A Floating City And the Blockade Runners
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE deck was still nothing but an immense timber-yard given up to an army of workmen. I could not believe I was on board a ship. Several thousand men?workmen, crew, engineers, officers, mechanics, lookers-on?mingled and jostled together without the least concern, some on deck, others in the engine-room; here pacing the upper decks, there scattered in the rigging, all in an indescribable pell-mell. Here fly-wheel cranes were raising enormous pieces of cast-iron, there heavy joists were hoisted by steam- windlasses ; above the engine-rooms an iron cylinder, a metal shaft in fact, was balanced. At the bows, the yards creaked as the sails were hoisted; at the stern rose a scaffolding which, doubtless, concealed some building in construction. Building, fixing, carpentering, rigging, and painting, we
...re going on in the midst of the greatest disorder. My luggage was already on board. I asked to see CARPENTERING, RIGGING, AND PAINTING. Captain Anderson, and was told that he had not yet arrived ; but one of the stewards undertook to install me, and had my packages carried to one of the aft- cabins. " My good fellow," said I to him, " the ' Great Eastern' was announced to sail on the 2Oth of March, but is it possible that we can be ready in twenty-four hours ? Can you tell me when we may expect to leave Liverpool ? " But in this respect the steward knew no more than I did, and he left me to myself. I then made up my mind to visit all the ins and outs of this immense ant-hill, and began my walk like a tourist in a foreign town. A black mire? that British mud which is so rarely absent from the pavement of English towns?covered the deck of the steamship; dirty gutters wound here and there. One might have thought oneself in the worst part of Upper Thames Street, nea...
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