all the decks on her!
There's the deck you walk on to, from the wharf, all shut in, with
windows along it, and the after cabin with the long table, and above
that the deck with all the chairs piled upon it, and the deck in front
where the band stand round in a circle, and the pilot house is higher
than that, and above the pilot house is the board with the gold name and
the flag pole and the steel ropes and the flags; and fixed in somewhere
on the different levels is the lunch counter where they sell the
sandwiches, and the engine room, and down below the deck level, beneath
the water line, is the place where the crew sleep. What with steps and
stairs and passages and piles of cordwood for the engine,--oh no, I
guess Harland and Wolff didn't build her. They couldn't have.

Yet even with a huge boat like the Mariposa Belle, it would be
impossible for her to carry all of the crowd that you see in the boat
and on the wharf. In reality, the crowd is made up of two classes,--all
of the people in Mariposa who are going on the excursion and all those
who are not. Some come for the one reason and some for the other.

The two tellers of the Exchange Bank are both there standing side by
side. But one of them,--the one with the cameo pin and the long face
like a horse,--is going, and the other,--with the other cameo pin and
the face like another horse,--is not. In the same way, Hussell of the
Newspacket is going, but his brother, beside him, isn't. Lilian Drone is
going, but her sister can't; and so on all through the crowd.

And to think that things should look like that on the morning of a
steamboat accident.

How strange life is!

To think of all these people so eager and anxious to catch the steamer,
and some of them running to catch it, and so fearful that they might
miss it,--the morning of a steamboat accident. And the captain blowing
his whistle, and warning them so severely that he would leave them
behind,--leave them out of the accident! And everybody crowding so
eagerly to be in the accident.

Perhaps life is like that all through.

Strangest of all to think, in a case like this, of the people who were
left behind, or in some way or other prevented from going, and always
afterwards told of how they had escaped being on board the Mariposa
Belle that day!

Some of the instances were certainly extraordinary. Nivens, the lawyer,
escaped from being there merely by the fact that he was away in the
city.

Towers,