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McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 4, March, 1896 by Various
page 57 of 197 (28%)
piston went up savagely and choked, for half the steam behind it
was mixed with dirty water. "Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I'm
choking," it gasped. "Never in the history of maritime invention has
such a calamity overtaken one so young and strong. And if I go, who's
to drive the ship?"

"Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the steam, who, of course, had been to sea
many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore, in a cloud, or
a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder storm, or anywhere else where
water was needed. "That's only a little priming, as they call it.
It'll happen all night, on and off. I don't say it's nice, but it's
the best we can do under the circumstances."

"What difference can circumstances make? I'm here to do my work--on
clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!" the cylinder roared.

"The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I've worked on the
North Atlantic run a good many times--it's going to be rough before
morning."

"It isn't distressingly calm now," said the extra strong frames, they
were called web frames, in the engine room. "There's an upward thrust
that we don't understand, and there's a twist that is very bad for our
brackets and diamond plates, and there's a sort of northwestward pull
that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. We mention this
because _we_ happened to cost a great deal of money, and we feel
sure that the owner would not approve of our being treated in this
frivolous way."

"I'm afraid the matter's out of the owner's hands for the present,"
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