"Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn Miss
Frazier her deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin for tea?"
said the skipper. "We'll be in dock the night, and when you're
goin' back to Glasgie ye can think of us loadin' her down an'
drivin' her forth - all for your sake."

In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons
dead-weight into the Dimbula, and took her out from Liverpool.
As soon as she met the lift of the open water, she naturally
began to talk. If you lay your ear to the side of the cabin,
the next time you are in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of
little voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and
whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking
exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm. Wooden ships
shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver
through all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The
Dimbula was very strongly built, and every piece of her had a
letter or a number, or both, to describe it; and every piece had
been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or punched by man, and had
lived in the roar and rattle of the shipyard for months.
Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice, in exact
proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it. Cast-iron, as
a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and
wrought-iron, and ribs and beams that have been much bent and
welded and riveted, talk continuously. Their conversation, of
course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because they are
all, though they do not know it, bound down one to the other in
a black darkness, where they cannot tell what is happening near
them, nor what will overtake them next.