"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 corollaries." "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 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 outside, 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."