ed the deck-beams, as the Dimbula rolled fearfully.
"You've cramped our knees into the stringers, and we can't move. Ease
off; you flat-headed little nuisances."

Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell away
in torrents of streaming thunder.

"Ease off!" shouted the forward collision-bulkhead. "I want to crumple
up, but I'm stiffened in every direction. Ease off; you dirty little
forge-filings. Let me breathe!"

All the hundreds of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the
outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted
to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position,
complained against the rivets.

"We can't help it! We can't help it!" they murmured in reply. "We're put
here to hold you, and we're going to do it; you never pull us twice in
the same direction. If you'd say what you were going to do next, we'd
try to meet your views.

"As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and that was
four inches thick, "every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in
opposite directions. Now, what's the sense of that? My friends, let us
all pull together."

"Pull any way you please," roared the funnel, "so long as you don't
try your experiments on me. I need fourteen wire-ropes, all pulling in
different directions, to hold me steady. Isn't that so?"

"We believe you, my boy!" whistled the funnel-stays through their
clinched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel
to the deck.

"Nonsense! We must all pull together," the decks repeated. "Pull
lengthways."

"Very good," said the stringers; "then stop pushing sideways when you
get wet. Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at the
ends as we do."

"No--no curves at the end. A very slight workmanlike curve from side to
side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on," said
the deck-beams.

"Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "Who ever heard
of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry
tons of good solid weight--like that! There!" A big sea smashed on the
deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load.

"Straight up and down is not bad," said the frames, who ran that way in
the sides of the ship, "but you must also expand yourselves sideways.
Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! open out!"

"Come back!" said the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward h