the late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger of
capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing her
god-speed.

For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of a
hotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of the
passengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding
forces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a ship without a deck; and the
deck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-called
promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the
hotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck," which is rigidly
reserved "for navigators only." There the true life of the ship goes on,
and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the
Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels:
"Thlee piecee bàmboo, two piecee puff-puff, wàlk-along ìnside, no can
see." Here the "wàlk-along," the motive power, is "ìnside" with a
vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the
engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the
communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an
engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even
know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or
down from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently
at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser,
the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the
promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the
sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the ship
one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a
single human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on the
towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only
inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the