promenade deck, with a door on each side of the yacht, and leading down
a flight of stairs to a long fore-and-aft passage, out of which all the
secretaries' cabins opened.
Abaft the secretaries' cabins, and occupying the whole breadth of the
boat, were a number of cabins and suites for the accommodation of Mrs.
Pulitzer, other members of the family, and guests; and abaft of these,
cut off by a 'thwartships bulkhead, were the quarters of the crew.
The lower deck was given over chiefly to stores, coal bunkers, the
engine room, the stoke-hold, and to a large number of electric
accumulators, which kept the electric lights going when the engines were
not working. There were, however, on this deck the gymnasium, and a
large room, directly under Mr. Pulitzer's bedroom, used to take the
overflow from the library.
The engines were designed rather for smooth running than for speed, and
twelve knots an hour was the utmost that could be got out of them, the
average running speed being about eight knots. The yacht had an ample
supply of boats, including two steam launches, one burning coal, the
other oil.
During my inspection of the yacht I was accompanied by my cabin-steward,
a young Englishman who had at one time served aboard the German
Emperor's yacht, Meteor. Nothing could have been more courteous than his
manner or more intelligent than his explanations; but the moment I tried
to draw him out on the subject of life on the yacht he relapsed into a
vagueness from which I could extract no gleam of enlightenment. After
fencing for some time with my queries he suggested that I might like to
have a glass of sherry and a biscuit in the secretaries' library, and,
piloting me thither, he left me.
The smoking-room was furnished with writing tables, some luxurious arm
chairs, and a comfortable lounge, and every spare nook was filled with
book shelves. The contents of these shelves were extremely varied. A
cursory glance showed me Meyer's Neues Konversations-Lexicon, The Yacht
Register, Whitaker's Almanack, Who's Who, Burke's Peerage, The Almanack
de Gotha, the British and the Continental Bradshaw, a number of
Baedeker's "Guides," fifty or sixty volumes of the Tauchnitz edition, a
large collection of files of reviews and magazines--The Nineteenth
Century, Quarterly, Edinburgh, Fortnightly, Contemporary, National,
Atlantic, North American, Revue de Deux Mondes--and a scattering of
volumes by Kipling, Shaw, Hosebery, Pater, Ida Tarbell, Bryce, Ferrero,
Macaulay, Anatole France, Maupassant, "Dooley," and a large number of
French and German plays. I was struck by the entire absence of books of
travel and scientific works.
I spent part of the afternoon in the drawing-room playing a large
instrument of the gramophone type. There were several hundred records--
from grand opera, violin solos by Kreisler, and the Gilbert and Sullivan
operas, to rag-time and the latest comic songs.
Before the time came to dress for dinner I had met the captain and some
of the officers of the yacht. They were all very civil; and my own
experience as a sailor enabled me to see that they were highly efficient
men. I was a good deal puzzled, however, by something peculiar but very
elusive in their attitude toward me, something which I had at once
detected in the manner of my cabin-steward.