each side, her level deck, her upright masts, her
restless pilot, and her more restless funnel-
smoke, which was beaten down by the gale, and
beaten up, and twisted about like a helpless,
struggling weathercock, in all directions. The
Joint Stock Company (limited) is ou board,
unlimited and happy. She walks the waters like a
thing of life. For the present; only for the
present.

The regular dinner had been finished about
ten minutes; the time was between half-past
five and six P.M., on Friday, the 9th of
September, 1859; we were passing Hastings, and
Belshazzar's feast had begun. A dozen of " our
own correspondents" had remained at the table
to congratulate a director of the company and a
proprietor of newspapers, upon the prospects of
the great vessel in which they were seated.
That director had just risen to acknowledge the
compliment, when death stared him, and stared
us all, in the face and spoke to us in a voice of
thunder through a dull booming sound, a crash,
another crash, and a fall of some heavy weight
upon heavy wood. A number of shrieks upon
deck, a distinct shock, a shower of broken glass
which fell upon our table and about our heads,
a smell of hot steam, and a sense of some awful
danger, brought us all upon our feet. I
instantly recollected all that had ever been said
against the vessel, all the monsters I had seen
amongst her machinery, all the mysterious noises
I had heard at the back of every partition during
the night, all the gulfs I had looked into upon
deck, and still I could come to no conclusion.
It was not my place, nor the place of any
man at, that table, amongst "our own
correspondents," to fear death. We were there
as running historians for running readers,
and it was our duty to see and record as
much as possible. Any other course of action
would have been a fraud upon our employers—
the public.

I have no particular kind of courage. I
cannot endure a cut finger; but I have sufficient
nervous excitement to carry me through
Pandemonium, and out at the other side. It carried
me through the steam, down a staircase, into
the grand saloon, which had been blown to
pieces by the explosion of the water-casing all
down the main fore funnel. Not a vestige of
the volcano in a glass case was to be seen. The
iron funnel, weighing many tons, had been shot
up from its root in the hold of the ship, through
the roof above, to fall across the deck, with its
inner casing crumpled up like dried parchment.
The hangings were torn and disordered, the
floor was covered with broken glass, the barley-
sugar-stick rails in some places were displaced,
the carpet was rolled up and smoking with damp
heat, the mirrors were either shattered or dimmed
with thick steam, and the lamps in some
places were broken down or were wrenched
awry. The gingerbread glory of the Italian
Court at sea was gone. The couch upon which
I had been sitting two hours before, with my
back to the bursting funnel-boiler, was also
gone, but the bookcase, nearly opposite, from
which I had taken a book, still remained. The
chess-boards I had specially ordered for the
evening's amusement in this arabesque
sepulchre were overturned. The floor was rent
asunder in a hundred places, and in the ladies'
saloon, along the centre of the apartment, it was
thrown up into a bow, and torn into shreds like
the strips which cover a case of oranges, or like
you may cut a bandbox with a large knife.
The private staircase of this inner drawing-room
was blown in all directions, together with its
covered way or pavilion, which stood upon deck.
Down below there was a broad, deep gulf like a
sprung mine, filled with fragments of heavy
timber, and splinters of wood, all torn as small
as if they had been prepared for special sale.
They were lying in shelving heaps against the
wall, and the whole place looked like a large
building-yard after a volcanic eruption. Down
another gulf in the Italian Court there was a
bundle of ragged planks, sticking up, in many
directions, and a pair of smaller funnels, which
had come through the floor of the spot where
the volcano in a glass-case had formerly stood,
and which were crossed like the letter X,
some distance up into the once gorgeous
apartment This part of the vessel was never
meant for sea-going purposes, but only as a
river show, and it came to a violent and
untimely end.

As I was among the first in this shattered
cell of over-decoration, I saw the captain's little
girl hurried out of a passage leading to a nest
of berths on the left, and passed on up-stairs
uninjured. She was the only person in the room
at the time of the explosion. Looking over the
rails near the left chief doorway, down a well
that had been made by the blowing away of
certain skylights, I heard several frantic cries of
"They're buried!—They're dying!—They're
smothered!" Immediately after this about a dozen
excited men began to tear frantically at a huge
jammed heap of splinters, blankets, mattresses,
doorways, couches, iron, and glass. Above the
din you could hear the regular moans of a person
in distress, and this only served further to excite
the men who were endeavouring to tear away
the obstinate rubbish.

"He's here!—He moves '—.Heave down a
rope!—Pull up a chain!—Handy, there!—He's
gone!—Hah!"—and a hundred such phrases
were shouted by every man below, while many
jumped upon the welded mass of fragments,
without knowing what they were doing. The
buried man was at last dragged out underneath
the heap by the energetic and well-directed
exertions of Mr. Hawkins, the chief boatswain, to
whom he may consider himself indebted for his
life. He presented a sickening spectacle of blood
and bruises as he was carried with loud cheers up
the saloon staircase, but his wounds were happily
slight, although he would probably have been
suffocated in a few more minutes. He was a
near neighbour of mine, as far as sleeping
accommodation went, being placed next door but
one. He had retired to his berth after dinner (as