Part 35 (1/2)

”I'll go down and stir them up, though I'm not sure that they need it,”

he said.

He disappeared round the deck-house, and now there was n.o.body to see him, Jefferson paced feverishly up and down the bridge, until Wall-eye, the steward, came pattering barefoot along the deck, with his arm in a sling. Jefferson stopped him with a sign.

”Slip into Mr. Austin's room, and bring me the thermometer he keeps in the little case,” he said. ”As usual, no comprenny? Casetta de cuero, very chiquit.i.ta.”

The man went away, and when he came back Jefferson, who went into the wheelhouse, sucked the little clinical thermometer gravely for a minute or two. Then he frowned as he looked at it.

”Ninety-nine, point something. I guess it's coming on again,” he said.

”Well, one can go on working when it's a good deal more than that, especially when he has to.”

He came out, and, leaning down, dropped the case into the hands of the man below.

”Put it back, and don't let Mr. Austin know,” he said. ”Senor Austin no savvy, you comprenny?”

Wall-eye grinned as he went away. He could, of course, hold his tongue, but the little case was sodden already, and it could not have got so wet as that in Austin's room.

In the meanwhile Austin had gone down to the stoke-hold. The place was dimly lighted, and insufferably hot, for, with the _c.u.mbria_ stationary, no more air came down the ventilator shafts than the fires would draw, and they were burning sulkily. In fact, it was only by strenuous labour that steam could be raised at all. Here and there the pale flicker of an oil lamp emphasised the gloom, though there were three half-moon patches of brightness in each of the two boilers, until a fierce red glow beat out as Tom, the donkey-man, flung open a furnace door. Then Austin gained some impression of his surroundings.

The bent figures of half naked men with shovels were forced out of the shadows. Another man, dripping with perspiration, pushed a clattering truck, and several more lay, apparently inert, upon the floor-plates, with water thick with coal grime trickling from them. Only two of them were professional firemen, and all were weakened by the climate or shaken by the fever, while as the red light touched them, Austin could see how worn they were, and the suggestive hollows in their uncovered skin. There are also things which it is unfit that a white man should do, and firing in a calm in the tropics is one of them. Austin, however, had little time to look about him in, for Tom thrust an iron bar into one of the Spaniards's hands.

”Stand by with the bucket, you. Now, out with the clinker!” he said.

It is probable that the last man addressed did not understand what was said, but he knew how to clean a fire, and stood, half crouching, before the furnace, with face averted, while he plied the bar. There was a rattling beneath the grate-bars and an overpowering wave of heat, in the midst of which the man stood bowed, with thin garments scorching and his hair frizzling visibly. Austin could hear his gasping breath, and became possessed by a sense of futile indignation. Toil of that kind was, he felt, more than could be expected of anything made in the image of a man. Then the Canario let the bar fall clanging, and seized another, while the heat grew more intense when he raked out the ash and glowing clinker from the flaming tunnel. Austin shrank back with a hand upon his eyes and singlet singeing, and his voice broke through Tom's cry of ”Damp her down!”

”Por misericordia,” he said, ”echadle agua!”

Somebody swung a bucket, and a cloud of steam whirled up; but the man who had cleaned the fire let his sc.r.a.per fall, and lurching with a half strangled cry, went down amidst the vapour. He lay with scorched chest and arms on the floor-plates, making little stertorous noises, until Tom, who tore the bucket from his comrade's hands, flung the rest of its contents over him.

”Drag him away!” he said, and turned to Austin. ”He's the second one, but he'll come round by and by. Did you come down to look on or give us a hand?”

He flung open another door, and Austin took a shovel from a weary man.

He had studied the art of firing up on deck, where it was considerably cooler, before the locomotive boiler, but he discovered that the work now demanded from him was an entirely different matter. The heat was overpowering, the bed of glowing fuel long, and it was only by the uttermost swing of shoulders and wrench of back and loins that he could effectively distribute his shovelful. He felt his lowered face scorching, and the sweat of effort dripped from him, but he toiled on in Berserker fury while Tom encouraged him.

”Spread it!” he said. ”Next lot well down to the back end. You needn't be afraid to move yourself. Keep her thin!”

Austin wondered whether he had any eyebrows left when that furnace was filled, but it was done at last, and then there was coal to be trimmed from the bunkers. The dust that whirled about the shovels blackened and choked him, but he worked on savagely. Every man was needed, with half the Spaniards sick, and he felt that if this was the cost of success it was not fitting that he should s.h.i.+rk his part in it. Social distinctions counted for nothing there; the barriers of creed and nationality had also melted. They were all privates in that forlorn hope, with death as the penalty of failure, and while they could not be more, none of them that day dared be less, than men.

He never remembered all he did. There was a constant clanging of shovels, whirring of coal trucks, and slamming of iron doors that opened to let out fiery heat and radiance and take the flying fuel in. Men came and went like phantoms, gasping, panting, groaning now and then, and the voice of their leader rose stridently at intervals. He was a man of low degree, and his commands were not characterised by any particular delicacy, but he was the man they needed, and when he emphasised his instructions with a grimy hand, and now and then the flat of the shovel, n.o.body resented it. During one brief interlude he found breath for a deprecatory word or two with Austin.

”If she was doing her eight or ten knots it wouldn't be as hard as this,” he said. ”Then the ventilators would cool her down. The fires won't burn themselves now--you have got to make them; but you'll find her steam sweet and easy when she's going up the trades head to breeze.”

”I wonder,” said Austin grimly, ”how many of us will be left when she gets there.”

Then Bill, who had been busy at the locomotive boiler, came down the ladder with a message, and he and Tom vanished into the engine room, while Austin, who greatly desired to go with them, put a restraint upon himself. For some minutes he felt his heart beat as he listened to a premonitory wheezing and panting, and then his blood seemed to tingle as this merged into the steady rumble of engines. The faint quiver of the floor-plates sent a thrill through him, and he drew in a great breath of relief when beam and angle commenced to tremble. The rumbling grew steadily louder, the whirl of the reversed propeller shook the s.h.i.+p, and it was evident that the engines were running well.

After that, however, the work became harder still, for the big cylinders must be fed, and it was with a sensation of thankfulness that he had not broken down beneath the strain Austin dragged himself up the ladder when a message was brought him that he was wanted to drive the after winch.