with their chests, as the latter operation is not
favourable to good singing. About a dozen
men seemed to go round between the poles, as
if they were taking a little gentle walking exercise.
It is true they were nothing but mere
outriggers, the regular crew having received a
small payment on account, which they were
supposed to be spending in the traditional
sailor-fashion at various out-ports. The discipline
of the ship was sheer higgledy-piggledy
and no one seemed to feel this more than
Captain Harrison, who was not the commander
except by courtesy, until the vessel arrived at
Weymouth. The floating island had not yet
received the sailing certificate of the Board of
Trade, and was not yet formally handed over by
the contractors to the proprietors. For all this,
the shareholding interest was very strong on
board, and the visitors were told by one of these
gentlemen, when a spot of ink was dropped
upon a cabin table, "never to forget the fact
that they were guests of the company."

The morning brought with it a stiff gale of
wind, and the promised steadiness of the floatin^g
island was tested more severely than it was ever
thought likely it would be in the Channel. If
the shares were half as steady as the vessel they
represent the shareholders would have every
reason to be satisfied with their enterprise. The
speed was undiminished at half power, according
to the engineer's report, and also according to
the pilot's measurement. The motion was
nothing but a side-rocking motion, scarcely felt
in the centre, without any pitching, and this is
all that has been provided for by the lamp-
swinging apparatus and other things in the
cabins. These calculations may possibly be
upset when she comes to the vexed question of
the long Atlantic swell, and I leave them to
the test of experience.

There was quite a little Stock Exchange on
board in the persons of the principal share-
holders, and operations were in all probability
made as she rounded Par Point, or ploughed
rapidly along the Channel in sight of the white
cliffs of Premium.

If the wind has the credit of playing many
strange tricks with vessels at sea, it certainly
ought to have the credit of playing even more
strange tricks on the deck with the passengers.
It causes them to put on unsightly disguises, as
if they were giving a comic entertainment,
and were coming up, half discovered, from
behind a green baize table in the characters of
a number of those fancy creations, which must
appear as strange to those who know the world
as an African Earthman or a Zulu Kaffir would
appear in a drawing-room. The wind not only
causes such passengers to envelop themselves
in transformation caps, but it alters the very
aspect of their faces. It pinches up the cheeks,
it reddens the nose, it dishevels the hair, and
almost prevents the son from recognising his
father.

A storm of rain is even more remarkable in
its effect upon the ship's officers and the ship's
passengers. Coming up from below, just after
a sharp and sudden shower, I found the huge
vessel entirely in the hands of a few oil-skin
pirates. The director of the engines—the most
gentlemanly of men—was not to be recognised in
the black, wet, shiny, coal-meter on the paddle-
box; and generally the floating island seemed to
be inhabited by a race of men who were partly
fishermen and partly sewer-keepers. An hour,
with a little sunshine, soon restored Upper
Thames-street to its ordinary condition, and
brought out the Rotten-row loungers once more
upon its surface.

One great comfort experienced in walking
upon the deck of the great ship, was the
impossibility, as it seemed, of getting in anybody's
way. You might look over the side without
being hauled away by a rope, or walk down any
passage without interfering with the work of the
vessel. Six hundred persons were said to be on
board, but no one was in the least aware of it.
The hardy traveller, who rejoiced in sea-legs that
had never been lost, and who loved to pass his
days upon the paddle-box, might have taken fifty
people up with him, without getting in the way
of captain, engineer, or pilot. The latter
gentleman, a short, sharp man, with a very shrill
voice always coming through a bright speaking-
trumpet, and who was always in a restless state
of movement, never complained for an instant of
being interrupted. If you went to perform
the common but forbidden operation of speaking
to the man at the wheel, you were only left in
doubt as to which man you should speak to,
because there were a dozen of them. They stood
directed by an officer, in a square steering-house,
with windows in front, and looked like a squad
of marines who were going through some exercise.
There were patent indexes, and many
other officers, communicating with each other
along the ship's length, but you might walk
for hours before they were forced upon your
notice. You might wander to the large glass
skylight over the engine-room, and look down
on a slow-moving mass of green iron and
bright, oily steel, as large in appearance as
temple columns, or the Marble Arch at Hyde
Park; but the working engineers were
invisible, far down in the gulf of an engine-room
beneath, which was reached by clean network
galleries, like the staircases of a great conservatory.
You might look down the deep, square
stoke-holes on deck, like the shafts of coal-
mines, and see nothing through the narrowing
Jacob's ladder of gridiron bars but a red glare
across the bottom; and hear nothing but the
roaring of engines, and the ringing of iron upon
iron, or of iron upon stone.

You might go to the extreme head of the vessel,
and gaze at the dull, misty coast, or the frothy
water, and amuse yourself with a strange
upcast of wind, which came so strongly up the
sides of the vessel that the weight of a child
would have been sustained upon it, as a pea is
sometimes blown up on the top of a tobacco-
pipe. Looking along the ship from this elevated
post, you saw her whole length aud breadth, with
her rows of boats hanging over like a fringe on