Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/102

. "This is simply ridiculous!" The piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it was mixed with dirty water. "Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I 'm choking," it gasped. "Never in the history of maritime invention has such a calamity overtaken one so young and strong. And if I go, who 's to drive the ship?"

"Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the Steam, who, of course, had been to sea many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore in a cloud, or a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder-storm, or anywhere else where water was needed. "That 's only a little priming, a little carrying-over, as they call it. It 'll happen all night, on and off. I don't say it 's nice, but it 's the best we can do under the circumstances."

"What difference can circumstances make? I 'm here to do my work—on clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!" the cylinder roared.

"The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I 've worked on the North Atlantic run a good many times—it 's going to be rough before morning."

"It is n'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."