CHAPTER V.
THE R.M.S.

KANGAROO.
It was on a Tuesday evening that a mighty vessel was steaming majestically out of the mouth of the Thames, and shaping her imposing course straight at the ball of the setting sun.

Most people will remember reading descriptions of the steamship Kangaroo, and being astonished at the power of her engines, the beauty of her fittings, and the extraordinary speed--about eighteen knots--which she developed in her trials, with an unusually low expenditure of coal.

For the benefit of those who have not, however, it may be stated that the Kangaroo, "the Little Kangaroo," as she was ironically named among sailor men, was the very latest development of the science of modern ship-building.
Everything about her, from the electric light and boiler tubes up, was on a new and patent system.
Four hundred feet and more she measured from stem to stern, and in that space were crowded and packed all the luxuries of a palace, and all the conveniences of an American hotel.

She was a beautiful and a wonderful thing to look on; as, with her holds full of costly merchandise and her decks crowded with her living freight of about a thousand human beings, she steamed slowly out to sea, as though loth to leave the land where she was born.