de, 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!"

"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, complained against the rivets.

"We can't help it! _We_ can't help it!" they murmured 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 planking, 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 d