THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
them through weather quite as bad as the fortnight that we 've had, in six days; and some of them are a little over ten thousand tons, I believe. Now I 've seen the Majestic, for instance, ducked from her bows to her funnel; and I 've helped the Arizona, I think she was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and I had to run out of the Paris's engine-room, one day, because there was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I don't deny—" The Steam shut off suddenly, as a tug-boat, loaded with a political club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York Senator off to Europe, crossed their bows, going to Hoboken. There was a long silence that reached, without a break, from the cut-water to the propeller-blades of the Dimbula.
Then a new, big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had just waked up: "It 's my conviction that I have made a fool of myself."
The Steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one voice, which is the soul of the ship.
"Who are you?" he said, with a laugh.
"I am the Dimbula, of course. I 've never been anything else except that—and a fool!"
The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away just in time; its band playing clashily and brassily a popular but impolite air;
In the days of old Rameses—are you on?
In the days of old Rameses—are you on?
In the days of old Rameses,
That story had paresis,
Are you on—are you on—are you on?
[105]
