BY RUDYARD KIPLING,

Author of "The Jungle Book," "Plain Tales from the Hills," etc.


It was her first voyage, and though she was only a little cargo
steamer of two thousand five hundred tons, she was the very best of
her kind, the outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements
in framework and machinery; and her designers and owners thought just
as much of her as though she had been the "Lucania." Any one can make
a floating hotel that will pay her expenses, if he only puts enough
money into the saloon, and charges for private baths, suites of rooms,
and such like; but in these days of competition and low freights every
square inch of a cargo boat must be built for cheapness, great hold
capacity, and a certain steady speed. This boat was perhaps
two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet wide, with
arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her main and sheep on
her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory was the amount of
cargo that she could store away in her holds. Her owners--they were
a very well-known Scotch family--came round with her from the North,
where she had been launched and christened and fitted, to Liverpool,
where she was to take cargo for New York; and the owner's daughter,
Miss Frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, admiring the new
paint and the brass-work and the patent winches, and particularly the
strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a bottle of very
good champagne when she christened the steamer the "Dimbula." It was
a beautiful September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness (she
was painted lead color, with a red funnel) looked very fine indeed.
Her house flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time
acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new