136 WINTER SUNSHINE 



feeling was added the delightful thought that the 

 "devil's hole" would soon be cleared and my long 

 fast over. 



Presently, after the darkness had set in, signal 

 rockets were let off from the stern of the vessel, 

 writing their burning messages upon the night ; and 

 when answering rockets rose slowly up far ahead, I 

 suppose we all felt that the voyage was essentially 

 done, and no doubt a message flashed back under 

 the ocean that the Scotia had arrived. 



The sight of the land had been such medicine to 

 me that I could now hold up my head and walk 

 about, and so went down for the first time and took 

 a look at the engines, those twin monsters that 

 had not stopped once, or apparently varied their 

 stroke at all, since leaving Sandy Hook; I felt like 

 patting their enormous cranks and shafts with my 

 hand, then at the coal bunks, vast cavernous re 

 cesses in the belly of the ship, like the chambers of 

 the original mine in the mountains, and saw the 

 men and firemen at work in a sort of purgatory of 

 heat and dust. When it is remembered that one of 

 these ocean steamers consumes about one hundred 

 tons of coal per day, it is easy to imagine what a 

 burden the coal for a voyage alone must be, and one 

 is not at all disposed to laugh at Dr. Lardner, who 

 proved so convincingly that no steamship could ever 

 cross the ocean, because it could not carry coal enough 

 to enable it to make the passage. 



On the morrow, a calm lustrous day, we steamed 

 at our leisure up the Channel and across the Irish 



