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For an instant Bryce Cardigan stared at her; then a slow, mocking little smile crept around the corners of his mouth, and his eyes lighted with mirth. "Glorious news, my dear Shirley, perfectly glorious! So the old fox has gone to San Francisco, eh? Left in a hurry and via the overland route! Couldn't wait for the regular passenger-steamer to-morrow, eh? Great jumping Jehoshaphat!
There we could lie, under protection of the gun-boats, and repair the damages to our machinery. We accepted his offer at once. I can hardly imagine a situation of greater helplessness, than a place on board a Western passenger-steamer under the guns of a hostile battery. A battle-field is no comparison. On solid earth the principal danger is from projectiles.
The dictograph which Shirley had asked Bryce to obtain for her in San Francisco arrived on the regular passenger-steamer on Thursday morning and Bryce called her up to ask when she desired it sent over. "Good morning, Mr. Cardigan," she greeted him cheerily. "How do you feel this morning? Any the worse for having permitted yourself to be a human being last night?"
"Mr. Moorshed goes forward, lookin' unusual 'appy, even for him. The Marines was enjoyin' a committee-meetin' in their own flat. "After that, it fell dark, with just a little streaky, oily light on the sea an' any thin' more chronic than the Archimandrite I'd trouble you to behold. She looked like a fancy bazaar and a auction-room yes, she almost looked like a passenger-steamer.
She made one short cruise, during which she fell in with two United States men-of-war, that avoided a fight with her on account of her superior strength. At the end of her cruise the war was over, and she was sold to the Mikado of Japan, whose flag she now carries. The "Nashville" was an old side-wheel passenger-steamer, of which the Confederates had made a privateer. Her career was a short one.
"The feeding here," said this candid man, "is worse if possible than the feeding at sea, when I served as doctor on board a passenger-steamer. Shall I tell you how I lost my place? Oh, say so plainly, if you don't think my little anecdote worth listening to!" "My dear sir, I am waiting to hear it." "Very good. No offence, I hope? That's right!
I was sent first to the James Adger, a passenger-steamer then being converted in New York for blockade duty, for which she was very fit; but in ten days more I was moved on to the Pocahontas, a ship built for war, a very respectable little steam-corvette, the only one of her class if such a bull as a class of one may be excused. She carried one ten-inch gun and four 32-pounders, all smooth-bores.
On one occasion lately, a passenger-steamer, 160 feet long, 16 feet broad, and capable of accommodating 600 passengers with ease, was made ready for receiving her machinery in twelve working-days. At this rate, one would be inclined to fear that business must necessarily soon come to a dead stop: but there is not the slightest appearance of such result, nor is it even apprehended.
A Northeast gale off Hatteras: immense gray combers, five to the mile, charging shoreward, occasionally breaking, again lifting their heads too high in the effort, truncated as by a knife, and the liquid apex shattered to spray; an expanse of leaden sky showing between the rain-squalls, across which heavy background rushed the darker scud and storm-clouds; a passenger-steamer rolling helplessly in the trough, and a square-rigged vessel, hove to on the port tack, two miles to windward of the steamer, and drifting south toward the storm-center.
It is impossible to over-estimate the unfortunate effect produced throughout the world by the discovery of bombs on board a German passenger-steamer, and of their secretion in the holds of Allied munition ships.
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