Chapter 5

"Ease off!" shouted the forward collision bulkhead. "I want to crumple up, but I'm stiffened in every direction. Ease off, you dirty little forge filings. Let me breathe!"

All the hundreds of plates that are riveted on to the frames, and make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position, complained against the rivets.

"We can't help it! _We_ can't help it!" they murmured. "We're put here to hold you, and we're going to do it. You never pull us twice in the same direction. If you'd say what you were going to do next, we'd try to meet your views."

"As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and that was four inches thick, "every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in opposite directions. Now, what's the sense of that? My friends, let us all pull together."

"Pull any way you please." roared the funnel, "so long as you don't try your experiments on _me_. I need fourteen wire ropes, all pulling in opposite directions, to hold me steady. Isn't that so?"

"We believe you, my boy!" whistled the funnel stays through their clenched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel to the deck.

"Nonsense! We must all pull together," the decks repeated. "Pull lengthways."

"Very good," said the stringers; "then stop pushing sideways when you get wet. Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at the ends as we do."

"No, no curves at the end. A very slight workmanlike curve from side to side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on," said the deck beams.

"Fiddle!" said the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "Who ever heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight. Like that! There!" A big sea smashed on to the deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load.

"Straight up and down is not bad," said the frames who run that way in the sides of the ship, "but you must also expand yourself sideways. Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! Open out!"

"Come back!" said the deck beam, savagely, as the upward heave of the sea made the frames try to open. "Come back to your bearings, you slack-jawed irons!"

"Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!" thumped the engines. "Absolute, unvarying rigidity--rigidity!"

"You see!" whined the rivets in chorus. "No two of you will ever pull alike, and--and you blame it all on us. We only know how to go through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can't and mustn't and sha'n't move."

"I've got one-sixteenth of an inch play at any rate," said the garboard strake triumphantly; and so he had, and all the bottom of the ship felt a good deal 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 haven'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 cloud I last 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 could 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 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 butt-strap, and the plate opened like a furnace door, and I had to climb into the nearest fog bank while the boat went down."

"Now that's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet. "Fatter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little peg! I blush for the family, sir." He settled himself more firmly than ever in his place, and the steam chuckled.

"You see," he went on quite gravely, "a rivet, and especially a rivet in _your_ position, is really the _one_ indispensable part of the ship." The steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to every single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in telling too much.

And all that while the little "Dimbula" pitched and chopped and swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for the gale was at its worst. It was inky black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand before your face. This did not make much difference to the iron-work below, but it troubled the foremast a good deal.

"Now it's all finished," he said, dismally. "The conspiracy is too strong for us. There is nothing left but to--"

"Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!" roared the steam through the foghorn, till the decks quivered. "Don't be frightened below. It's only me, just throwing out a few words in case any one happens to be rolling round to-night,"

"You don't mean to say there's any one except _us_ on the sea in such weather?" said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.

"Scores of 'em," said the steam, clearing its throat. "Rrrrrraaa! Brraaaaa! Prrrrp! It's a trifle windy up here; and, great boilers, how it rains!"

"We're drowning," said the scuppers. They had been doing nothing else all night, but this steady thresh of rain above them seemed to be the end of the world.

"That's all right. We'll be easier in an hour or two. First the wind and then the rain; soon you may make sail again! Grrraaaaah! Drrrraaaa! Drrrrrp! I have a notion that the sea is going down already. If it does you'll learn something about rolling. We've only pitched till now. By the way, aren't you chaps in the hold a little easier than you were?"

There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave a supple little waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf club.

"We have made a most amazing discovery," said the stringers, one after another; "a discovery that entirely changes the situation. We have found, for the first time in the history of shipbuilding, that the inward pull of the deck beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of marine architecture."

The steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the foghorn. "What massive intellects you great stringers have!" he said, softly, when he had finished.

"We, also," began the deck beams, "are discoverers and geniuses. We are of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially helps _us_. We find that we lock upon them when we are subjected to a heavy and singular weight of sea above."

Here the "Dimbula" shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side, and righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.

"In these cases--are you aware of this, steam?--the plating at the bows, and particularly at the stern,--we would also mention the floors beneath us,--helps _us_ to resist any tendency to spring." It was the frames who were speaking in the solemn and awed voice which people use when they have just come across something entirely new for the very first time.

"I'm only a poor, puffy little flutterer," said the steam, "but I have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business. It's all tremendously interesting. Tell us some more. You fellows are _so_ strong."

