The yacht had an ample
supply of boats, including two steam launches, one burning coal, the
other oil.
During my inspection of the yacht I was accompanied by my cabin-steward,
a young Englishman who had at one time served aboard the German
Emperor's yacht, Meteor. Nothing could have been more courteous than his
manner or more intelligent than his explanations; but the moment I tried
to draw him out on the subject of life on the yacht he relapsed into a
vagueness from which I could extract no gleam of enlightenment. After
fencing for some time with my queries he suggested that I might like to
have a glass of sherry and a biscuit in the secretaries' library, and,
piloting me thither, he left me.
The smoking-room was furnished with writing tables, some luxurious arm
chairs, and a comfortable lounge, and every spare nook was filled with
book shelves. The contents of these shelves were extremely varied. A
cursory glance showed me Meyer's Neues Konversations-Lexicon, The Yacht
Register, Whitaker's Almanack, Who's Who, Burke's Peerage, The Almanack
de Gotha, the British and the Continental Bradshaw, a number of
Baedeker's "Guides," fifty or sixty volumes of the Tauchnitz edition, a
large collection of files of reviews and magazines--The Nineteenth
Century, Quarterly, Edinburgh, Fortnightly, Contemporary, National,
Atlantic, North American, Revue de Deux Mondes--and a scattering of
volumes by Kipling, Shaw, Hosebery, Pater, Ida Tarbell, Bryce, Ferrero,
Macaulay, Anatole France, Maupassant, "Dooley," and a large number of
French and German plays.
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