Then a work of transformation began. According to the scheme of Jenifer Vass, every vice which tempts men and women, every form of iniquity of the old and the new world, was to be introduced, cultivated, and pampered on board the “Lawless.” Ten staterooms were torn to pieces and made into one. The floors were covered with Turkish rugs; Bagdad curtains and Eastern ornaments were hung about the walls. The final appearance of the room was totally different from the little holes in the wall found in the Chinatown of nearly all the large cities, but its object was the same. Here men and women could smoke opium from morning till night, and with the additional advantage that no one would disturb them. There was no danger of the place being raided and their names appearing in the next morning’s police-court items. On one of the walls was arranged a set of bunks on which the sleepers could be laid away when the drug was really on. One-half the ship was converted into a gambling hall. Here every game of chance at Monte Carlo,--faro, roulette, poker, pinquette, fantan, and every other game by which a man can win a fortune or lose his all in a single night--was to be put in operation. There was to be a bar where every known strong drink could be bought, and each man was to be the judge of when he had had enough. No waiter could inform him that the management refused to serve him anything more, and he would have to go elsewhere. Here one could swill brandy, absinthe, bhang, or any other nerve-destroying drink until his brain reeled; and as long as he had the money to pay for more no one would stop him. Every drug and narcotic, whose sale is guarded by the laws of the United States and other civilized countries, was to be sold as freely as the chocolates of the confectioner. Cocaine, opium, laudanum, and morphine were laid in in bulk for the use of the passengers of the “Lawless,” without limit or restriction. In fact, there was wine for the drinker, women for him who wanted company, song for him who would sing, and each and every other evil thing ever devised by a wicked and lustful world was to be found somewhere between the two decks of this Palace of Sin. The trips were to last one month, the “Lawless” merely getting into mid ocean and steaming slowly down to the Gulf of Mexico, remaining there until the month was up, when the passengers, saturated with vice and steeped in corruption, were to be returned to the place of starting. The crew was cut down to as small a number as possible, and consisted mostly of the riffraff to be found about the wharves of any large seaport city. There was nothing about the scheme which could be punished by the laws of any country, nevertheless the arrangements were kept as quiet as possible, and nothing found its way into the papers.