The Day's Work

[83]

HE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass
work, and the patent winches, and particularly the
strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a
bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the
Dimbula. It was a beautiful September afternoon, and
the boat in all her newness— she was painted lead-colour
with a red funnel— looked very fine indeed. Her house-
flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time
acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw
that she was new to the High and Narrow Seas and
wished to make her welcome.

"And now," said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the
captain, " she 's a real ship, is n't she? It seems only
the other day father gave the order for her, and now—
and now— is n't she a beauty 1 " The girl was proud of
the firm, and talked as though she were the controlling
partner.

44 Oh, she 's no so bad," the skipper replied cau-
tiously. " But I 'm say in' that it takes more than
christenin' to mak' a ship. In the nature o' things,
Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she 's just irons and
rivets and plates put into the form of a ship. She has
to find herself yet."

" I thought father said she was exceptionally well
found."

" So she is," said the skipper, with a laugh. " But
it 's this way wi' ships, Miss Frazier. She 's all here,
but the parrts of her have not learned to work together
yet. They 've had no chance."

44 The engines are working beautifully. I can hear
them."

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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

u Yes, indeed. But there 's more than engines to a
ship. Every inch of her, ye '11 understand, has to be
livened up and made to work wi' its neighbour— sweet-
enin' her, we call it, technically."

" And how will you do it? " the girl asked.

' ' "We can no more than drive and steer her and so
forth; but if we have rough weather this trip— it 's
likely— she '11 learn the rest by heart! For a ship,
ye '11 obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in no sense a reegid
body closed at both ends. She 's a highly complex
structure o' various an' conflictin' strains, wi' tissues
that must give an' tak' accordin' to her personal modu-
lus of elasteecity . " Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer,
was coming towards them. "I'm sayin' to Miss Frazier,
here, that our little Dimbula has to be sweetened yet,
and nothin' but a gale will do it. How 's all wi' your
engines, Buck?"

"Well enough— true by plumb an' rule, o' course;
but there 's no spontaneeity yet." He turned to the
girl. * ' Take my word, Miss Frazier, and maybe ye '11
comprehend later; even after a pretty girl 's christened
a ship it does not follow that there 's such a thing as a
ship under the men that work her."

" I was sayin' the very same, Mr. Buchanan," the
skipper interrupted.

" That 's more metaphysical than I can follow, " said
Miss Frazier, laughing.

"Why so? Ye 're good Scotch, an'— I knew your
mother's father, he was fra' Dumfries— ye 've a vested
right in metapheesics, Miss Frazier, just as ye have in
the Dimbula," the engineer said.
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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

" Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an'
earn Miss Frazier her deevidends. Will you not come
to my cabin for tea? " said the skipper. " We '11 be in
dock the night, and when you 're goin' back to Glasgie
ye can think of us loadin' her down an' drivin' her
forth— all for your sake."

In the next few days they stowed some four thou-
sand tons dead weight into the Dimbula, and took her
out from Liverpool. As soon as she met the lift of the
open water, she naturally began to talk. If you lay
your ear to the side of the cabin, the next time you are
in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of little voices in
every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and whispering
and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking
exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm. Wooden
ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels
throb and quiver through all their hundreds of ribs
and thousands of rivets. The Dimbula was very
strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter or
a number, or both, to describe it; and every piece had
been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or punched by
man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of the ship-
yard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own
separate voice, in exact proportion to the amount of
trouble spent upon it. Cast-iron, as a rule, says very
little; but mild steel plates and wrought-iron, and ribs
and beams that have been much bent and welded
and riveted, talk continuously. Their conversation, of
course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because
they are all, though they do not know it, bound down
one to the other in a black darkness, where they cannot
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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

tell what is happening near them, nor what will over-
take them next.

As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen,
grey-headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely
over her straight bows, and sat down on the steam-
capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the
capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly
painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes
being ducked.

"Don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered
through the teeth of his cogs. uHil Where 's the
fellow gone?"

The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a
chuckle; but " Plenty more where he came from," said
a brother- wave, and went through and over the capstan,
who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron deck-
beams below.

" Can't you keep still up there ? " said the deck-beams.
" What 's the matter with you? One minute you weigh
twice as much as you ought to, and the next you
don't!"

