nd turns over just short of the turn of
the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, but
the G. P. O. serves them raw under a lick of gray official paint. The
inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern, but
the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as the
stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies almost
amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an
aperture--a bottomless hatch at present--into which our coach will be
locked. One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to the
despatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. The light below is
obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It
enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and
last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it
comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap
into the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfy
themselves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the waybill
over the hatch-coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr.
Geary. Receipt has been given and taken. "Pleasant run," says Mr. Geary,
and disappears through the door which a foot-high pneumatic compressor
locks after him.

"A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with
a tang. We are clear.

Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody-porthole through
which I watch million-lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets
hold of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known
view and darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of it I can see a postal
packet's light ploughing through the white fleece. For an instant she
gleams like a star ere she drops toward the Highgate Receiving Towers.
"The Bombay Mail," says Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch. "She's
forty minutes late."

"What's our level?" I ask.

"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?"

The bridge (let us ever bless the G. P. O. as a repository of ancientest
tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he
stands on the control platform that runs thwartships overhead. The bow
colloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is
feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4,300 feet.

"It's steep to-night," he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under.
"We generally pick up an easterly drau