"You'll see," said the bow plates proudly. "Ready behind there! Here's the father and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets all!" The great sluicing comber thundered by, but through all the scuffle and confusion the steam could hear the low, quick cries of the iron-work as the various strains took them--cries like these: "Easy now, easy! _Now_ push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull in! Shove crossways! Mind the strain at the ends! Grip now! Bite tight! Let the water get away from under, and there she goes."

The wave raced off into the darkness shouting, "Not bad that, if it's your first run!" and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed to the beat of the engines inside her. All three cylinders were wet and white with the salt spray that had come down through the engine-room hatch; there was white salt on the canvas-bound steam pipes, and even the bright work below was speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make the most of steam that was half water, and were pounding along cheerfully.

"How's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?" said the steam, as he whirled through the engine room.

"Nothing for nothing in the world of woe," the cylinders answered, as if they had been working for centuries, "and precious little for seventy-five pounds head. We've made two knots this last hour and a quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, isn't it?"

"Well, it's better than drifting astern, at any rate. You seem rather less--how shall I put it?--stiff in the back than you were."

"If you'd been hammered as we've been this night, you wouldn't be stiff--ffreff--ff--either. Theoreti--retti--retti--cally, of course, rigidity is _the_ thing. Purr--purr--practically, there has to be a little give and take. _We_ found that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a stretch--chch--chh. How's the weather?"

"Sea's going down fast," said the steam.

"Good business," said the high-pressure cylinder. "Whack her up along, boys. They've given us five pounds more steam;" and he began humming the first bars of "Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah," which, as you must have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not made for high speed. Racing liners with twin screws sing "The Turkish Patrol" and the overture to the "Bronze Horse" and "Madame Angot," till something goes wrong, and then they give Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette" with variations.

"You'll learn a song of your own some fine day," said the steam, as he flew up the foghorn for one last bellow.

Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the "Dimbula" began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron in her was sick and giddy. But, luckily, they did not all feel ill at the same time; otherwise she would have opened out like a wet paper box. The steam whistled warnings as he went about his business, for it is in this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of the accidents happen; because 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 had ample time, 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 gray 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 crossbars; 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 was proud of her."

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

Naturally, everything in the "Dimbula" stiffened with pride, and the foremast and the forward collision bulkhead, who are pushing creatures, begged the steam to warn the port of New York of their arrival. "Tell those big boats all about us," they said. "They seem to take us quite as a matter of course."

It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with less than half a mile between each, their bands playing, and their tugboats shouting and waving handkerchiefs beneath, were the "Majestic," the "Paris," the "Touraine," the "Servia," the "Kaiser Wilhelm II." and the "Werkendam," all statelily going out to sea. As the "Dimbula" shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the steam (who knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and then) shouted:

"Oyez! oyez! oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye by these presents we are the 'Dimbula,' fifteen days nine hours out from Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for the first time in our career. We have not foundered! We are here! Eer! eer! We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly unparalleled in the annals of shipbuilding. Our decks were swept. We pitched, we rolled! We thought we were going to die! Hi! hi! But we didn't! We wish to give notice that we have come to New York all the way across the Atlantic, through the worst weather in the world; and we are the 'Dimbula.' We are--arr--ha--ha--ha-r-r!"

The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the seasons. The "Dimbula" heard the "Majestic" say "Humph!" and the "Paris" grunted "How!" and the "Touraine" said "Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the "Servia" said "Haw!" and the "Kaiser" and the "Werkendam" said "Hoch!" Dutch fashion--and that was absolutely all.

"I did my best," said the steam, gravely, "but I don't think they were much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?"

"It's simply disgusting," said the bow-plates. "They might have seen what we've been through. There isn't a ship on the sea that has suffered as we have--is there now?"

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as that," said the steam, "because I've worked on some of those boats, and put them through weather quite as bad as 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 tugboat, loaded with a political club and a brass band that had been to see a senator off to Europe, crossed the 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 one 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 deep 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, and its band was 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?

"Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the steam. "To tell the truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs of stringers. Here's quarantine. After that we'll go to our wharf and clean up a little, and next month we'll do it all over again."

A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

NOTES DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL.--GOYA AND HIS CAREER.--FOUR ENGLISH PAINTERS OF FAMILIAR LIFE.--GÉRICAULT, INGRES, AND DELACROIX.

BY WILL H. LOW.

Looking backward to the first quarter of this century, it is hardly too sweeping an assertion to say that, with a single exception, there was little that was important in the way of painting outside of France and England. There were local reputations in all the other countries, practitioners of the art who joined to a respectable proficiency in painting an adhesion to the traditions which had been handed down to them. These men, in their time and place, were notable; and in the museums of their respective countries their works remain of chronological interest to students of painting. But to the larger public which these papers address, they are of little importance, having exercised but slight influence on contemporaneous art.

