I heard him sing out--"Below there, ahoy! Shake her up, shake her
up! Heave on a hundred million billion tons of brimstone!"

"Ay-ay, sir!"

"Pipe the stabboard watch! All hands on deck!"

"Ay-ay, sir!"

"Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals
and sky-scrapers!"

"Ay-ay, sir!"

"Hand the stuns'ls! Hang out every rag you've got! Clothe her
from stem to rudder-post!"

"Ay-ay, sir!"

In about a second I begun to see I'd woke up a pretty ugly
customer, Peters. In less than ten seconds that comet was just a
blazing cloud of red-hot canvas. It was piled up into the heavens
clean out of sight--the old thing seemed to swell out and occupy
all space; the sulphur smoke from the furnaces--oh, well, nobody
can describe the way it rolled and tumbled up into the skies, and
nobody can half describe the way it smelt. Neither can anybody
begin to describe the way that monstrous craft begun to crash
along. And such another powwow--thousands of bo's'n's whistles
screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred
thousand worlds like ours all swearing at once. Well, I never