“Come, I can add something to improve that feast,” said Slagg, drawing a piece of cheese from his pocket, and setting it before his friend.
Robin thanked him, and was about to take the cheese when Stumps snatched it up, and ran out of the room with it, laughing coarsely as he went.
“The big bully,” growled Slagg; “it’s quite obvious to me that feller will have to be brought to his marrow-bones afore long.”
“Never mind,” said Jeff, who was of a more amiable spirit than Stumps, “here’s more o’ the same sort.” He took another piece of cheese from a shelf as he spoke, and gave it to Robin.
“Now, my young toolip,” said Slagg, “havin’ finished your feed, p’r’aps you’d like to see over the big ship.”
With great delight Robin said that he should like nothing better, and, being led forth, was soon lost a second time in wonderment.
Of what use was it that Slagg told him the Great Eastern was 692 feet long by 83 feet broad, and 70 feet deep? If he had said yards instead of feet it would have been equally instructive to Robin in his then mentally lost condition. Neither was it of the slightest use to be told that the weight of the big ship’s cargo, including cable, tanks, and coals, was 21,000 tons.
But reason began to glimmer again when Slagg told him that the two largest vessels afloat could not contain, in a convenient position for passing out, the 2700 miles then coiled in the three tanks of the Great Eastern.
“This is the main tank,” said Slagg, leading his friend to a small platform that hung over a black and apparently unfathomable gulf.
“I see nothing at all,” said Robin, stretching his head cautiously forward and gazing down into darkness profound, while he held on tight to a rail. “How curious!—when I look down everything in this wonderful ship seems to have no bottom, and when I look up, nothing appears to have any top, while, if I look backward or forward things seem to have no end! Ah! I see something now. Coming in from the light prevented me at first. Why, it’s like a huge circus!”