"And now," said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, "she's a real ship, isn't she? It seems only the other day father gave the order for her, and now—and now—isn't she a beauty!" The girl was proud of the firm, and talked as though she were the controlling partner.
"Oh, she's no so bad," the skipper replied cautiously. "But I'm sayin' that it takes more than christenin' to mak' a ship. In the nature o' things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she's just irons and rivets and plates put into the form of a ship. She has to find herself yet."
"I thought father said she was exceptionally well found."
"So she is," said the skipper, with a laugh. "But it's this way wi' ships, Miss Frazier. She's all here, but the parrts of her have not learned to work together yet. They've had no chance."
"The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them."
"Yes, indeed. But there's more than engines to a ship. Every inch of her, ye'll understand, has to be livened up and made to work wi' its neighbour—sweetenin' her, we call it, technically."
"And how will you do it?" the girl asked.
"We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we have rough weather this trip—it's likely—she'll learn the rest by heart! For a ship, ye'll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in no sense a reegid body closed at both ends. She's a highly complex structure o' various an' conflictin' strains, wi' tissues that must give an' tak' accordin' to her personal modulus of elasteecity." Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer, was coming towards them. "I'm sayin' to Miss Frazier, here, that our little Dimbula has to be sweetened yet, and nothin' but a gale will do it. How's all wi' your engines, Buck?"
"Well enough—true by plumb an' rule, o' course; but there's no spontaneeity yet." He turned to the girl. "Take my word, Miss Frazier, and maybe ye'll comprehend later; even after a pretty girl's christened a ship it does not follow that there's such a thing as a ship under the men that work her."
"I was sayin' the very same, Mr. Buchanan," the skipper interrupted.
"That's more metaphysical than I can follow," said Miss Frazier, laughing.
"Why so? Ye're good Scotch, an'—I knew your mother's father, he was fra' Dumfries—ye've a vested right in metapheesics, Miss Frazier, just as ye have in the Dimbula," the engineer said.
"Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn Miss Frazier her deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin for tea?" said the skipper. "We'll be in dock the night, and when you're goin' back to Glasgie ye can think of us loadin' her down an' drivin' her forth—all for your sake."
In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons dead–weight into the Dimbula, and took her out from Liverpool. As soon as she met the lift of the open water, she naturally began to talk. If you lay your ear to the side of the cabin, the next time you are in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of little voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking exactly like a telephone in a thunder–storm. Wooden ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver through all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The Dimbula was very strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter or a number, or both, to describe it; and every piece had been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or punched by man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of the shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice, in exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it. Cast–iron, as a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and wrought–iron, and ribs and beams that have been much bent and welded and riveted, talk continuously. Their conversation, of course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because they are all, though they do not know it, bound down one to the other in a black darkness, where they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what will overtake them next.
As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey–headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on the steam–capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes being ducked.
"Don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered through the teeth of his cogs. "Hi! Where's the fellow gone?"
The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but "Plenty more where he came from," said a brother–wave, and went through and over the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron deck–beams below.
"Can't you keep still up there?" said the deckbeams. "What's the matter with you? One minute you weigh twice as much as you ought to, and the next you don't!"
"It isn't my fault," said the capstan. "There's a green brute outside that comes and hits me on the head."
"Tell that to the shipwrights. You've been in position for months and you've never wriggled like this before. If you aren't careful you'll strain us."
"Talking of strain," said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, "are any of you fellows—you deck–beams, we mean—aware that those exceedingly ugly knees of yours happen to be riveted into our structure—ours?"
"Who might you be?" the deck–beams inquired.
"Oh, nobody in particular," was the answer. "We're only the port and starboard upper–deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving and hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps."
Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak, that run lengthways from stern to bow. They keep the iron frames (what are called ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends of the deck–beams, which go from side to side of the ship. Stringers always consider themselves most important, because they are so long.
"You will take steps—will you?" This was a long echoing rumble. It came from the frames—scores and scores of them, each one about eighteen inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in four places. "We think you will have a certain amount of trouble in that"; and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held everything together whispered: "You Will! You will! Stop quivering and be quiet. Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What's that?"
Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they did their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern to bow, and she shook like a rat in a terrier's mouth.
An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the big throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning round in a kind of soda–water—half sea and half air—going much faster than was proper, because there was no deep water for it to work in. As it sank again, the engines—and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a row—snorted through all their three pistons. "Was that a joke, you fellow outside? It's an uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work if you fly off the handle that way?"
"I didn't fly off the handle," said the screw, twirling huskily at the end of the screw–shaft. "If I had, you'd have been scrap–iron by this time. The sea dropped away from under me, and I had nothing to catch on to. That's all."