" It is n't my fault," said the capstan. " There 's a
green brute outside that comes and hits me on the
head."

" Tell that to the shipwrights. You 've been in
position for months and you 've never wriggled like
this before. If you are n't careful you '11 strain tts."

" Talking of strain," said a low, rasping, unpleasant

voice, "are any of you fellows— you deck-beams, we

mean— aware that those exceedingly ugly knees of

yours happen to be riveted into our structure— ourst "

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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

" Who might you be? " the deck-beams inquired.

1 ' Oh, nobody in particular, ' ' was the answer. ' ' We 're
only the port and starboard upper-deck stringers; and
if you persist in heaving and hiking like this, we shall
be reluctantly compelled to take steps."

Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so
to speak, that run lengthways from stern to bow. They
keep the iron frames (what are called ribs in a wooden
ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends of the deck-
beams, which go from side to side of the ship. Stringers
always consider themselves most important, because they
are so long.

" You will take steps— will you? " This was a long
echoing rumble. It came from the frames— scores and
scores of them, each one about eighteen inches distant
from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in four
places. " We think you will have a certain amount of
trouble in that"; and thousands and thousands of the
little rivets that held everything together whispered:
"You will. You will! Stop quivering and be quiet.
Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What's
that?"

Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with
fright; but they did their best as a fluttering jar swept
along the ship from stern to bow, and she shook like a
rat in a terrier's mouth.

An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising,
had lifted the big throbbing screw nearly to the surface,
and it was spinning round in a kind of soda-water—
half sea and half air— going much faster than was
proper, because there was no deep water for it to work

[88]

Drawn by W. Louis Sonntag,

An unusually severe pitch . . . had lifted the big, throbbing screw
nearly to the surface."

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

in. As it sank again, the engines— and they were triple
expansion, three cylinders in a row— snorted through all
their three pistons. " Was that a joke, you fellow out-
side? It 's an uncommonly poor one. How are we to
do our work if you fly off the handle that way? "

" I did n't fly off the handle," said the screw, twirl-
ing huskily at the end of the screw-shaft. " If I had,
you 'd have been scrap-iron by this time. The sea
dropped away from under me, and I had nothing to
catch on to. That 's all."

"That 's all, d' you call it?" said the thrust-block,
whose business it is to take the push of the screw ; for if
a screw had nothing to hold it back it would crawl right
into the engine-room. (It is the holding back of the
screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) " I
know I do my work deep down and out of sight, but I
warn you I expect justice. All I ask for is bare justice.
Why can't you push steadily and evenly, instead of
whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under
all my collars." The thrust-block had six collars, each
faced with brass, and he did not wish to get them heated.

All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-
shaft as it ran to the stern whispered: " Justice— give
us justice."

"I can only give you what I can get," the screw
answered. u Look out! It 's coming again! "

He rose with a roar as the Dimbula plunged, and
' ' whack — flack — whack — whack ' ' went the engines,
furiously, for they had little to check them.

" I 'm the noblest outcome of human ingenuity— Mr.
Buchanan says so," squealed the high-pressure cylin-
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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

der. "This is simply ridiculous!" The piston went
up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it
was mixed with dirty water. "Help! Oiler! Fitter!
Stoker! Help! I 'm choking," it gasped. "Never in
the history of maritime invention has such a calamity
overtaken one so young and strong. And if I go, who 's
to drive the ship?"

"Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the Steam, who, of
course, had been to sea many times before. He used to
spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or a gutter, or a
flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where
water was needed. " That 's only a little priming, a
little carrying-over, as they call it. It '11 happen all
night, on and off. I don't say it 's nice, but it 's the
best we can do under the circumstances."

"What difference can circumstances make? I 'm
here to do my work— on clean, dry steam. Blow cir-
cumstances! " the cylinder roared.

" The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I Ve
worked on the North Atlantic run a good many times
—it 's going to be rough before morning."

"It is n't distressingly calm now," said the extra-
strong frames— they were called web-frames—in the
engine-room. "There 's an upward thrust that we
don't understand, and there 's a twist that is very bad
for our brackets and diamond- plates, and there 's a sort
of west-northwesterly pull, that follows the twist,
which seriously annoys us. We mention this because
we happened to cost a good deal of money, and we feel
sure that the owner would not approve of our being
treated in this frivolous way."

