Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

O'SHAH

but not more so than the rolling volumes of white
smoke that plunged after them, rested a moment
over the writer, and then went wreathing and curling
up among the webbed rigging and the tall masts,
and left only glimpses of these things visible, high
up in the air, projecting as if from a fog.
Now the flashes came thick and fast from the
black sides of both vessels. The muffled thunders
of the guns mingled together in one continued roll,
the two ships were lost to sight, and in their places
two mountains of tumbled smoke rested upon the
motionless water, their bases in the hazy twilight
and their summits shining in the sun. It was good
to be there and see so fine a spectacle as that.
THE NAVAL SALUTE
We closed up fast upon the ironclads. They fell
apart to let our flotilla come between, and as the
Vigilant ranged up the rigging of the ironclads was
manned to salute the Shah. And, indeed, that was
something to see. The shrouds, from the decks clear
to the trucks, away up toward the sky, were black
with men. On the lower rounds of these rope ladders
they stood five abreast, holding each other's hands,
and so the tapering shrouds formed attenuated
pyramids of humanity, six pyramids of them towering into the upper air, and clear up on the top of
each dizzy mast stood a little creature like a clothes
pin-a mere black peg against the sky-and that
mite was a sailor waving a flag like a postage stamp.
All at once the pyramids of men burst into a cheer,
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