12 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



mysterious hum of unseen forces. Day and night, 

 from Queenstown to Quarantine, this machinery 

 does his bidding without pause or hitch. At night, 

 he can sleep serenely in his bunk — sleep serenely, 

 with a responsibility that I would not wear one hour 

 for an emperor's revenues — in the knowledge that 

 all is well. I followed him past thirteen fierce 

 furnaces that, night and day, must be stoked and 

 trimmed by eighty blackened firemen in four-hour 

 shifts. Beard of Vulcan ! Why, four minutes face 

 to face with those blindinof coals are more than 

 enough for me, and send me groping back into a 

 cooler darkness. About this submerged world of 

 work there is a strange fascination for those unac- 

 customed to the sight of it. Little thought do 

 those who yawn on the decks above give to the 

 heroic toilers underfoot. Fortunately, their risk of 

 drowning is no longer what it was, for there 

 is an automatic arrangement of hermetically-sealed 

 bulk - head doors, which, after due signalling 

 with bells and flashlight, can be controlled from 

 the bridge, shutting off from the rest of the 

 ship isolated portions threatened by an inrush of 

 water. 



Caronia hurls herself through the ocean rollers 

 with the help of quadruple expansion engines, with 

 thirteen Scotch boilers and a working pressure of 

 2IO lbs. to the square inch. A horse-power, figured 

 at 21,000, drives the manganese-bronze blades of 

 her propellers, and she owes nothing to the new- 

 fashioned turbine principle utilised in the leviathans 

 lately floated by her owners. The ocean is a 

 mighty force, but she makes little of its dignity. 

 From my plunge into these arteries of the under- 



