Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/313

 chanced to overhear the remark, "an' if you wor in the tanks, you 'd 'ave blessed Capt'n Halpin for wot he done. Wy, sir, that coat o' whitewash made a difference o' no less than eight degrees in the cable-tanks the moment it was putt on. Before that we was nigh stooed alive. Arter that we 've on'y bin baked."

"Indeed?" said Robin, but before he could say more the bluff cable-man had returned to his bakery.

"Just look here," he continued, turning again to Letta; "the great ships around us seem like little ones, by contrast, and the little ones like boats,—don't they?"

"Yes, and the boats like toys," said Letta, "and the people in them like dolls."

"True, little one, and yonder comes a toy steamer," said Sam, who had been contemplating the paying-out gear in silent admiration, "with some rather curious dolls on it."

"Oh!" exclaimed Letta, with great surprise, "look, Robin, look at the horses—just as if we were on shore!"

Among the many surprising things on board of the big ship, few were more striking for incongruity than the pair of grey carriage-horses, to which Letta referred, taking their morning exercise composedly up and down one side of the deck, with a groom at their heads.