The exception already noted was in Spain, and there only in the case of a single painter. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, "Pintor Español," as he delighted to call himself, would be, indeed has been, a fascinating subject for picturesque biography. Charles Yriarte, the well-known French art critic, has given the world a most interesting and complete story of Goya's life, which, though it is only separated from our own day by a span of seventy years, chronicles the exploits of one who in the history of art must hark back to Benvenuto Cellini in the sixteenth century to find his parallel.

Goya was born March 31, 1746, at Fuente de Todos, in the province of Aragon. The son of a small farmer, he was placed when very young in the local Academy of Fine Arts at Saragossa, where he received instruction from Bayen and Luzan, painters little known outside of Spain. The swashbuckler instincts which were to govern him through life manifested themselves here, where in a street brawl he laid low three of his adversaries. He found it prudent to evade both justice and the vengeance which followed swift and sure in those days in Spain, by flying to Madrid. Soon after his arrival in the capital, however, in continuation of his old mode of life, he was picked up for dead in one of the low quarters of the town. Surviving the poignard, but again threatened with arrest, he joined a _quadrilla_ of bull-fighters, in whose company he went from town to town, giving exhibitions of his prowess in the national sport.

With all this, painting must have been somewhat of an interlude; but Goya had early shown signs of great talent, and before he left Saragossa, his master, Josepha Bayen, had confidence enough in his future to entrust the happiness of his daughter to his care by permitting his marriage to her. Goya's biographer notes that through all the various adventures of his career he had the utmost care for the material comfort of this lady. Her character must impress us to-day as charitable to excess; for, shortly after the bull-fighting episode, Goya found himself in Rome, where his next exploit was the abduction, from a convent, of a noble Roman girl. With the police once more on his track, he sought refuge at the Spanish Embassy, whence he was despatched home in disguise, probably to the relief of his country's representative in Rome. Before this adventure, which was only one of many which the charitable wife had to pardon, he had attracted the attention of David, who was then in Italy, and who, as his art differed in every way from that of Goya, must have been strongly impressed by his work to give it his approval.

On arriving home Goya was given employment in designing a series of tapestries for the royal palace; and from 1780, when he was made a member of the Spanish Royal Academy, ensues the period of his greatest artistic activity. Carrying into his art the same excess of temperament which marked his life, his execution was rapid and decisive. Rebellious to the ordinary means employed by painters, he used various mediums, some of which have ill withstood the ravages of time; and, disdaining brushes, he often employed sponges or bits of rag in their place. In the case of one of his pictures, a revolt of the Madrilenians against the French, it is said that he employed a spoon.

In 1799 Goya was made painter to the king, Charles III., whose successor, the fourth of his name, continued his favor. The time, which was that of the notorious "Prince of Peace," Godoy, was favorable for a character like that of Goya, whose eccentricities were looked upon with an indulgent eye by a court which must have felt that its function was hardly that of moral censor. At least Goya, the intimate of Maria Louisa and the court circle, by no means abandoned his friends the bull-fighters and tavern-keepers. Fresh from an altar-piece for a cathedral, or a royal portrait, his ready brush found employment in rapidly painting a street scene, or even a sign for a wine-shop. A whitewashed wall for canvas and mud from the gutter for pigment, were the means employed to embody a patriotic theme at the entrance of the French soldiers into Madrid--a popular masterpiece executed to the plaudits of the crowd.

All this would seem to denote a charlatan; yet withal, Goya has fairly won his place amid the great painters of the world. Perhaps no better example could be found of the essential difference between the outward and visible actions of a man and the inward and spiritual grace of an artist than in this instance; and the Latin standpoint, always more intellectually liberal than our own Anglo-Saxon appreciation of the same problem furnishes the reason why Goya was left free to pursue his artistic career instead of languishing in prison. His illogical brush filled the cathedrals of Saragossa, Seville, Toledo, and Valencia with masterly frescoes, while with the etching needle he produced many plates. Some of these, like the "Caprices," a series of eighty etchings, are filled with imagination alternately tragical and grotesque; while another series, representing bull-fights, throughout its thirty-three plates depicts the incidents of the game with intense realism. The "Disasters of War," another series of eighty, were inspired by the French invasion; and never, perhaps, were the cruelties of war more strenuously realized in art than in these. Probably these etchings, executed, like all his works, by methods peculiar to himself, constitute his best title to remembrance. But his painting, replete though it be with the defects of his qualities, stands as a precursor of the great coloristic school of which Delacroix was the head and front. This is notably to be felt in his portraits, and in some of the rapidly executed single figures of which the Louvre has a specimen and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, another--the latter, "A Jewess of Tangiers."