nd so forth; but if we have
rough weather this trip--it's likely--she'll learn the rest by heart!
For a ship, ye'll 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 modulus 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'll 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.

"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'll 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 thousand 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
shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice,
in exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it.