The other guests had arrived, seven in all--four ladies and three gentlemen, and we met on the red and black dock, with mountains of ore and coal about us, with the thundering din of working machines in our ears, and out there before us, enshrouded in smoke and black dust, the great ship that was to carry us for nearly a thousand miles up the Lakes and back again. It was a happy moment, I say, for I met the seven guests in this wilderness of din and dirt--_and six of them had never been aboard a freighter in their lives_. They had heard, of course, what lay beyond those red steel walls. But was there not a mistake here? Was it possible---- Doubt filled their faces. High above them towered the straight wall of the ship with a narrow ladder reaching down to them. At the huge coal derricks whole cars of coal were being lifted up as if they were no more than scuttles in the hands of a strong man and their contents sent thundering into the gaping hatches; black dust clouded the air, settling in a thousand minute particles on fabric and flesh; black-faced men shouted and worked at the loading machine; the crash of shunting cars came interminably from the yards; and upon it all the sun beat fiercely, and the air that entered our nostrils seemed thick--thick with the dust and grime and heat of it all. A black-faced, sweating man, who was the mate, leaned over the steel side high above us and motioned us aft, and the seven guests hurried through the thickness of the air, the ladies shuddering and cringing as the cars of coal thundered high over their heads, until they came to the big after port with a plank laid to the dock. Up this they filed, their faces betraying more doubt, more uneasiness, more discomfort as hot blasts of furnace air surged against them; then up a narrow iron stair, through a door--and out there before them lay the ship, her thirty hatches yawning like caverns, and everywhere coal--and coal dust. The ladies gasped and drew their dresses tightly about them as they were guided along the narrow promenade between the edge of the ship and the open hatches, and at last they were halted before one of those doors labelled “Owners.” Then the change! It came so suddenly that it fairly took the breath away from those who had never been on a freighter before. The guests filed through that narrow door into a great room, which a second glance showed them to be a parlour. Their feet sank in the noiseless depths of rich velvet carpet; into their heated faces came the refreshing breaths of electric fans; great upholstered chairs opened to them welcomingly; the lustre of mahogany met their eyes, and magazines and books and papers were ready for them in profusion. To us there now came the thunder of the coal as if from afar; here was restfulness and quiet--through the windows we could see the dust and smoke and heat hovering about the ship like a pall.