‘“ WHERE AM 1?” gI

who are conducting this affair may be, no matter where
they may take me, J will continue to play my part
as keeper. No, no one shall suspect that under the
cloak of Gaydon is hidden Simon Hart, the engineer.
In this there are two advantages; first, they cannot
mistrust a poor wretch of a keeper, and in the second
place, perhaps I shall fathom the mystery of the new
contrivance and make use of it should I succeed in
escaping.

But my thoughts wander. Before I take to flight I
must reach my destination. It will be time to think of
escaping when an opportunity presents itself. Until then
the chief thing is that no one knows who I am—this they
shall not know.

Now I am quite certain on one point; we are moving
rapidly. I return, however, to my first idea, No! the
vessel that is carrying us, if it be not a steamer, is certainly
not a sailing ship. It is undoubtedly propelled by a
powerful engine of locomotion. That I hear none of the
sounds peculiar to machinery when the screws or wheels
are working, that the vessel is not shaken by the movement
of pistons in cylinders, Iam forced to admit. It is, rather
than a continuous and regular movement, a kind of direct
rotation that communicates itself to the propeller, whatever
it may be. There can be no mistake: the vessel is moved
by a special mechanism. What?

Is it by one of those turbines of which we have been
hearing, worked from the inside by an immersed tube, and
destined to become a substitute for the screw, because they