Текст книги "The ship that found herself"

Автор книги: Rudyard Kipling

“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, 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, were the Majestic, the Paris, the Touraine, the Service, 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 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 ship-building! 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-r!”

The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the Seasons. The Dimbula heard the Majestic say, “Hmph!” 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 sent 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 tugboat, 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?
 

“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 and 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.”