"Terrible work for hot weather, I should think," said the lawyer, when the shovels were still for a moment and the great fires raged, roared and crackled within. He seemed to feel the necessity of saying something to do away with the impression of his being a sulky intruder,--and was addressing one of the bronzed old stokers who had paused to wipe from his grimy brow the sweat that was actually pouring into his eyes and blinding him. "Yes, hot enough while we are lying at the dock," answered the stoker. "Why hotter now than at any other time?" asked the lawyer, who had probably never happened to study that peculiar philosophy, simply because he had never been thrown into contact with it. "Why? oh, Lord bless you!--because we are lying still, now, and there is no draught. When we are going through the water, and of course through the air, the motion makes a draught and we do not more than _half_ roast." "Then it never gets _very_ cool down here?" was the next inquiry. "Not _very_!" answered the fireman, sententiously. "But we never have the worst of these hot fires," he continued, answering something that had not been spoken but that seemed to be in the face of his auditor. "Who then?" "The passengers--at least some of them--on board any steamer that carries them over sea or down the coast." "You mean when they--when the steamers take fire and burn?" The question was asked in what seemed to be a hurried and troubled voice; and had not the reflected glow from the furnace made every thing red under its light, there might have been seen a face of ghastly white contrasting with the dark and grimy one so near. "No!" and the stoker laughed. "I did not mean that--only the thought of it. Steamers do not burn _very_ often--not half so often as I should think they would, the way they are built, and with a whole Pennsylvania coal-mine on fire inside of them at once. When they do go, though, they make things howl! No slow burning, as there is sometimes on sailing-vessels, so that they can batten down the hatches and keep the fire under until there is a chance of help: every thing goes in a moment, and all is over in an hour--iron steamer or wood, very little difference." "Horrible!" said the lawyer. The word seemed forced from him, and there could not be a doubt that he was at the moment fancying some terrible reality.