in this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that
most of the accidents happen, for then everything thinks that the
worst is over and goes off guard. So he orated and chattered till
the beams and frames and floors and stringers and things had
learned how to lock down and lock up on one another, and endure
this new kind of strain.

They found ample time to practise, for they were sixteen days at
sea, and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New
York. The Dimbula picked up her pilot, and came in covered with
salt and red rust. Her funnel was dirty-grey from top to bottom;
two boats had been carried away; three copper ventilators looked
like hats after a fight with the police; the bridge had a dimple
in the middle of it; the house that covered the steam steering-gear
was split as with hatchets; there was a bill for small repairs in
the engine-room almost as long as the screw-shaft; the forward
cargo-hatch fell into bucket-staves when they raised the iron
cross-bars; and the steam-capstan had been badly wrenched on its
bed. Altogether, as the skipper said, it was "a pretty general
average."

"But she's soupled," he said to Mr. Buchanan. "For all her
dead-weight she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off
the Banks - I am proud of her, Buck."

"It's vera good," said the chief engineer, looking along the
dishevelled decks. "Now, a man judgin' superfeecially would say
we were a wreck, but we know otherwise - by experience."

Naturally everything in the Dimbula fairly stiffened with pride,