five minutes of midnight. The chief furnished Ingram an
oversuit and the young engineers dropped through manholes and down
vertical and spiral ladders into the cellar of the steamer, the bottom of
which was thirty feet below the water level.

"The 'Campania,'" said Siemens, "has a strong double bottom that
forms a series of water-tight compartments which, filled with water,
furnish ballast when necessary. On the second steel or false bottom
of the steamer, fore and aft, are located the boilers, furnaces,
and coal-bunkers. We have fourteen double-ended boilers, fitted
longitudinally in two groups, in two water-tight compartments, and
separated by huge coal-bunkers. Each boiler is eighteen feet in diameter
and seventeen feet long. The thickness of the steel boilerplate is
1-17/32 inches. Above each group of boilers rises 130 feet in height a
funnel nineteen feet in diameter, which, if a tunnel, would easily admit
the passage of two railway trains abreast."

George saw the fires lighted, and when the furnaces required more coal,
suddenly a whistle brought fifty stokers or firemen, the automatic
furnace doors flew open, and a gleam of light flooded everything. Long
lances made draft-holes in the banks of burning coal, through which the
air was sucked with increasing roar. The round, red mouths of the hundred
craters snapped their jaws for coal, which was fed them by brawny men
whose faces were streaked with grimy perspiration, and their bodies
almost overcome by heat. The hundred furnaces are kept at almost white
heat from New York to Liverpool.

"Four hours on, and four hours off, and the best quality of food are some
of the recent improvements," said Siemens.

George Ingram shook his head, and his heart ached as he witnessed the
stokers, and resolved to do his utmost to mitigate the hardships of
labor. "What are the duties of the stokers?" inquired George.

"Our stokers," replied Siemens, "must be men of strength and skill, for
they both feed and rake the fires. The ashes and slag must be hoisted and
dumped into the ocean, and twice an hour, as the gauges indicate, fresh
water is let into the boilers. Daily the boilers convert into steam over
a hundred tons of water, which, condensed, is used over and over again."

"What quantity of coal do you use?"

"About three hundred tons per day, or an average of nearly two thousand
tons per voyage. The coal carrying capacity of the "Campania," however,
when needed as an arme