s head. We've made two knots this last hour and a
quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, isn't it?"

"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 wouldn'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.

"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.
Racing-liners with twin-screws sing "The Turkish Patrol" and the
overture 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'll 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:
otherwise 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 sixteen 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.
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 en