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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: VANDALIA, the last remaining cable slipped. For a time - and there
was no onlooker so cold-blooded as to offer a guess at its duration
- the CALLIOPE lay stationary; then gradually drew ahead. The
highest speed claimed for her that day is of one sea-mile an hour.
The question of times and seasons, throughout all this roaring
business, is obscured by a dozen contradictions; I have but chosen
what appeared to be the most consistent; but if I am to pay any
attention to the time named by Admiral Kimberley, the CALLIOPE, in
this first stage of her escape, must have taken more than two hours
to cover less than four cables. As she thus crept seaward, she
buried bow and stem alternately under the billows.
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