t-block whose business it
is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing to hold
it back it would crawl right into the engine-room. (It is the holding
back of the screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) "I know I
do my work deep down and out of sight, but I warn you I expect
justice. All I ask for is bare justice. Why can't you push steadily
and evenly instead of whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot
under all my collars." The thrust-block had six collars, each faced
with brass, and he did not wish to get them heated.

All the bearings that supported the fifty feet of screw-shaft as it
ran to the stern whispered: "Justice--give us justice."

"I can only give you what I can get," the screw answered. "Look out!
It's coming again!"

He rose with a roar as the _Dimbula_ plunged, and
"whack--flack--whack--whack" went the engines, furiously, for they had
little to check them.

"I'm the noblest outcome of human ingenuity--Mr. Buchanan says so,"
squealed the high-pressure cylinder. "This is simply ridiculous!" The
piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it was
mixed with dirty water. "Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I'm
choking," it gasped. "Never in the history of maritime invention has
such a calamity overtaken one so young and strong. And if I go, who's
to drive the ship?"

"Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been to sea
many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or
a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where
water was needed. "That's only a little priming, a little
carrying-over, as they call it. It'll happen all night, on and off. I
don't say it's nice, but it's the best we can do under the
circumstances."

"What difference can circumstances make? I'm here to do my work--on
clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!" the cylinder roared.

"The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I've worked on the
North Atlantic run a good many times--it's going to be rough before
morning."

"It is n't distressingly calm now," said the extra-strong frames--they
were called web-frames--in the engine-room. "There's an upward thrust
that we don't understand, and there's a twist that is very bad for our
brackets and diamond-plates, and there's a sort of west-north-westerly
pull that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. We mention
this because we happened to cost a good deal of money, and we feel