The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of
the seasons. The "Dimbula" heard the "Majestic" say "Humph!" and the
"Paris" grunted "How!" and the "Touraine" said "Oui!" with a little
coquettish flicker of steam; and the "Servia" said "Haw!" and the
"Kaiser" and the "Werkendam" said "Hoch!" Dutch fashion--and that was
absolutely all.

"I did my best," said the steam, gravely, "but I don't think they were
much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?"

"It's simply disgusting," said the bow-plates. "They might have
seen what we've been through. There isn't a ship on the sea that has
suffered as we have--is there now?"

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as that," said the steam, "because I've
worked on some of those boats, and put them through weather quite as
bad as we've had in six days; and some of them are a little over ten
thousand tons, I believe. Now, I've seen the 'Majestic,' for instance,
ducked from her bows to her funnel, and I've helped the 'Arizona,' I
think she was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and
I had to run out of the 'Paris's' engine room one day because there
was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I don't deny--" The steam
shut off suddenly as a tugboat, loaded with a political club and a
brass band that had been to see a senator off to Europe, crossed the
bows, going to Hoboken. There was a long silence, that reached without
a break from the cut-water to the propeller blades of the "Dimbula."

Then one big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had
just waked up: "It's my conviction that I have made a fool of myself."