even than that order, was a list of the several hundred stewards,
together with a designation of the post of each in case of casualty. I
noticed that thirty or forty of them were told off "to control
passengers." After all, we were in the midst of the Atlantic, and in a
crisis the elevator-boys themselves would have more authority than any
passenger, however gorgeous. A thought salutary for gorgeous
passengers--that they were in the final resort mere fool bodies to be
controlled! After I had seen the countless store-rooms, in the recesses
of each of which was hidden a clerk with a pen behind his ear and a
nervous and taciturn air, and passed on to the world of the second
cabin, which was a surprisingly brilliant imitation of the great world
of the saloon, I found that I held a much-diminished opinion of the
great world of the saloon, which I now perceived to be naught but a thin
crust or artificial gewgaw stuck over the truly thrilling parts of the
ship.

It was not, however, till the next day that I realized what the most
thrilling part of the ship was. Under the protection of another high
officer I had climbed to the bridge--seventy-five feet above the level
of the sea--which bridge had been very seriously disestablished by an
ambitious wave a couple of years before--and had there inspected the
devices for detecting and extinguishing fires in distant holds by merely
turning a handle, and the charts and the telephones and the telegraphs,
and the under-water signaling, and the sounding-tubes, and the officers'
piano; and I had descended by way of the capstan-gear (which, being
capable of snapping a chain that would hold two hundred and sixty tons
in suspension, was suitably imprisoned in a cage, like a fierce wild
animal) right through the length of the vessel to the wheel-house aft.
It was comforting to know that if six alternative steering-wheels were
smashed, one after another, there remained a seventh gear to be worked,