great hold capacity, and a certain steady speed.  This boat was perhaps two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her holds.  Her owners—­they were a very well-known Scotch family—­came round with her from the North, where she had been launched and christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was to take cargo for New York; and the owner’s daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass-work and the patent winches, and particularly the strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a bottle of very good champagne when she christened the steamer the “Dimbula.”  It was a beautiful September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness (she was painted lead color, with a red funnel) looked very fine indeed.  Her house flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new to the sea and wished to make her welcome.

“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 the 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.”

“But 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 parts of her have not learned to work together yet.  They’ve had no chance.”

“But the engines are working beautifully.  I can hear them.”

“Yes, indeed.  But there is more than engines to a ship.  Every inch of her, ye’ll understand, has to be livened up, and made to work wi’ its neighbor—­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 eelasteecity.”  Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer, in his blue coat with gilt buttons, was coming toward 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, of 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.”