Halfway up the plank of the first ocean liner he had ever been transported on, he felt a pulling-down.  Gravity working on him?  He looked back, and his bride was not six feet behind him but all the way down the plank, back at its base.  She must have turned around.  He had wanted to yell something, but it wouldn’t have reached her.  He took each measured step — past ascending passengers — all the way back down.  I’m already feeling motion sick, she said just before he got to her.  He took her hand, and together they looked up the plank to the mammoth vessel that, after a month’s honeymoon, was to drop them off someplace even more foreign.  Under the ship, the two stood.  Standing thus made him feel aware of himself, as though his bride and he were existing in a pose, being recorded by cameras, with the eyes of his countryfolk over and behind him, watching each moment of a dream unfold.  The old way of looking was setting out to meet the new.  He watched himself as he then lifted his bride in his arms and took the first step back up the plank.  He stopped, for a sense of her, of her weight.  When she then shut her eyes and made herself lighter by clinging more tightly to him, he took balanced steps on each rung of the plank, all the way up to the lowest deck.