shape of a giant ship, all the properties of a ship began to
appear and increase in hideous exaggeration. A rudder as big as a giant
elm tree, bosses and bearings of propellers the size of a
windmill--everything was on a nightmare scale; and underneath the iron
foundations of the cathedral floor men were laying on concrete beds
pavements of oak and great cradles of timber and iron, and sliding ways
of pitch pine to support the bulk of the monster when she was moved,
every square inch of the pavement surface bearing a weight of more than
two tons. Twenty tons of tallow were spread upon the ways, and hydraulic
rams and triggers built and fixed against the bulk of the ship so that,
when the moment came, the waters she was to conquer should thrust her
finally from earth.

And the time did come. The branching forest became clothed and thick
with leaves of steel. Within the scaffoldings now towered the walls of
the cathedral, and what had been a network of girders and cantilevers
and gantries and bridges became a building with floors, a ship with
decks. The skeleton ribs became covered with skins of wood, the metal
decks clothed with planks smooth as a ball-room floor. What had been a
building of iron became a town, with miles of streets and hundreds of
separate houses and buildings in it. The streets were laid out; the
houses were decorated and furnished with luxuries such as no palace ever
knew.

And then, while men held their breath, the whole thing moved, moved
bodily, obedient to the tap of the imprisoned waters in the ram. There
was no christening ceremony such as celebrates the launching of lesser
ships. Only the waters themselves dared to give the impulse that should
set this monster afloat. The waters touched the cradle, and the cradle
moved on the ways, carrying the ship down towards the waters. And when
the cradle stopped the ship moved on; slowly at first, then with a
movement that grew quicker until it increased to the speed of a
fast-trotting horse, touching the waters, dipping into them, cleaving
them, forcing them asunder in waves and ripples that fled astonished to
the surrounding shores; finally resting and floating upon them, while
thousands of the pigmy men who had roosted in the bare iron branches,
who had raised the hideous clamour amid which the giant was born,
greeted their handiwork, dropped their tools, and raised their hoarse
voices in a cheer.

The miracle had happened. And the day came when th