“All aboard?” sang out the captain from the pilot-house on the hurricane deck.
“Aye, aye, all aboard,” was the response from Fritz’s friend the deck hand, who, with only a red flannel shirt on and a pair of check trousers—very unsailorlike in appearance altogether—stood in the bows.
“Then fire away and let her rip!” came the reply from the captain above, followed by the tinkle of an electric bell in the engine-room, the steamer’s paddles revolving with a splash the moment afterwards and urging her on her watery way.
Round the Battery at Manhattan Point she glided, and up the East River through Hell Gate into Long Island Sound—one of the most sheltered channels in the world, and more like a lake or lagoon than an arm of the sea—leaving a broad wake of creamy green foam behind her like a mill-race, and quivering from stem to stern with every revolution of her shaft, with every throb of her high-pressure engines!
Chapter Fourteen.
An Unexpected Meeting.
The Rhode Island steamer was a splendid boat, Fritz found, when he came to look about him; for, she was a “floating palace,” every inch of her, with magnificent saloons and state-cabins stretching away the entire length of the vessel fore and aft. A light hurricane deck was above all, on which the passengers could promenade up and down to their hearts’ content, having comfortable cane-bottomed seats along the sides to sit down upon when tired and no gear, or rope coils, or other nautical “dunnage,” to interrupt their free locomotion on this king of quarter-decks, which had, besides, an awning on top to tone down the potency of the western sun.
With three tiers of decks—the lowermost, or main, containing the engine-room and stowage place for cargo, as well as the men’s quarters; the lower saloon, in which were the refreshment bars, and what could only appropriately be called the “dining hall,” if such a term were not an anachronism on board ship; and, thirdly, the upper saloon, containing the principal cabins and state-rooms, in addition to the graceful promenading hurricane deck surmounting the whole—the steamer had the appearance of one of those bungalow-like pretended “houses” which children build up with a pack of cards. Only that, this illusion was speedily destroyed by the huge beam of the engine, working up and down like a monster chain-pump on top of the whole structure—not to speak of the twin smoke-stacks on either side of the paddle-boxes emitting volumes of thick, stifling vapour, and the two pilot-houses, one at each extremity of the hurricane deck; for, like most American river steamers, the boat was what was called a “double-ender,” built whale-boat fashion to go either backwards or forwards, a very necessary thing to avoid collision in crowded waters.