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Rh doesn't want it; if we're going for a spell ashore, he won't come, but stays here poking about the wheels. He was the first man in all Europe to see that gas would finally supplant steam for maritime vessels; and Black gave him carte blanche to carry out his ideas on this ship. You may be surprised to hear it, but fore and aft in those great cigar-shaped ends of ours we have nothing but gas—three million feet, at a pressure of between two and three atmospheres. Why, man, it's the idea of the century; for every four pounds of coal burnt by an Atlantic liner, we don't burn a pound. We can steam for ten days without lighting a fire; and all the coal we need to go round the world will go in our bunkers. Save for that, and Karl Remey's genius, there wouldn't be a man jack of us with a neck to call his own to-day. Now, we snap our fingers at the best of them; there isn't a cruiser that can live with the thirty knots we can show; and there isn't a line-of-battle ship swimming that could get the better of us while our engines are moving. It's a big claim you think, but wait until you see us in action, then you'll know how much we owe to the little man in rags, but who has one of the clearest brains that ever was put into human being."

I was silent under this revelation, for it came to me that, with all the terrors of the great ship, there was also a scientific side, which