"Nothing for nothing in this world of woe," the cylinders answered, as though they had been working for centuries, "and precious little for seventy-five pounds' head. We've made two knots this last hour and a quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, is n'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 would n'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 gray 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 engine-room almost as long as the screw-shaft; the forward cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when they raised the iron cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had been badly wrenched on its bed. Altogether, as the skipper said, it was "a pretty general average."