The lowest, or main, deck was full of machinery. The lantern burned with a clear, steady light, but Brown kept moving it around, so the shadows of the hulking machines seemed to shift and jump ominously, as if they were things alive. “Here, hold that still,” Marsh commanded. He turned to York and began to point, his stick jabbing like a long hickory finger toward the boilers, great metal cylinders that ran along either side of the forepart of the deck. “Eighteen boilers,” Marsh said proudly, “three more than the Eclipse. Thirty-eight-inch diameters, twenty-eight-foot long, each of ’em.” His stick waggled. “Furnaces are all done up with firebrick and sheet iron, got ’em up on brackets clear of the deck, cuts down on the chance of fires.” He traced the path of the steam lines overhead, running from the boilers back to the engines, and they all turned toward the stern. “We got thirty-six-inch cylinders, high pressure, and we got ourselves an eleven-foot stroke, same as the Eclipse. This boat is goin’ chew up that old river something terrible, I tell you.”

Brown gabbled, Smith gibbled, and Joshua York smiled.

“Come on up,” Marsh said. “Your friends don’t seem too interested in the engines, but they ought to like it just fine upstairs.”

The staircase was wide and ornate, polished oak with graceful fluted banisters. It began up near the bow, its width hiding the boilers and engines from those boarding, then broke in two and curled gracefully to either side to open on the second, or boiler, deck. They walked along the starboard side, with Marsh and his stick and Brown and the lantern leading the way, their boots clacking on the hardwood deck of the promenade as they marveled at the fine gothic detail of the pillars and the guard rails, all the painstakingly shaped wood, carved with flowers and curlicues and acorns.