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** I 'm afraid the matter is out of owner's hands for
the present," said the Steam, slipping into the con-
denser. "You 're left to your own devices till the
weather betters. ' '

"I would n't mind the weather," said a flat bass
voice below; " it 's this confounded cargo that 's break-
ing my heart. I 'm the garboard-strake, and I 'm twice
as thick as most of the others, and I ought to know
something. ' '

The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom
of a ship, and the DimbulcCs garboard-strake was nearly
three-quarters of an inch mild steel.

' ' The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have
expected," the strake grunted, " and the cargo pushes
me down, and, between the two, I don't know what
I 'm supposed to do."

" When in doubt, hold on," rumbled the Steam, mak-
ing head in the boilers.

"Yes; but there 's only dark, and cold, and hurry,
down here; and how do I know whether the other
plates are doing their duty? Those bulwark-plates up
above, I ' ve heard, ain't more than five-sixteenths of an
inch thick— scandalous, I call it."

" I agree with you," said a huge web-frame, by the
main cargo-hatch. He was deeper and thicker than all
the others, and curved half-way across the ship in the
shape of half an arch, to support the deck where deck-
beams would have been in the way of cargo coming up
and down. ' ' I work entirely unsupported, and I ob-
serve that I am the sole strength of this vessel, so far as
my vision extends. The responsibility, I assure you, is
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THE SHIP THAT POUND HERSELF

enormous. I believe the money- value of the cargo is
over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Think
of that!"

" And every pound of it is dependent on my per-
sonal exertions." Here spoke a sea- valve that commu-
nicated directly with the water outside, and was seated
not very far from the garboard-strake. " I rejoice to
think that I am a Prince-Hyde Valve, with best Para
rubber facings. Five patents cover me— I mention this
without pride— five separate and several patents, each
one finer than the other. At present I am screwed fast.
Should I open, you would immediately be swamped.
This is incontrovertible ! ' '

Patent things always use the longest words they can.
It is a trick that they pick up from their inventors.

"That 's news," said a big centrifugal bilge-pump.
11 1 had an idea that you were employed to clean decks
and things with. At least, I 've used you for that
more than once. I forget the precise number, in thou-
sands, of gallons which I am guaranteed to throw per
hour; but I assure you, my complaining friends, that
there is not the least danger. I alone am capable of
clearing any water that may find its way here. By my
Biggest Deliveries, we pitched then! "

The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It
was a dead westerly gale, blown from under a ragged
opening of green sky, narrowed on all sides by fat,
grey clouds; and the wind bit like pincers as it fretted
the spray into lacework on the flanks of the waves.

" I tell you what it is," the foremast telephoned down
its wire-stays. " I 'm up here, and I can take a dis-

[92]

THE SHIP THAT POUND HERSELF

passionate view of things. There 's an organized con-
spiracy against us. I 'm sure of it, because every
single one of these waves is heading directly for our
bows. The whole sea is concerned in it— and so 's the
wind. It's awful!"

" What 's awful? " said a wave, drowning the capstan
for the hundredth time.

' ' This organized conspiracy on your part, ' ' the cap-
stan gurgled, taking his cue from the mast.

* * Organized bubbles and spindrift ! There has been a
depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!" He
leaped overside; but his friends took up the tale one
after another.

"Which has advanced—" That wave hove green
water over the funnel.

4 ' As far as Cape Hatteras — ' : He drenched the bridge .

" And is now going out to sea— to sea— to sea! " The
third went out in three surges, making a clean sweep of
a boat, which turned bottom up and sank in the darken-
ing troughs alongside, while the broken falls whipped
the davits.

" That 's all there is to it," seethed the white water
roaring through the scuppers. " There 's no animus in
our proceedings. We 're only meteorological corol-
laries."

" Is it going to get any worse? " said the bow-anchor
chained down to the deck, where he could only breathe
once in five minutes.

" 'Not knowing, can't say. Wind may blow a bit by
midnight. Thanks awfully. Good-bye."

The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some
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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

distance aft, and found itself all mixed up on the deck
amidships, which was a well-deck sunk between high
bulwarks. One of the bulwark-plates, which was
hung on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and
passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again with
a clean smack.

