Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/45

Rh us on. Soon the wheels began turning again, but very slowly; one of them had been damaged during the stoppage, and its spokes and paddles scraped the hull of the ship. The engine had to be stopped again, and we had to content ourselves with the screw. The night was fearful; the fury of the tempest was redoubled; the Great Eastern had fallen into the trough of the sea and could not right herself; at break of day there was not a piece of iron-work remaining on the wheels. They hoisted a few sails in order to right the ship, but no sooner were they hoisted than they were carried away; confusion reigned everywhere; the cable-chains, torn from their beds, rolled from one side of the ship to the other; a cattle-pen was knocked in, and a cow fell into the ladies' saloon through the hatchway; another misfortune was the breaking of the rudder-chock, so that steering was no longer possible. Frightful crashes were heard; an oil tank, weighing over three tons, had broken from its fixings, and, rolling across the tween-decks, struck the sides alternately like a battering-ram. Saturday passed in the midst of a general terror, the ship in the trough of the sea all the time. Not until Sunday did the wind begin to abate, an American engineer on board then succeeded in fastening the chains on the rudder; we turned little by little, and the Great Eastern righted herself. A week after we left Liverpool we reached Queenstown. Now, who knows, sir, where we shall be in a week?"

must be confessed the Doctor's words were not very comforting, the passengers would not have heard them without shuddering. Was he joking, or did he speak seriously? Was it, indeed, true, that he went with the Great Eastern in all her voyages, to be present at some catastrophe? Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.

However, the Great Eastern continued her course, tossing like a canoe, and keeping strictly to the " shortest line" of steamers. It is well known, that on a flat surface, the nearest way from one point to another is by a straight line.