“I’ve got one-sixteenth of an inch play at any rate,” said the garboard strake triumphantly; and so he had, and all the bottom of the ship felt a good deal easier for it.

“Then we’re no good,” sobbed the bottom rivets.  “We were ordered—­we were ordered—­never to give, and we’ve given, and the sea will come in, and we’ll all go to the bottom together!  First we’re blamed for everything unpleasant, and now we haven’t the consolation of having done our work.”

“Don’t say I told you,” whispered the steam consolingly; “but, between you and me and the cloud I last came from, it was bound to happen sooner or later.  You had to give a fraction, and you’ve given without knowing it.  Now hold on, as before.”

“What’s the use?” a few hundred rivets chattered.  “We’ve given—­we’ve given; and the sooner we confess that we can’t keep the ship together and go off our little heads, the easier it will be.  No rivet forged could stand this strain.”

“No one rivet was ever meant to.  Share it among you,” the steam answered.

“The others can have my share.  I’m going to pull out,” said a rivet in one of the forward plates.

“If you go, others will follow,” hissed the steam.  “There’s nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going.  Why, I knew a little chap like you—­he was an eighth of an inch fatter, though—­on a steamer—­to be sure, she was only twelve tons, now I come to think of it—­in exactly the same place as you are. He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same butt-strap, and the plate opened like a furnace door, and I had to climb into the nearest fog bank while the boat went down.”

“Now that’s peculiarly disgraceful,” said the rivet.  “Fatter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage?  Reedy little peg!  I blush for the family, sir.”  He settled himself more firmly than ever in his place, and the steam chuckled.

“You see,” he went on quite gravely, “a rivet, and especially a rivet in your position, is really the one indispensable part of the ship.”  The steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to every single piece of iron aboard.  There is no sense in telling too much.

And all that while the little “Dimbula” pitched and chopped and swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for the gale was at its worst.  It was inky black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand before your face.  This did not make much difference to the iron-work below, but it troubled the foremast a good deal.

“Now it’s all finished,” he said, dismally.  “The conspiracy is too strong for us.  There is nothing left but to—­”