don't think they were
much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?"

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

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as that," said the Steam, "because I've
worked on some of those boats, and sent 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 funnel; 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, because
there was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I don't deny--" The
Steam shut off suddenly, as a tugboat, 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 conviction 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. "I am the Dimbula, of course. I've
never been anything 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 Rameses--are you on?
In the days of old Rameses--are you on?
In the days of old Rameses,
That story had paresis,
Are you on--are you on--are you on?

"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'll go to our wharf and clean up a
little, and--next month we'll do it all over again."

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 Beadons, and the Rivett-Carnacs. That is only one way of
saying that certain families serve