In the next four days they stowed nearly four thousand tons dead
weight into the "Dimbula," and took her out from Liverpool. As soon as
she met the lift of the open water she naturally began to talk. If
you put your ear to the side of the cabin the next time you are in a
steamer, you will hear hundreds of little voices in every direction,
thrilling and buzzing, and whispering and popping, and gurgling and
sobbing and squeaking exactly like a telephone in a thunder storm.
Wooden ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and
quiver through all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The
"Dimbula" was very strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter
or a number or both to describe it, and every piece had been hammered
or forged or rolled or punched by man and had lived in the roar and
rattle of the shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own
separate voice in exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon
it. Cast iron, as a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and
wrought iron, and ribs and beams that have been bent and welded and
riveted a good deal, talk continuously. Their conversation, of course,
is not half as wise as human talk, because they are all, though they
do not know it, bound down one to the other in black darkness, where
they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what is going to
happen next.

A very short while after she had cleared the Irish coast a sullen,
gray-headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her
straight bows, and sat down on the steam capstan, used for hauling
up the anchor. Now, the capstan and the engine that drove it had been
newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody cares for being
ducked.

"Don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered through the teeth of