laurence watched her come in , by grey 's invitation , from a pleasant cool antechamber set atop the castle , and seeing her from this unfamiliar and reversed direction was struck by the overwhelming impression of terrible force : not only the sheer vastness of her size , but the hollow eyes of her brute armament of thirty-two-pounders , glaring angrily out of portholes , and what seemed at this distance a veritable horde of dragons coiled upon her deck , uncountable for their lying so intertwined that their heads and tails could not quite be separated one from another .