rod near the cylinder was thought a triumph of engineering.
The boiler was in sections and provided with a salt-water pump. The
wheels were very large, which lessened the loss of power; the
smoke-stack was lofty, which increased the draught. On the other hand,
the size of the wheels exposed them to the force of the waves, and the
height of the smoke-stack to the violence of the wind. Wooden
paddle-floats, iron clamps, bosses of cast-iron--such were the wheels,
which, well constructed, could, strange though it may seem, be taken to
pieces. Three floats were always under water. The speed of the centre of
the floats only exceeded by a sixth the speed of the vessel itself; this
was the chief defect of the wheels. Moreover, the cranks were too long,
and the slide-valve caused too much friction in the admission of steam
into the cylinder. For that period the engine seemed, and indeed was,
admirable. It had been constructed in France, at the works at Bercy.
Mess Lethierry had roughly sketched it: the engineer who had constructed
it in accordance with his diagram was dead, so that the engine was
unique, and probably could not have been replaced. The designer still
lived, but the constructor was no more.

The engine had cost forty thousand francs.

Lethierry had himself constructed the "Devil Boat" upon the great
covered stocks by the side of the first tower between St. Peter's Port
and St. Sampson. He had been to Breme to buy the wood. All his skill as
a shipwright was exhausted in its construction; his ingenuity might be
seen in the planks, the seams of which were straight and even, and
covered with sarangousti, an Indian mastic, better than resin. The
sheathing was well beaten. To remedy the roundness of the hull,
Lethierry had fitted out a boom at the bowsprit, which allowed him to
add a false spritsail to the regular one. On the day of the launch, he
cried aloud, "At last I am afloat!" The vessel was successful, in fact,
as the reader has already learnt.

Either by chance or design she had been launched on the 14th of July,
the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. On that day, mounted upon
the bridge between the two paddle-boxes, looked Lethierry upon the sea,
and exclaimed, "It is your turn now! The Parisians took the Bastille,
now science takes the sea."

Lethierry's boat made the voyage from Guernsey to St. Malo once a week.
She started on the Tuesday morning, and returned on the Friday evening,
in time for the