Excuse me!" He leaped overside; but
his friends took up the tale one after another.

"Which has advanced--" That wave hove green water over the funnel.

"As far as Cape Hatteras--" He drenched the bridge.

"And is now going out to sea--to sea--to sea!" The third went out in
three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom up and
sank in the darkening troughs alongside, while the broken falls whipped
the davits.

"That's all there is to it," seethed the white water roaring through
the scuppers. "There's no animus in our proceedings. We're only
meteorological corollaries."

"Is it going to get any worse?" said the bow-anchor chained down to the
deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.

"Not knowing, can't say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight. Thanks
awfully. Good-bye."

The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and
found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck
sunk between high bulwarks. One of the bulwark-plates, which was hung on
hinges to open outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the water
back to the sea again with a clean smack.

"Evidently that's what I'm made for," said the plate, closing again with
a sputter of pride. "Oh, no, you don't, my friend!" The top of a wave
was trying to get in from the outside, but as the plate did not open in
that direction, the defeated water spurted back.

"Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the bulwark-plate. "My
work, I see, is laid down for the night"; and it began opening and
shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.

"We are not what you might call idle," groaned all the frames together,
as the Dimbula climbed a big wave, lay on her side at the top, and shot
into the next hollow, twisting in the descent. A huge swell pushed up
exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free with nothing
to support them. Then one joking wave caught her up at the bow, and
another at the stern, while the rest of the water slunk away from under
her just to see how she would like it; so she was held up at her two
ends only, and the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the
groaning iron keels and bilge-stringers.

"Ease off! Ease off; there!" roared the garboard-strake. "I want
one-eighth of an inch fair play. D' you hear me, you rivets!"

"Ease off! Ease off!" cried the bilge-stringers. "Don't hold us so tight
to the frames!"

"Ease off!" grunt