“What’s awful?” said a wave, drowning the capstan for the hundredth time.

“This organized conspiracy on your part,” the capstan gurgled, taking his cue from the mast.

“Organized bubbles and spindrift!  There has been a depression in the Gulf of Mexico.  Excuse me!” He leaped overside; but his friends took up the tale one after another.

“Which has advanced—­” That wave threw green over the funnel.

“As far as Cape Hatteras—­” He drenched the bridge.

“And is now going out to sea—­to sea—­to sea!” He went out in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom up and sank in the darkening troughs alongside.

“That’s all there is to it,” seethed the broken water, roaring through the scuppers.  “There’s no animus in our proceedings.  We’re a meteorological corollary.”

“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-by.”

The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and got 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 wop.

“Evidently that’s what I’m made for,” said the plate, shutting up again with a sputter of pride.  “Oh, no, you don’t, my friend!”

The top of a wave was trying to get in from outside, but the plate did not open in that direction, and 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 as she descended.  A huge swell pushed up exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free, with nothing to support them, and then one joking wave caught her up at the bow, and another at the stern, while the rest of the water fell away from under her, just to see how she would like it, and she was held up at the two ends, 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 an eighth of an inch play.  D’you hear me, you young rivets!”

“Ease off! ease off!” cried the bilge stringers.  “Don’t hold us so tight to the frames!”

“Ease off!” grunted 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.”