"Evidently that 's what I 'm made for," said the
plate, closing again with a sputter of pride. " Oh, no,
you don't, my friend! "

The top of a wave was trying to get in from the out-
side, but as the plate did not open in that direction, the
defeated water spurted back.

"Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the
bulwark-plate. " My work, I see, is laid down for the
night ' ' ; and it began opening and shutting, as it was
designed to do, with the motion of the ship.

" We are not what you might call idle," groaned all
the frames together, as the Dimbula climbed a big
wave, lay on her side at the top, and shot into the next
hollow, twisting in the descent. A huge swell pushed
up exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern
hung free with nothing to support them. Then one
joking wave caught her up at the bow, and another at
the stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from
under her just to see how she would like it ; so she was
held up at her two ends only, and the weight of the
cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron keels
and bilge-stringers.

"Ease off! Ease off, there!" roared the garboard-
strake. ' ' I want one eighth of an inch fair play. D' you
hear me, you rivets ! ' '

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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

"Ease off! Ease off!" cried the bilge-stringers.
"Don't hold us so tight to the frames!"

" Ease off ! " grunted the deck-beams, as the Dimbula
rolled fearfully. " You 've cramped our knees into the
stringers, and we can't move. Ease off, you flat-headed
little nuisances."

Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each
side, and fell away in torrents of streaming thunder.

" Ease off ! " shouted the forward collision-bulkhead.
" I want to crumple up, but I 'm stiffened in every
direction. Ease off, you dirty little forge-filings. Let
me breathe! "

All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the
frames, and make the outside skin of every steamer,
echoed the call, for each plate wanted to shift and creep
a little, and each plate, according to its position, com-
plained against the rivets.

" We can't help it! We can't help it! " they mur-
mured in reply. "We 're put here to hold you, and
we 're going to do it; you never pull us twice in the
same direction. If you 'd say what you were going to
do next, we 'd try to meet your views."

" As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck plank-
ing, and that was four inches thick, ' ' every single iron
near me was pushing or pulling in opposite directions.
Now, what 's the sense of that? My friends, let us all
pull together."

" Pull any way you please," roared the funnel, " so
long as you don't try your experiments on me. I need
fourteen wire ropes, all pulling in different directions, to
hold me steady. Is n't that so? "

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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

" We believe you, my boy ! " whistled the funnel-stays
through their clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind
from the top of the funnel to the deck.

"Nonsense! We must all pull together," the decks
repeated . ' ' Pull lengthways. ' '

" Very good," said the stringers; " then stop pushing
sideways when you get wet. Be content to run grace-
fully fore and aft, and curve in at the ends as we do. ' '

" No— no curves at the end. A very slight workman-
like curve from side to side, with a good grip at each
knee, and little pieces welded on, ' ' said the deck-beams.

"Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark
hold. " Who ever heard of curves? Stand up straight;
be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good
solid weight— like that! There! " A big sea smashed
on the deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves
to the load.

" Straight up and down is not bad," said the frames,
who ran that way in the sides of the ship, " but you
must also expand yourselves sideways. Expansion is
the law of life, children. Open out ! open out ! ' '

" Come back! " said the deck-beams, savagely, as the
upward heave of the sea made the frames try to open.
" Come back to your bearings, you slack-jawed irons! "

"Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!" thumped the en-
gines. " Absolute, unvarying rigidity— rigidity! "

* ' You see ! ' ' whined the rivets, in chorus. * ' No two of
you will ever pull alike, and— and you blame it all on us.
We only know how to go through a plate and bite down
on both sides so that it can't, and must n't, and sha'n't
move."

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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

" I 've got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate,"
said the garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had,
and all the bottom of the ship felt the easier for it.

"Then we 're no good," sobbed the bottom rivets.
44 We were ordered— we were ordered— never to give;
and we 've given, and the sea will come in, and we '11
all go to the bottom together! First we 're blamed for
everything unpleasant, and now we have n't the con-
solation of having done our work."

"Don't say I told you," whispered the Steam, con-
solingly, " but, between you and me and the last cloud
I came from, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
You had to give a fraction, and you 've given without
knowing it. Now, hold on, as before."

