The Great Stone of Sardis | Page 2

to contain everything. As the more modern hull held nothing but
the machinery, it was small in comparison with the superincumbent upper hull, and thus
the force of the engine, once needed to propel a vast mass through the resisting medium
of the ocean, was now employed upon a comparatively small hull, the great body of the
vessel meeting with no resistance except that of the air.
It was not necessary that the two parts of these compound vessels should always be the
same. The upper hulls belonging to one of the transatlantic lines were generally so
constructed that they could be adjusted to any one of their lower or motive-power hulls.
Each hull had a name of its own, and so the combination name of the entire vessel was
frequently changed.
It was not three o'clock when the Euterpe-Thalia passed through the Narrows and moved
slowly towards her pier on the Long Island side of the city. The quarantine officers, who
had accompanied the vessel on her voyage, had dropped their report in the official tug
which had met the vessel on her entrance into the harbor, and as the old custom-house
annoyances had long since been abolished, most of the passengers were prepared for a
speedy landing.
One of these passengers--a man about thirty-five--stood looking out over the stern of the
vessel instead of gazing, as were most of his companions, towards the city which they
were approaching. He looked out over the harbor, under the great bridge gently spanning
the distance between the western end of Long Island and the New Jersey shore--its
central pier resting where once lay the old Battery--and so he gazed over the river, and
over the houses stretching far to the west, as if his eyes could catch some signs of the
country far beyond. This was Roland Clewe, the hero of our story, who had been
studying and experimenting for the past year in the scientific schools and workshops of
Germany. It was towards his own laboratory and his own workshops, which lay out in the
country far beyond the wide line of buildings and settlements which line the western bank
of the Hudson, that his heart went out and his eyes vainly strove to follow.
Skilfully steered, the Thalia moved slowly between high stone piers of massive
construction; but the Euterpe, or upper part of the vessel, did not pass between the piers,
but over them both, and when the pier-heads projected beyond her stern the motion of the
lower vessel ceased; then the great piston, which supported the socket in which the ball of
the Euterpe moved, slowly began to descend into the central portion of the Thalia, and as
the tide was low, it was not long before each side of the upper hull rested firmly and
securely upon the stone piers. Then the socket on the lower vessel descended rapidly until

it was entirely clear of the ball, and the Thalia backed out from between the piers to take
its place in a dock where it would be fitted for the voyage of the next day but one, when it
would move under the Melpomene, resting on its piers a short distance below, and,
adjusting its socket to her ball, would lift her free from the piers and carry her across the
ocean.
The pier of the Euterpe was not far from the great Long Island and New Jersey Bridge,
and Roland Clewe, when he reached the broad sidewalk which ran along the river-front,
walked rapidly towards the bridge. When he came to it he stepped into one of the
elevators, which were placed at intervals along its sides from the waterfront to the
far-distant point where it touched the land, and in company with a dozen other
pedestrians speedily rose to the top of the bridge, on which moved two great platforms or
floors, one always keeping on its way to the east, and the other to the west. The floor of
the elevator detached itself from the rest of the structure and kept company with the
movable platform until all of its passengers had stepped on to the latter, when it returned
with such persons as wished to descend at that point.
As Clewe took his way along the platform, walking westward with it, as if he would thus
hasten his arrival at the other end of the bridge, he noticed that great improvements had
been made during his year of absence. The structures on the platforms, to which people
might retire in bad weather or when they wished refreshments, were more numerous and
apparently better appointed than when he had seen them last, and the long rows of
benches on which passengers might sit in the open air during their transit had also
increased in