It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with less than half a mile between each, their bands playing, and their tugboats shouting and waving handkerchiefs beneath, were the "Majestic," the "Paris," the "Touraine," the "Servia," the "Kaiser Wilhelm II." and the "Werkendam," all statelily going out to sea. As the "Dimbula" shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the steam (who knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and then) shouted: "Oyez! oyez! oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye by these presents we are the 'Dimbula,' fifteen days nine hours out from Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for the first time in our career. We have not foundered! We are here! Eer! eer! We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly unparalleled in the annals of shipbuilding. Our decks were swept. We pitched, we rolled! We thought we were going to die! Hi! hi! But we didn't! We wish to give notice that we have come to New York all the way across the Atlantic, through the worst weather in the world; and we are the 'Dimbula.' We are--arr--ha--ha--ha-r-r!" The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the seasons. The "Dimbula" heard the "Majestic" say "Humph!" and the "Paris" grunted "How!" and the "Touraine" said "Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the "Servia" said "Haw!" and the "Kaiser" and the "Werkendam" said "Hoch!" Dutch fashion--and that was absolutely all. "I did my best," said the steam, gravely, "but I 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 put them through weather quite as bad as 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 senator off to Europe, crossed the 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 one 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 deep voice, which is the soul of the ship.