" What 's the use? " a few hundred rivets chattered.
" We Ve given — we 've given; and the sooner we confess
that we can't keep the ship together, and go off our little
heads, the easier it will be. No rivet forged can stand
this strain."

" No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among
you," the Steam answered.

" The others can have my share. I 'm going to pull
out," said a rivet in one of the forward plates.

"If you go, others will follow," hissed the Steam.
" There 's nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets
going. Why, I knew a little chap like you— he was an
eighth of an inch fatter, though— on a steamer— to be
sure, she was only twelve hundred tons, now I come to
think of it— in exactly the same place as you are. He
pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as baa
as this, and he started all his friends on the same butt-
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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

strap, and the plates opened like a furnace door, and I
had to climb into the nearest fog-bank, while the boat
went down. ' '

" Now that 's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet.
' ' Fatter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our
tonnage? Reedy little peg! I blush for the family,
sir." He settled himself more firmly than ever in his
place, and the Steam chuckled.

" You see," he went on, quite gravely, " a rivet, and
especially a rivet in your position, is really the one in-
dispensable part of the ship."

The Steam did not say that he had whispered the very
same thing to every single piece of iron aboard. There
is no sense in telling too much.

And all that while the little Dinibula pitched and
chopped, and swung and slewed, and lay down as though
she were going to die, and got up as though she had
been stung, and threw her nose round and round in
circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for the gale
was at its worst. It was inky black, in spite of the
tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top every-
thing, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could
not see your hand before your face. This did not make
much difference to the ironwork below, but it troubled
the foremast a good deal.

"Now it 's all finished," he said dismally. "The
conspiracy is too strong for us. There is nothing left
but to-"

* ' Hurraar ! Brrrraaah ! Brrrrrrp ! » ' roared the Steam
through the fog-horn, till the decks quivered. " Don't
be frightened, below. It 's only me, just throwing out

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THE SHIP THAT POUND HERSELF

a few words, in case any one happens to be rolling
round to-night."

" You don't mean to say there 's any one except us
on the sea in such weather?" said the funnel, in a
husky snuffle.

" Scores of 'em," said the Steam, clearing its throat.
" Rrrrrraaa! Brraaaaa! Prrrrp! It 's a trifle windy
up here; and, Great Boilers! how it rains! "

"We 're drowning," said the scuppers. They had
been doing nothing else all night, but this steady thrash
of rain above them seemed to be the end of the world.

"That 's all right. We '11 be easier in an hour or
two. First the wind and then the rain: Soon you may
make sail again ! Grrraaoaaah ! Drrrraaaa I Drrrp ! I
have a notion that the sea is going down already. If
it does you '11 learn something about rolling. We 've
only pitched till now. By the way, are n't you chaps in
the hold a little easier than you were? "

There was just as much groaning and straining as
ever, but it was not so loud or squeaky in tone; and
when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a
poker hit on the floor, but gave with a supple little
waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf-club.

" We have made a most amazing discovery," said the
stringers, one after another. ' ' A discovery that entirely
changes the situation. We have found, for the first
time in the history of ship-building, that the inward
pull of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of the
frames locks us, as it were, more closely in our places,
and enables us to endure a strain which is entirely with-
out parallel in the records of marine architecture."
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THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

The Steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the
fog-horn. " What massive intellects you great stringers
have," he said softly, when he had finished.

4< "We also," began the deck-beams, " are discoverers
and geniuses. We are of opinion that the support of the
hold-pillars materially helps us. We find that we lock
up on them when we are subjected to a heavy and
singular weight of sea above."

Here the Dimbula shot down a hollow, lying almost
on her side; righting at the bottom with a wrench
and a spasm.

" In these cases— are you aware of this, Steam?— the
plating at the bows, and particularly at the stern— we
would also mention the floors beneath us— help us to
resist any tendency to spring." The frames spoke, in
the solemn awed voice which people use when they
have just come across something entirely new for the
very first time.

" 1 'm only a poor puffy little flutterer,*' said the
Steam, " but I have to stand a good deal of pressure in
my business. It 's all tremendously interesting. Tell
us some more. You fellows are so strong."

