eighth of an inch play. D'you hear me, you young 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."

[Illustration: "AN UNUSUALLY SEVERE PITCH ... HAD LIFTED THE BIG
THROBBING SCREW NEARLY TO THE SURFACE."]

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 on 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. "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."

"As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and that was