At which moment Mr. Yardo turns from the controls with a wide smile of
triumph and says "Eighteen twenty-seven, girls!" and the world goes
weightless and swings upside down.
Then still with no sense of any time-lapse I am lying in the big
lighted hold, with the sound of trampling all round: it is somehow
filtered and far off and despite the lights there seems to be a globe
of darkness around my head. I hear my own voice repeating, "M'Clare?
How's M'Clare?"