in the sides of the ship, "but you must also expand yourself sideways.
Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! Open out!"

"Come back!" said the deck beam, savagely, as the upward heave of
the sea made the frames try to open. "Come back to your bearings, you
slack-jawed irons!"

"Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!" thumped the engines. "Absolute,
unvarying rigidity--rigidity!"

"You see!" whined the rivets in chorus. "No two of you will ever pull
alike, and--and you blame it all on us. We only know how to go through
a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can't and mustn't and
sha'n't move."

"I've got one-sixteenth of an inch play at any rate," said the
garboard strake triumphantly; and so he had, and all the bottom of the
ship felt a good deal easier for it.

"Then we're no good," sobbed the bottom rivets. "We were ordered--we
were _ordered_--never to give, and we've given, and the sea will come
in, and we'll all go to the bottom together! First we're blamed for
everything unpleasant, and now we haven't the consolation of having
done our work."

"Don't say I told you," whispered the steam consolingly; "but, between
you and me and the cloud I last came from, it was bound to happen
sooner or later. You _had_ to give a fraction, and you've given
without knowing it. Now hold on, as before."