Miss Van Buren's society as possible during this trip.
Consequently I saw with pleasure that the passengers in their
deck-chairs must group round the skipper at his wheel, as there is no
other comfortable place. There will be no notice up on board "Lorelei":
"Please do not speak to the man at the wheel." The more he is spoken
to--by the right person--the better he will like his job. What I have to
pray for is dry weather, that the ladies may spend their days on deck,
for just as much time as they spend below I shall consider that I am
wasting. Indeed, I regret the attractiveness of the cabins, for I fear
there may be a temptation to dawdle there, or lie among cushions on the
comfortable seat-bunks on a gray or chilly day. "I hope she's as much
interested in scenery as she apparently is in history," I said to myself
as Starr and I wandered over the boat, "for the skipper-job can be
combined with the business of lecturer and _cicerone_, if that proves a
bid for popularity."

Aft of the cabins is the motor-house; and hearing our voices through the
skylight, chauffeur Hendrik left the brass-work and came to stand by his
engine. I immediately determined to study this engine thoroughly, so
that if Hendrik's intelligence prove untrustworthy in an emergency, mine
may be prepared to assist it.

He soon saw that it was useless to "show off" before me, but he enjoyed
explaining the motor in broken English to Starr. The American artist
heard with a vague smile the difference between the ordinary four-cycle
engine of an automobile, and the two-cycle engine of this marine motor,
with its piston receiving an impulse at each down stroke; tried to
understand how the charge of vaporized petrol was drawn into the
crank-chamber, and there slightly compressed; how the gas afterwards
traveled along a by-pass into the firing chamber at the upper part of
the cylinder, to be further compressed by the up-stroke of the piston
and fired by the sparking plug, while the burnt gases escaped through a
port uncovered by the piston in its downward strokes, admission and
exhaust being thus controlled by the piston movement alone.

"Great heavens! I wronged this good youth," the patient listener cried,
when he found a chance to speak. "I thought him all pinkness, and
perspiration, and purple velvet slippers, but he can pull information by
the yard out of his brain, as he does cotton waste out of his pocket.
Unfortunately, it's waste too, as far as I'm