Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/109

 "I ’ve got one fraction of an inch play, at any rate," said the garboard-strake, triumphantly. So he had, and all the bottom of the ship felt the 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 have n'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 last cloud I 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 can 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 hundred 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