A few minutes before noon
A few minutes before noon on a hot summer day , Edmund Trevelyan walked up the gang-plank of the steamship , at that moment the largest Atlantic liner afloat . Exactly at the stroke of twelve she would leave Southampton for Cherbourg , then proceed across to Queenstown , and finally would make a bee-line west for New York . Trevelyan was costumed in rough tweed of subdued hue , set off by a cut so well-fitting and distinguished that it seemed likely the young man would be looked upon by connoisseurs of tailoring as the best-dressed passenger aboard . He was followed by Ponderby , his valet , whose usually expressionless face bore a look of dissatisfaction with his lot , as though he had been accustomed to wait upon the nobility , and was now doomed to service with a mere commoner .