Browning and Sedgwick reached New York and took passage on the first outgoing Cunarder.  When the ship steamed out of the harbor, it entered at once into a lively sea, and the great craft grew strangely unsteady.  Browning was a good sailor, but Sedgwick found it was all he could do to maintain his equanimity.  “Jack,” he said at last, “this is worse exercise then riding a Texas steer.”  “Did you ever ride a Texas steer?” asked Browning.  “Indeed I have,” said Sedgwick.  “The cowboys have a game of that kind.  When a lot of steers are corraled, they climb up on the cross-bar over the gate; the gate is opened, the steers are turned out with a rush, and the science is to drop from the cross-bar upon a steer and ride him.  If you miss, you are liable to be trodden to death.  If you strike fairly, then the trick is to see how long you can hold on.  It is rough exercise, but I believe it is preferable to this perpetual rising, falling and rolling.  The infernal thing seems to work like an Ingersoll drill.  It turns a quarter of a circle on one’s stomach with every blow it strikes.”

They had sailed into an expiring storm that was fast losing its strength; the waves were breaking down, and by the time night came on the ship was running nearly on an even keel, only gently rolling as it swept magnificently on its voyage.

The two miners walked the deck, or sat by the rail, until far into the night, admiring the glorified structure on which they rode; watching the stars and the sea, and saw with other things the beautiful spectacle of another ship as grand as their own, that swept close by them on its way to New York.  Its whole 500 feet of length was a blaze of light, and as the Titans whistled hoarsely to each other a greeting without abating their speed, it seemed to the two landsmen as though two stars had met in space, saluted and passed on, each in its own sublime orbit.

Sedgwick and Browning soon made the acquaintance of several passengers.  A day or two later an animated conversation sprang up in the smoking room.  An American was declaring that his country was the greatest on earth because it could feed the world from its mighty food area.

An Englishman disputed the claim, because the profits of the manufacturers of little England were more than all the profits from all the lands of the United States.

A Frenchman claimed the palm for France, because in France the people were artists; from a little basis, from material well-nigh worthless in itself, the Frenchman could, by infusing French brain into it, create a thing of beauty for which the world was glad to exchange gold and gems.