“Well, ma’am,” pleaded the Captain apologetically, “only just one place more and you will then have ‘killed all the lions’; that is, all save the Dockyard, which Master Bob will have to tell you about.”
“Do let us go, mamma! I do so want to see them making the biscuits. They do it all by machinery, just fancy!” said Nellie coaxingly. “Do, let us go, please, won’t you?”
“Do, please,” also pleaded Bob, “it will be so very jolly!”
“I suppose I must give in,” sighed his mother. “Oh, Captain Dresser, Captain Dresser, you have a good deal to answer for!”
The old sailor only chuckled in response; and, giving the necessary orders to the boatmen, the wherry, which had come down rapidly from Porchester, the tide having turned and being now on the ebb, was pulled in to the Gosport shore, its passengers landing at Clarence Yard, the great food depot of the Navy.
Here they saw all that was to be seen, gazing with wonder at the vast stores of things eatable accumulated for the service of the fleet—Bob and Miss Nell being particularly interested in the bread-factory and bakery, where the attendant who showed them over the place completed their satisfaction by filling their respective pockets with the curious hexagonal-shaped biscuits there made, “thus provisioning them,” as the Captain said, “for the remainder of their stay.”
They crossed back from Gosport to Portsmouth by the floating bridge, which, of course, Bob wanted to know all about, the Captain explaining to him how it was fixed on two chains passing through the vessel and moored on either shore, so as to prevent the “bridge” from being swayed by the action of the tide, which runs very strongly in and out of the harbour at the point of its passage.
“But how does the bridge move?” asked the inquiring Bob, full of questions as usual. “I can’t see how it can, if it be chained up like Rover!”
“There is a steam-engine in the centre of the vessel, as you can see for yourself, there,” replied the Captain, pointing to the funnels that bore out his statement. “This engine works a pair of vertical wheels inside that casing between the two divisions of the boat; and these wheels, which are each some eight feet in diameter and cogged, wind in the chains at one end, paying them out at the other.”
“I see,” said Bob; and the floating bridge having by this time reached its terminus at the Portsmouth side of the water, they all stepped ashore and made their way home, Mrs Strong declaring that she had had “enough of going about, for one day at least!”