But other differences are few, and a description of the super-liners is, in all details save those I have just mentioned, a description of these other ships which travel most of the main ocean lanes, and girdle the earth with comfortable travel routes. They cross the North Atlantic between Europe and America. They cross diagonally from the Old World to the wonder cities of Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Buenos Ayres. They journey through Suez on their trips to the Far East and return. They link China and Japan with the United States and Canada, and regularly sail from North America to South. For all their comparatively limited numbers these ships visit many of the world’s important ports, for they are busy—very busy—and one never sees them laid up when business is slack, nor do they idle about port for lengthy stays. Every minute that is possible they are on their way across the oceans, and a year or more ahead their sailing dates are scheduled. These are the ships that sail the great sea lanes almost as regularly as the great express trains pass along their tracks. And these are the ships that visit the most important ports of earth. But important though they are, we can give them no more time. Already we have told about their greater counterparts and, too, have said that there are no vital differences save size. But dropping down the scale of size, which is the only yardstick that is ready at hand by which to classify these ships, we come to a more numerous category. Captain Bone, in “The Lookoutman,” lists these as “intermediate liners.” I have vainly endeavoured to find a better way to list them, but I always come back to his method, and so, I suppose, must use it. The intermediate liners, ranging, perhaps, from five thousand tons to twelve or even fifteen, are of many types and are engaged in the performance of many tasks. They visit the lesser ports and the greater with a fine disregard for anything save the business on which they are engaged. You will find them stopping at Capetown on their way to Australia from Liverpool. You will find them at Central American ports loading bananas. They visit Guayaquil, Havana, Piræus, and Sydney, and lord it over the smaller craft that fill those busy harbours. They fill a less pretentious place in Liverpool and New York, and now and then they drop their anchors in tiny mid-pacific ports, or manage, with difficulty, to get behind the breakwaters at Ponta Delgada, or churn the tropic water at Mombasa, or anchor at Christchurch. [Illustration: A MAIL LINER _These ships, while somewhat smaller than the biggest ships and not quite so fast, are perhaps the most popular of passenger ships, for their rates are not so high as those of the great ships, and their accommodations are more or less comparable._ ]