"Watch us and you '11 see," said the bow-plates,
proudly. " Ready, behind there! Here 's the father
and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets all!"
A great sluicing comber thundered by, but through the
scuffle and confusion the Steam could hear the low,
quick cries of the ironwork as the various strains took
them— cries like these: " Easy, now— easy! Now push
for all your strength I Hold out I Give a fraction ! Hold
up ! Pull in ! Shove crossways I Mind the strain at the
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THE SHIP THAT POUND HERSELF

ends I Grip, now ! Bite tight ! Let the water get away
from under— and there she goes! "

The wave raced off into the darkness, shouting, " Not
bad, that, if it 's your first run! " and the drenched and
ducked ship throbbed to the beat of the engines inside
her. All three cylinders were white with the salt spray
that had come down through the engine-room hatch;
there was white fur on the canvas-bound steam-pipes,
and even the bright- work deep below was speckled and
soiled ; but the cylinders had learned to make the most
of steam that was half water, and were pounding along
cheerfully.

"How 's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity
hitting it? " said the Steam, as he whirled through the
engine-room.

"Nothing for nothing in this world of woe," the
cylinders answered, as though they had been working
for centuries, " and precious little for seventy-five
pounds head. We 've made two knots this last hour
and a quarter! Eather humiliating for eight hundred
horse-power, is n't it? n

" Well, it 's better than drifting astern, at any rate.
You seem rather less— how shall I put it?— stiff in the
back than you were."

" If you 'd been hammered as we 've been this night,
you would n't be stiff —iff— iff, either. Theoreti— retti
— retti— cally, of course, rigidity is the thing. Purrr—
purr— practically, there has to be a little give and take.
We found that out by working on our sides for five
minutes at a stretch— chch—chh. How 's the weather? "

" 'Sea 's going down fast," said the Steam.
[101]

THE SHIP THAT POUND HERSELF

"Good business," said the high-pressure cylinder.
" Whack her up, boys. They 've given us five pounds
more steam"; and he began humming the first bars
of ' ' Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah, ' '
which, as you may have noticed, is a pet tune among
engines not built for high speed. Eacing-liners with
twin-screws sing " The Turkish Patrol" and the over-
ture to the " Bronze Horse," and " Madame Angot,"
till something goes wrong, and then they render
Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," with
variations.

" You '11 learn a song of your own some fine day,"
said the Steam, as he flew up the fog-horn for one last
bellow.

Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little,
and the Dimbula began to roll from side to side till
every inch of iron in her was sick and giddy. But
luckily they did not all feel ill at the same time : other-
wise she would have opened out like a wet paper box.

The Steam whistled warnings as he went about his
business : it is in this short, quick roll and tumble that
follows a heavy sea that most of the accidents happen,
for then everything thinks that the worst is over and
goes off guard. So he orated and chattered till the
beams and frames and floors and stringers and things
had learned how to lock down and lock up on one
another, and endure this new kind of strain.

They found ample time to practise, for they were six-
teen days at sea, and it was foul weather till within a
hundred miles of New York. The Dimbula picked up
her pilot, and came in covered with salt and red rust.
[102]

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

Her funnel was dirty-grey from top to bottom; two
boats had been carried away; three copper ventilators
looked like hats after a fight with the police ; the bridge
had a dimple in the middle of it ; the house that covered
the steam steering-gear was split as with hatchets ; there
was a bill for small repairs in the engine-room almost
as long as the screw-shaft ; the forward cargo-hatch fell
into bucket-staves when they raised the iron cross-bars ;
and the steam-capstan had been badly wrenched on its
bed. Altogether, as the skipper said, it was " a pretty
general average."

' ' But she ' s soupled, ' ' he said to Mr. Buch anaa . ' * For
all her dead weight she rode like a yacht. Ye mind
that last blow off the Banks? I am proud of her,
Buck."

"It 's vera good," said the chief engineer, looking
along the dishevelled decks. ' ' Now, a man judgin'
superfeecially would say we were a wreck, but we know
otherwise— by experience."

Naturally everything in the Dimbula fairly stiffened
with pride, and the foremast and the forward collision-
bulkhead, who are pushing creatures, begged the Steam
to warn the Port of New York of their arrival. " Tell
those big boats all about us," they said. " They seem
to take us quite as a matter of course."

