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The chief had but just come from the depths where the contamination of the earth was most evident in the condition of his stokers; but his chin was now cleanly shaven, and his pipe was drawing as well as his engine fires, and he had wrapped himself in an old P. & O. white duck jacket to show what he had been before he sank to the level of a coasting steamer.
And then the Braybrook Castle began to move, and the wrecking gang cheered and cheered until they were hoarse, and the second engineer of the tug and two stokers, stripped to their waists, with the perspiration streaming down their roasting bodies, answered with a yell and then, lying well over on her starboard bilge, the great ship slid off stern first into deep water, and Tom Lester's heart leapt within him with joy and pride.
That stately veteran of Manila Bay upon whose bridge his loyal, devoted admirers had outlined in brass-headed nails the very spot where Commodore Dewey's feet had rested as he spoke the memorable words: "When you are ready you may fire, Gridley." And the Olympia's personnel? The admiral of the fleet, the captain and the officers straight down to the very stokers?
At the fifth shot, a gigantic crash resounded from below, and the stokers rushed above with the news that the fore stoke-hold had three feet of water in it. The hands received the news with a deep groan; then with curses and recriminations. They bellowed like bulls at Black; they refused all orders. He shot down man after man, while I crouched for safety in the tower; and they became but fiercer.
He could not defend himself, but he made a clutch to save himself, caught something, swung in, struck against the iron ladder, and went tumbling and sliding downward. At the moment when Frank was attacked, a glare of light had filled the pit. One of the stokers had turned his back to the gleaming mouths of the furnaces and looked upward, as if to relieve his aching eyes.
And if I find you telling anything more, I will thrash you, Velo Kupenol, within an inch of your life. I can do it, too. I learned that in America, at least. And for the present we are in the same fix. We are here as common soldiers. My papers were stolen from me in barracks the night my father died, Velo, so there won't be any proving at all. We are just a pair of stokers on a transport.
But I caught the hotel millionaire throwing curious looks at me now and then. I went home worried and depressed and shut myself up in my workroom. This business had to be thought out. It wasn't only stokers; it was something deep, world-wide. I had come up against the slums. What had I to do with it all? I was in my room all afternoon.
I went up to Argand's Caffay, a place where all kinds of seafaring people used to go to get a drink and a bite to eat. There were quite a few in there now French stokers from a steamer or two and half a dozen French man-of-war's men from a French gun-boat that was lying in the harbor, I remember.
"If I was a burnin' peacock, with two hundred bloodshot eyes in my shinin' tail, I'd need 'em all on this job!" said Hinch. "Don't talk! Steer! This ain't the North Atlantic," Pyecroft replied. "Blast my stokers! Why, the steam's dropped fifty pounds!" Hinchcliffe cried. "Fire's blown out," said the engineer. "Stop her!" "Does she do that often?" said Hinch, descending. "Sometimes." "Anytime?"
The stokers did not sit down in idleness, but moved briskly about, punching up the fires with long poles, and now and then adding fuel. Sometimes they hoisted the half of a skeleton into the air, then slammed it down and beat it with the pole, breaking it up so that it would burn better. They hoisted skulls up in the same way and banged and battered them.
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