"Well, I would n't go so far as that," said the Steam, "because I've worked on some of those boats, and sent them through weather quite as bad as the fortnight that 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 tug-boat, loaded with a political club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York Senator off to Europe, crossed their 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 a new, 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."
The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one voice, which is the soul of the ship.
"I am the _Dimbula_, of course. I've never been anything else except that--and a fool!"
The tug-boat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away just in time, its band playing clashily and brassily a popular but impolite air:
In the days of old Rameses--are you on? In the days of old Rameses--are you on? In the days of old Rameses, That story had paresis, Are you on--are you on--are you on?
"Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the Steam. "To tell the truth I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and stringers. Here's Quarantine. After that we'll go to our wharf and clean up a little, and--next month we'll do it all over again."
Harvey N. Cheyne, a spoiled darling, "perhaps fifteen years old," "an American--first, last, and all the time," had "staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail," after trying to smoke a "Wheeling stogie." "He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail," where a "gray mother-wave tucked him under one arm." He was picked up by the fishing schooner _We're Here_, and after many marvellous experiences among the sailors arrived in port, a happier and wiser fellow. His telegram to his father brings the following result.