"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 west-northwesterly pull, that follows the twist, which
seriously annoys us. We mention this because we happened to cost
a good 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 is out of 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 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."

The garboard-strake is the lowest plate in the bottom of a ship,
and the Dimbula's garboard-strake was nearly three-quarters of an
inch mild steel.

"The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected," the
strake grunted, "and the cargo pushes me down, and, between the
two, I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"When in doubt, hold on," rumbled the Steam, making head in the
boilers.