ve the great boats clear way, the Steam (who
knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and
then) shouted:

"Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know
ye by these presents, we are the _Dimbula_, fifteen days nine hours
from Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of
cargo for the first time in our career! We have not foundered. We are
here, _'Eer! 'Eer!_ We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly
unparalleled in the annals of ship-building! Our decks were swept! We
pitched; we rolled! We thought we were going to die! _Hi! Hi!_ But we
did n't. We wish to give notice that we have come to New York all the
way across the Atlantic through the worst weather in the world; and we
are the _Dimbula_! We are--arr--ha--ha--ha-r-r-r!"

The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of
the Seasons. The _Dimbula_ heard the _Majestic_ say, "Hmph!" 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 is n't a ship on the sea that has
suffered as we have--is there, now?"

"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 fo