ch wire terminating in a marked dial with a
movable indicator, containing in its scope every order and answer
required in handling the massive hulk, either at the dock or at
sea--which eliminated, to a great extent, the hoarse, nerve-racking
shouts of officers and sailors.

From the bridge, engine-room, and a dozen places on her deck the
ninety-two doors of nineteen water-tight compartments could be closed in
half a minute by turning a lever. These doors would also close
automatically in the presence of water. With nine compartments flooded
the ship would still float, and as no known accident of the sea could
possibly fill this many, the steamship _Titan_ was considered
practically unsinkable.

Built of steel throughout, and for passenger traffic only, she carried
no combustible cargo to threaten her destruction by fire; and the
immunity from the demand for cargo space had enabled her designers to
discard the flat, kettle-bottom of cargo boats and give her the sharp
dead-rise--or slant from the keel--of a steam yacht, and this improved
her behavior in a seaway. She was eight hundred feet long, of seventy
thousand tons' displacement, seventy-five thousand horse-power, and on
her trial trip had steamed at a rate of twenty-five knots an hour over
the bottom, in the face of unconsidered winds, tides, and currents. In
short, she was a floating city--containing within her steel walls all
that tends to minimize the dangers and discomforts of the Atlantic
voyage--all that makes life enjoyable.

Unsinkable--indestructible, she carried as few boats as would satisfy
the laws. These, twenty-four in number, were securely covered and lashed
down to their chocks on the upper deck, and if launched would hold five
hundred people. She carried no useless, cumbersome life-rafts;
but--because the law required it--each of the three thousand berths in
the passengers', officers', and crew's quarters contained a cork jacket,
while about twenty circular life-buoys were strewn along the rails.

In view of her absolute superiority to other craft, a rule of
navigation thoroughly believed in by some captains, but not yet openly
followed, was announced by the steamship company to apply to the
_Titan_: She would steam at full speed in fog, storm, and sunshine, and
on the Northern Lane Route, winter and summer, for the following good
and substantial reasons: First, that if another craft should strike her,
the force of the impact would be distribute