decks on her! There's the deck you walk on to, from the wharf, all
shut in, with windows along it, and the after cabin with the long
table, and above that the deck with all the chairs piled upon it, and
the deck in front where the band stand round in a circle, and the
pilot house is higher than that, and above the pilot house is the
board with the gold name and the flag pole and the steel ropes and
the flags; and fixed in somewhere on the different levels is the
lunch counter where they sell the sandwiches, and the engine room,
and down below the deck level, beneath the water line, is the place
where the crew sleep. What with steps and stairs and passages and
piles of cordwood for the engine,--oh no, I guess Harland and Wolff
didn't build her. They couldn't have.

Yet even with a huge boat like the Mariposa Belle, it would be
impossible for her to carry all of the crowd that you see in the boat
and on the wharf. In reality, the crowd is made up of two
classes,--all of the people in Mariposa who are going on the
excursion and all those who are not. Some come for the one reason and
some for the other.

The two tellers of the Exchange Bank are both there standing side by
side. But one of them,--the one with the cameo pin and the long face
like a horse,--is going, and the other,--with the other cameo pin and
the face like another horse,--is not. In the same way, Hussell of the
Newspacket is going, but his brother, beside him, isn't. Lilian Drone
is going, but her sister can't; and so on all through the crowd.


And to think that things should look like that on the morning of a
steamboat accident.