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The room in which she now found herself was an apartment about twenty feet square, lighted at one end by two very large circular ports, or scuttles, let into the side of the ship, affording ample illumination during the daytime, while the hours of darkness were provided for by half a dozen electric lights disposed about the cabin, mounted on handsome aethereum brackets, and furnished with opal shades, shaped and tinted to represent flowers.
I suppose you had some good reason for so doing?" remarked the colonel, chiming into the conversation. "I had no less than three good reasons for leaving the hull of the ship unpainted," answered the professor. "In the first place, aethereum is quite insensible to the attacks of air and water it never oxidises, and paint was therefore unnecessary for its preservation.
Arrived here, they sought out a certain spot on the deck, about midway between the pilot-house and the fore end of the superstructure, and quite close to the port rail; and, having found it, they at once proceeded to remove three small aethereum discs from the deck, disclosing three sunk bolt-holes so arranged as to form the angles of an equilateral triangle measuring eighteen inches along each side.
The floor was covered with a rich Turkey carpet, into which one sank ankle deep; the chairs, sofas, the massive sideboard, the wide table, in fact all the furniture in the room, was constructed of aethereum and modelled after the choicest designs, the upholstery being in rich embossed velvet of a delicate light-blue shade.
There was nothing for it, of course, but to assent, or be for ever discredited in the eyes of the king and his followers, and Lethbridge very good-naturedly submitted, the more readily, perhaps, since von Schalckenberg had insisted, as a measure of precaution, upon our each donning a suit of aethereum chain mail under our clothes. You will guess the result.
The walls, divided up in the same manner as those of the other apartment, were adorned with choice pictures, and exquisite statues of frosted aethereum were grouped on pedestals at frequent intervals all round the room.
Then, when the concrete had become properly hardened, a substantial flagstaff of aethereum was stepped into the hole in a position accurately corresponding with the North Pole of the earth, and also made secure by being built in or "set" in concrete, which completely filled the hole.
Why, it seems to be absolutely devoid of weight altogether. What is it, professor?" "Thad, my good sir, is my new medal, which I gall `aethereum' begause of ids wonderful lighdness. See here." There was a very handsome cut glass water-jug, full, standing on the table in a capacious salver of hammered brass. The professor took up the jug and emptied it into the salver, almost filling the latter.
The trio hastened to the after part of the deck, and, raising a trap-door which the professor indicated, withdrew therefrom a thin pliant wire hawser made, like almost everything else in the ship, of aethereum which, having secured one end of it to a ring-bolt in the after extremity of the deck, they coiled down in readiness for use as a tow-line.
The bulkheads were of frosted aethereum, divided up into panels by fluted Corinthian pilasters of the same metal, supporting a massive cornice and a coved ceiling, the wall panels being enriched with graceful designs in polished aethereum surrounding choice paintings in water-colour, while the ceiling was painted to represent a cloud-dappled sky, with cupids flitting hither and thither among the clouds.
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