dumped into her through six hatchways, more or less, by twelve
winches or so, with clatter and hurry and racket and heat, in a
cloud of steam and a mess of coal-dust. As long as you keep her
propeller under water and take care, say, not to fling down barrels
of oil on top of bales of silk, or deposit an iron bridge-girder of
five ton or so upon a bed of coffee-bags, you have done about all
in the way of duty that the cry for prompt despatch will allow you
to do.



XIV.



The sailing-ship, when I knew her in her days of perfection, was a
sensible creature. When I say her days of perfection, I mean
perfection of build, gear, seaworthy qualities and case of
handling, not the perfection of speed. That quality has departed
with the change of building material. No iron ship of yesterday
ever attained the marvels of speed which the seamanship of men
famous in their time had obtained from their wooden, copper-sheeted
predecessors. Everything had been done to make the iron ship
perfect, but no wit of man had managed to devise an efficient
coating composition to keep her bottom clean with the smooth
cleanness of yellow metal sheeting. After a spell of a few weeks
at sea, an iron ship begins to lag as if she had grown tired too
soon. It is only her bottom that is getting foul. A very little
affects the speed of an iron ship which is not driven on by a
merciless propeller. Often it is impossible to tell what