It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in
single file, with less than half a mile between each, their
bands playing and their tugboats shouting and waving
handkerchiefs, were the Majestic, the Paris, the Tou-
raine, the Servia, the Kaiser Wilhelm JJ., and the Wer-
kendam, all statelily going out to sea. As the Dimbula
[103]

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the
Steam (who knows far too much to mind making an ex-
hibition of himself now and then) shouted :

' ' Oyez ! Oyez ! Oy ez ! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of
the High Seas ! Know ye by these presents, we are the
Dimbula, fifteen days nine hours from Liverpool, hav-
ing crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo
for the first time in our career ! We have not foundered.
We are here. 'Eer! 'Eer! We are not disabled. But
we have had a time wholly unparalleled in the annals
of ship-building ! Our decks were swept ! We pitched ;
we rolled ! We thought we were going to die! Hi! Hi!
But we did n't. We wish to give notice that we have
come to New York all the way across the Atlantic,
through the worst weather in the world; and we are
the Dimbula! We are— arr— ha— ha— ha-r-r-r! "

The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the
procession of the Seasons. The Dimbula heard the Ma-
jestic say, " Hmph! " and the Paris grunted, " How ! "
and the Touraine said, " Oui! " with a little coquettish
flicker of steam; and the Servia said, " Haw! " and the
Kaiser and the WerJcendam said, " Hoch! " Dutch fash-
ion—and that was absolutely all.

"I did my best," said the Steam, gravely, "but I
don't think they were much impressed with us, some-
how. Do you? "

u It 's simply disgusting, ' ' said the bow-plates. ' ' They
might have seen what we 've been through. There is n't
a ship on the sea that has suffered as we have— is there,
now? "

" Well, I would n't go so far as that," said the Steam,
" because I Ve worked on some of those boats, and sent
[104]

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

them through weather quite as bad as the fortnight that
we 've had, in six days; and some of them are a little
over ten thousand tons, I believe. Now I 've seen the
Majestic, for instance, ducked from her bows to her fun-
nel; and I 've helped the Arizona, I think she was, to
back off an iceberg she met with one dark night ; and I
had to run out of the Paris's engine-room, one day, be-
cause there was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I
don't deny — " The Steam shut off suddenly, as a tug-
boat, loaded with a political club and a brass band, that
had been to see a New York Senator off to Europe,
crossed their bows, going to Hoboken. There was a
long silence that reached, without a break, from the
cut-water to the propeller-blades of the Dimbula.

Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as
though the owner had just waked up: "It 's my con-
viction that I have made a fool of myself."

The Steam knew what had happened at once; for
when a ship finds herself all the talking of the separate
pieces ceases and melts into one voice, which is the
soul of the ship.

" Who are you? " he said, with a laugh.

41 1 am the Dimbula, of course. I 've never been any-
thing else except that— and a fool! "

The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be
run down, got away just in time; its band playing
clashily and brassily a popular but impolite air:

In the days of old Barneses— are you on?
In the days of old Barneses — are you on?
In the days of old Barneses,
That story had paresis,
Are you on— are you on— are you on ?
[105]

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

" Well, I 'm glad you 've found yourself," said the
Steam. ' ' To tell the truth, I was a little tired of talking
to all those ribs and stringers. Here 's Quarantine.
After that we '11 go to our wharf and clean up a little,
and— next month we '11 do it all over again."

[106]

THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS

THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS

SOME people will tell you that if there were but a
single loaf of bread in all India it would be divided
equally between the Plowdens, the Trevors, the Bea-
dons, and the Eivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of
saying that certain families serve India generation after
generation, as dolphins follow in line across the open
sea.

Let us take a small and obscure case. There has
been at least one representative of the Devonshire
Chinns in or near Central India since the days of Lieu-
tenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay
European Eegiment, who assisted at the capture of
Seringapatam in 1799. Alfred Ellis Chinn, Humphrey's
younger brother, commanded a regiment of Bombay
grenadiers from 1804 to 1813, when he saw some mixed
fighting; and in 1834 John Chinn of the same family
—we will call him John Chinn the First— came to light
as a level-headed administrator in time of trouble at a
place called Mundesur. He died young, but left his
mark on the new country, and the Honourable the Board
of Directors of the Honourable the East India Company