afloat upon the sea; detaches it from
all other houses and from the world, and literally commits himself to
it. This was the greatest sea town that had ever been built; these were
the first inhabitants of it; theirs were the first lives that were lived
in these lovely rooms; this was one of the greatest companies that had
ever been afloat together within the walls of one ship. No wonder they
were proud; no wonder they were preoccupied with the source of their
pride.

But things stranger still to the life of the sea are happening in some
of the hundreds of cells which our giant section-knife has laid bare. An
orchestra is practising in one of them; in another, some one is catching
live trout from a pond; Post Office sorters are busy in another with
letters for every quarter of the western world; in a garage,
mechanicians are cleaning half a dozen motor-cars; the rippling tones of
a piano sound from a drawing-room where people are quietly reading in
deep velvet armchairs surrounded by books and hothouse flowers; in
another division people are diving and swimming in a great bath in water
deep enough to drown a tall man; in another an energetic game of squash
racquets is in progress; and in great open spaces, on which it is only
surprising that turf is not laid, people by hundreds are sunning
themselves and breathing the fresh air, utterly unconscious of all these
other activities on which we have been looking. For even here, as
elsewhere, half of the world does not know and does not care how the
other half lives.

All this magnitude had been designed and adapted for the realization of
two chief ends--comfort and stability. We have perhaps heard enough
about the arrangements for comfort; but the more vital matter had
received no less anxious attention. Practically all of the space below
the water-line was occupied by the heaviest things in the ship--the
boilers, the engines, the coal bunkers and the cargo. And the
arrangement of her bulkheads, those tough steel walls that divide a
ship's hull into separate compartments, was such that her designers
believed that no possible accident short of an explosion in her boilers
could sink her. If she rammed any obstruction head on, her bows might
crumple up, but the steel walls stretching across her hull--and there
were fifteen of them--would prevent the damage spreading far enough aft
to sink her. If her broadside was rammed by another ship, and one or
even two of these compartmen