"What's the use?" a few hundred rivets chattered. "We've given--we've
given; and the sooner we confess that we can't keep the ship together
and go off our little heads, the easier it will be. No rivet forged
could stand this strain."

"No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you," the steam
answered.

"The others can have my share. I'm going to pull out," said a rivet in
one of the forward plates.

"If you go, others will follow," hissed the steam. "There's nothing so
contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I knew a little chap like
you--he was an eighth of an inch fatter, though--on a steamer--to be
sure, she was only twelve tons, now I come to think of it--in exactly
the same place as you are. _He_ pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a
sea, not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the
same butt-strap, and the plate opened like a furnace door, and I had
to climb into the nearest fog bank while the boat went down."

"Now that's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet. "Fatter than me,
was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little peg! I
blush for the family, sir." He settled himself more firmly than ever
in his place, and the steam chuckled.

"You see," he went on quite gravely, "a rivet, and especially a rivet
in _your_ position, is really the _one_ indispensable part of the
ship." The steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing
to every single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in telling too
much.