Mr. Carville. "The launch starts down there."

A stiff breeze was blowing and we were occupied with our hats until we
reached the Communipaw side. Mr. Carville muttered a warning about no
smoking "... five hundred dollars fine ... necessary, you see," and I
saw his corn-cob no more until we reached his room.

"There she is," he remarked, indicating two very red funnels projecting
above a roof. "That's the _Raritan_."

A faint smell of petroleum was in the air as we threaded our way among
the blue-ended barrels and lengths of oily hose. In one way this ship of
Mr. Carville's was novel to me. There was about her decks no noise of
cranes lifting cargo, no open hatchways, no whiffs of steam or screaming
of pulley-blocks, with huge bales of merchandise swinging in mid-air. As
we ascended the accommodation ladder I saw nothing save a young man with
thick gauntlets standing guard over an iron wheel valve in a big pipe
that ran along the deck. A stout, iron-grey man in uniform was leaning
against the sky-light on the poop-deck as we came past the funnels. With
a slight bashfulness Mr. Carville turned, and making a vague
introductory gesture, pronounced our names. I caught the words "Chief
Officer" and "come to have a look round!" There was a little further
parley, in which the "Old Man," "stores," and "The Second" bore some
part. I did not pay much attention to the conversation, to tell the
truth. I was looking northward across New York Bay and comprehending the
significance of Mr. Carville's parallel between Manhattan and the City
of the Lagoons. For a moment I forgot that I was standing on the deck of
a ship. From my lacustrine vantage the whole of the wide harbour lay in
view, the more distant edge of Long Island forming an irregular and
dusky line betwixt the blue waters and the bluer sky. In the middle
distance stood the statue of Liberty, islanded in the incoming tide-way,
while away beyond, rising in superb splendour from a pearly haze, the
innumerable towers of Manhattan floated and gleamed before my eyes.
Irresistibly there came to me a memory of Turner's Venetian
masterpieces, and I knew that even that great magician would have seized
upon the scene before me with avidity, would have delighted in the
fairy-like threads of the bridges, the poetic groupings of the vast
buildings, and the innumerable fenestrations of the _campanili_. One by
one half-forgotten fragments of Byron came back to me as I looked out
across t