“That’s all, d’you call it?” said the thrust-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 is 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 want 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 get,” the screw answered.  “Look out!  It’s coming again!”

He rose with a roar as the “Dimbula” plunged; and “whack—­whack—­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, 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 isn’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 northwestward pull that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us.  We mention this because we happened to cost a great deal of money, and we feel sure that the owner would not approve of our being treated in this frivolous way.”

“I’m afraid the matter’s out of the owner’s hands for the present,” said the steam, slipping into the condenser.  “You’re left to your own devices till the weather betters.”

“I wouldn’t mind the weather,” said a flat bass voice deep below; “it’s this confounded cargo that’s breaking my heart.  I’m the garboard strake, and I’m twice as thick as most of the others, and I ought to know something.”