There is nothing here for display. The inner skin of the
gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of my head and 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 grey 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.
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