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It is pathetic to recall that as I sat that morning in the breakfast room of an hotel, from the windows of which could be seen the four huge funnels of the Titanic towering over the roofs of the various shipping offices opposite, and the procession of stokers and stewards wending their way to the ship, there sat behind me three of the Titanic's passengers discussing the coming voyage and estimating, among other things, the probabilities of an accident at sea to the ship.
He enrolled in his working legion the pick of mechanics, stokers, iron-founders, lime-burners, miners, brickmakers, and artisans of every sort, white or black without distinction of colour. Many of them brought their families with them. It was quite an emigration. On the 31st of October, at 10 a.m., this troop landed on the quays of Tampa Town.
Negro youths who worked as stokers in the vessels, came up the steep, narrow streets with eyes sparkling restlessly as though contemplating wholesale rapine. Under the doorways disappeared grave Moorish horsemen, trailing long garments fastened at the head in a ball of whiteness, or garbed in purplish mantles, with sharp pointed hoods that gave them the aspect of bearded, crimson-clad monks.
The latter ordered his engines started again at full speed, with the intention of ramming the enemy, but his Chinese stokers refused to obey the order, and his ship did not move. The crew of the steamship got into their small boats, and for an hour and a half these were towed by the submarine so that their row to shore would not be so long.
Poverty, that's what it is, and I've always steered way clear of it as though I were afraid to look. I've taken your father's point of view and left the slums for him and his friends to tackle when they get the time. I was only too glad to be left out. But that hour with J. K. and his stokers gave me a jolt. I can feel it still. I can't seem to shake it off.
I'll come for you when I am ready " and he laid his hand encouragingly on the widow's arm. With this he turned to the Texan and the Actor: "You understand, both of you, do you not, Mr. Bonner? You and your friend will guard the aft companion-way, and help the Chief Engineer take care of the stokers and the steerage. I and the First Officer will fill the boats."
Below, the boiler deck was dully illumined by smoky lanterns; but when one of the great doors of the roaring furnace was thrown open, that the half-naked black firemen might throw in more pitch-pine slabs, there shone forth such a fiery glare, that the boat and the machinery working in the open, and plain to view seemed wrapped in a Vesuvius of flame, and the sturdy stokers and lounging roustabouts looked like the fiends in a fiery inferno.
Turn to those stories of the winning of the V.C., and then ask yourself whether the nation whose sons are capable of this noble heroism deserves to have the whip of Zabern laid across its shoulders by any jack-in-office who chooses to insult us. Those two stokers, putting their heads out for a breath of fresh air in the midst of the battle, are true to the English type.
All day and all night, half naked stokers, so grimed with oil and coal dust as to lose the slightest semblance to human beings, feverishly shovelled coal, throwing it rapidly and evenly over roaring furnaces kept at a fierce white heat.
Lothair stood with his chief friends near him, the ladies, however, seated, and every one passed farmers and townsmen and honest folk, down to the stokers of the trains from Grandchester, with whose presence St. Aldegonde was much pleased, and whom he carefully addressed as they passed by.
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