kinds, some stowed away like mattresses,
and it showed me that only the servants of
the company were allowed to set the ship on
fire. Our candles were properly taken away
from us, by the bedroom stewards, at ten
o'clock the night before, and we were left in the
dark to grope our way to our couches. Here,
at eight o'clock in the morning, was a candle
that had been stuck against a block of wood,
and that had burnt down below the level
of its dangerous socket. How long it would
have been before it caught the woodwork, it is
impossible to say, but I extinguished it at
once, without waiting to test the experiment.

Just above this meat-house was the grand
saloon, the Versailles, or rather the Italian
Court of the ship, an apartment that had
consumed much capital in its elaborate and Crystal
Palace-like decoration, that might, perhaps,
have been more navally expended. A
number of carefully painted panels, divided by
large plates of solid looking-glass, by the richly
curtained alcove doors that led to nests of
berths, and by the berth window-holes cut out
of a wall of golden flowers, were very pleasant
things to look upon; but the whole of this
apartment was a gilded sham. It had nothing
like sea-going comfort about it. Its space
was limited for so large a ship, and its many
mirrors were engaged all day and night in deluding
the passengers as to the extent of their
chief sitting-room. The couches are placed
round those two highly decorated and beglazed
funnel shafts, which stood at each end of this
Italian Court upon the water, a couple of smiling
volcanoes. As you looked in those glittering
mirrors, to adjust your cravat, or brush back
your flowing hair, you might have seen the dim
outline of a death's-head peering over your
shoulder.

Behind their deceitful faces was a steaming
mass of destructive water, ready to explode at
any moment. Their duty was to act as
concealed funnels; their construction was to make
them concealed boilers. The water constantly
being passed through their outer and their inner
surface (a space like that which would be made
by putting a pint seed measure inside a quart
measure), was a shield which protected the
loungers in the ship's drawing-room from
the heat of the inner, or furnace-funnel, and
a feeder of fluid, at the same time, to
the boilers below. This water was boiled in
its progress, and passed into the boilers warm
instead of cold, for engineering purposes,
and the whole safety of the thing was provided
for by a valve as large as a man's hand. In
theory it was beautiful: in practice it has failed.
From the stopping of a valve, the water-
chamber became a closed boiler of explosive
steam, and the result was an accident (as every-
body knows) which would have destroyed the
vessel but for the extreme solidity of its
construction. This solidity of construction would
have been no consolation to most of the
passengers if the explosion had happened at the
dinner hour on Wednesday, when their banquet
was spread in this apartment, nor to the ladies
in their drawing-room just beyond, if it had
occurred a couple of hours later in the evening,
when the band of the floating island was
beguiling the time with a concert. The fault was
a workman's fault, and upon the unfortunate
workmen the full weight of its consequences
has fallen.

As we passed Gravesend, on our voyage to
the Nore, on Thursday morning, the whole
county of Kent seemed to be assembled in piers
and gardens to watch our progress. The people
looked like beds of flowers as they sat motionless
on the land; and the ships in the river
were bending down with the human fruit on
their decks and in their rigging. By degrees
the two coasts became misty, as they receded
obliquely on either side; and we steamed out
of the river cleft-stick at half the speed of our
engines, which gave us thirteen miles an hour.
At the Nore our anchor was once more let go,
like a gigantic diver, into the sea, with a roar
like the heavy rumble of thunder; the water for
some distance round was turned into a frothing
well of champagne, and it was some time before
its excitement subsided. Our dinner, on this
occasion, took place in the chief dining-room
of the ship, an apartment divided from the
grand saloon by an intervening kitchen, and
running, with a supplemental chamber, past the
paddle-boxes, under the first and second decks
and along the centre of the floating island. The
construction of this apartment was, in the main,
the same as that of the chief saloon; only one
funnel, however, belonging to the screw engines,
passing through it from ceiling to floor. The
other two funnels, further aft, which appear
amongst the masts of the vessel, belong to
the same engines, while the two funnels fore
(one of which is now destroyed) belong
to the paddle engines. The dining saloon
was cramped and confined, like the gilded
showroom, and round the sides were the same doors,
areas, passages, and windows, belonging to
berths, like the lower section of any ordinary
houses in an ordinary street, except that the
windows were square holes without any glass in
them. I passed the greater part of the night
looking at the pictures upon deck—at the brass-
faced moon shining through the rope ladders—
at the lines of rigging which seemed to cross
the hazy sky, like many rows of black rails—at
the blinking yellow lights off different parts of
the coast—at the silent men on watch, who
paced the deck, or leant lazily over the deep
sides of the vessel and at the groups of tarred
and greasy riggers, who clustered thickly round
the hatches of the sea-going Italian Court,
listening to the band music down in the ladies'
saloon. The next night, at the same hour, the
scene was far different.

On the morning of Friday, the anchor was
weighed, for the second time, by piccolo power,
aided and abetted by the singing of the men.
Those men who were most musical were least
useful in pushing against the capstan poles