chambers barely accommodated our machine, but we nevertheless squeaked through.
     
    The Ada is heading south-southwest, bound for the Galapagos Islands and the rolling blue sea beyond. I haven’t the remotest notion where we might end up, luscious Tahiti perhaps, or historic Pitcairn Island, or Pago Pago, or Samoa, and right now I don’t particularly care. What matters is that we are rid of both the Belle Époque and the darkling plain. Bring on the South Pacific, typhoons and all.
     
    Night falls over the Gulf of Panama. By the gleam of my electric torch I am reading the Oxford Book of English Verse. Three stanzas by George Peele seem relevant to our situation. In the presence of Queen Elizabeth, an ancient warrior doffs his helmet, which “now shall make a hive for bees”. No longer able to fight, he proposes to serve Her Majesty in a different way. “Goddess, allow this aged man his right to be your beadsman now, that was your knight.” The poem is called “Farewell to Arms”, a sentiment to which we Battle of Trindade veterans respond with enthusiastic sympathy, though not for any reasons Mr Peele would recognize. Farewell, ignorant armies. Auf Wiedersehen, dreadful Kronprinz Wilhelm. Adieu, fatuous Good Hope. Hail and farewell.
     
    I am master of a wondrous raft, and soon I shall be a father as well. Over two thousand pilgrims are in my keeping, and at present every soul is safe. Strange stars glitter in a stranger sky. Colonel Astor’s Airedale and Mr Harper’s Pekingese howl at the