furnaces. Sailors were working up and down
the stairs, mechanics were fitting up tables in
the officers’ cabins, marines were tugging at
gun-carriages; every one was busy, for the
vessel was soon to be off to Portsmouth, and
from thence to start in search of a storm, in
order to test her sea-going powers. Going, to
look for a tempest! What a young Titan it
must be, whose infant amusement it is to go
looking for a tempest!

What a little world, I thought to myself, is
this vessel. How I can fancy it hereafter, when
it has long left its quiet moorings opposite the
green fields, and has broken, out into the wide
sea, when the storm lashes it, the thunders
bellow over it, and the lightnings drive their
fiery shafts at it! I can see her moving with
stately majesty to meet the vanguard of the
enemy’s fleet, breaking through a rain of iron,
and driving like a cannon-shot into the very
heart of the foe.

How old Benbow, in his grand laced cocked-
hat, deep-flapped white satin waistcoat, blue coat,
gold epaulettes, knee-breeches and silver buckles,
would be astonished, could he rise from the dead
during a modern sea battle, and go on board
such a vessel as the Warrior as it moved into
action.

What! No laying yard-arm to yard-arm, and
opening a broadside till one or the other yield
—no pouring in boarders through open port-
holes, through smashed-in poop-windows—no
driving into the captain’s cabin with pistols
and cutlasses?

“And what is that dreadful panting noise,
bosun, between decks?” says the commodore’s
ghost.

“That, an it please your honour, is the steam-
engines putting on extra power for running
down the French corvette ahead of us, the
Currant-juice (the Courageux).”

“And that noise like unloading stones,
bosun?”

“That is the getting up coals from the bunkers
for the forty furnaces.”

“And, good Heavens! where is the bowsprit
gone to, bosun?”

“Turned back on the hinge, your honour, so
as not to stop us when we run down the
enemy.”

“What a wonderful age! And what is that
enormous iron pot on deck for?”

“For riflemen, in case the enemy board us.”

“But why not put them in the main-tops, as
they used to do in our time?”

“The men don’t go up aloft now, your honour;
it’s all done with pulleys and tackle.”

“Do you ever have a mast shot away?”

“No, your honour, because they are all
iron.”

“How many sixty-eight’s do you carry?”

“Your honour is making game of an old
sailor; the two hundred pounders are our chief
guns to do heavy work with.”

“Good Heavens!” says the venerable ghost,
fading away in sheer disgust. “I don’t know
what the world is coming to.”

As I left the Warrior (after giving a gratuity
to that tremendous vendor of facts the master
gunner), descended the leviathan’s side, and took
boat for the land, I could not help thinking of
the Warrior in action, and comparing her with
Nelson’s vessels, breaking their way through the
French phalanx at Trafalgar.

Again I see those great tattered acres of canvas,
torn and flapping, moving in the long, blue
swell that sets into the bay of Cadiz, majestically
impelled by light winds from the south-west.
There are the Royal Sovereign, the Sirius,
the Téméraire, the Leviathan, and, ahead of all,
Nelson’s war-ship, the Victory, with the striped
colours flying at every mast. They are all in
shadow, and move in two fierce lines to break
the enemy’s centre.

Villeneuve, in the Bucentaur, leads on his
French fleet, on whose sails the sun shines with
fallacious brightness. Our tops are specked
scarlet with marines. The sailors, in groups of eight,
stand to their guns; the shot are ready, in pyramids;
the buckets and tompions are prepared;
the portfires burn luridly; the ships are cleared
for action; everything is sternly simple, and
cleared free for fighting; the younger boy in
the ship longs for the first gun to fire. . . . .

The ships are wrapped in a yellow sulphur-
cloud; the decks are strewn with splinters,
spent shot, fragments of fire-balls, and heaps of
dead men. The Victory alone has lost fifty men,
and her maintop-mast and all her studding-sails
and booms are shot away. One double-headed
French shot alone struck eight of her marines
dead; once or twice the ship has been on fire,
for the Victory is jammed in with French and
Spanish vessels. Worst of all—making the day
of victory a day of bitter grief to England—
Nelson has been struck on the left shoulder
by a bullet from the rifle of a Tyrolese in
the Redoutable’s mizen-top, and has been
carried below. Still we are victorious—the battle
is our own. Soon, those vessels, with drooping
flags, will be on their way to England, bearing
the body of the dead hero.

But the new Warrior in action will appear far
different to the old Victory. She will not float
into battle with puffing sails and defiant flags.
When the men are above at their guns, the
helmsman is behind his iron shield, and the rifle-
men are immured in their iron tower, there will
be below a busy world of firemen and engineers
also at their several posts, standing in the orange
blaze at furnace doors, like mute spirits, ready to
urge the vessel to her gigantic rush upon the
enemy, what time the tremendous two hundred
pounders are loading with the solid essence
of death and ruin. The bowsprit is hinged
back, the great wheels revolve, the piston
begins its untiring labour, the pent-up fury is
released. The vast vessel grinds down on the
foe, like a mad elephant upon a gang of beaters.
It severs beams, and crushes masts—men are
but as flies before its relentless fury, its Cyclopean
power. The wooden walls go down before
it, and the shot hop off it like raindrops from a
cabbage-leaf.