'The Centaur', Chapter 3, by Algernon Blackwood

"Lonely! Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?"

-Thoreau

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Picking up where Chapter 1 left off!

mistral: a strong, cold, northwesterly wind that blows from southern France into the Gulf of Lion in the northern Mediterranean

Serpentine: The Serpentine is a lake in Hyde Park, London.

The picture used is the RMS Saxonia, around 1900. It's a passenger steamship that actually did sail the Mediterranean as well as the North Atlantic. It's a British owned ship, Cunard Line, but it's entirely plausible that a British ship could be making a stop in a French port on its way to the Levant. We'll find out next chapter the captain of the ship is German, but it's not uncommon for crews of ships to have a different nationality than the owners of the ships. International shipping has always been a big ol' mess.

Regardless, point is: a passenger steamship of the period. European ones will all look fairly similar regardless.

[BloingDidoing]

So the guy only gave up the spiritual perception of bigness?