“Sounds like something good being cooked, don’t it? I s’pose there’ll be a bit o’ something to eat soon. I’m growing streaky, and could eat anything, from biscuit up to bull-beef. Well, what’s the matter?” he cried, as a fiercer shrieking came along with clouds of vapour. “That go in the wrong place? Well, will that do?”
He shifted the direction of the nozzle, but the noise was as bad as ever.
“Well, you are hard to please, and you’ll have to take it now as I like to give it you, so off you go, my lad.”
“All right, Bob,” I replied; “I’m going,” and saturated with the moisture of my strange vapour-bath, I went along the narrow passage by the bulwarks, to find to my astonishment that I had walked out of a dense fog into the clear sunshine; and when I looked back, it was to see the white vapour towering up as if to reach the skies.
Chapter Forty Three.
I was faint and hungry, but I could not help standing there for a few minutes in the hot sunshine, which sent a pleasant glow through my damp clothes, and watching the wonderful great wreaths of steam rolling and circling up in the bright light, which made them look as if the pearly lining of sea-shells were there in a gaseous state in preparation before sinking in solution down into the sea.
Here the wreaths looked soft and pearly and grey, there they were flushed with a lovely pink which, as the steam-cloud curled over, became scarlet and orange and gold. In places where they opened as they ascended, the gold-rayed blue sky showed through, to give fresh effects of beauty, while high up, there at times were the upper parts of the masts standing out as if they belonged to some smaller ship sailing away through a thick sea-fog of an ocean far above the level where I stood.
I was gazing wonderingly at the beautiful effects produced by the bright sunshine upon the vapour, forgetting all about our danger for the moment in spite of the steady clank of the double pump, which came in regular pulsation above the hiss and roar of the steam, when my name was suddenly pronounced behind me, and turning sharply, I saw Miss Denning standing there, looking very pale, and with a scared expression in her eyes that was painful to see.