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Every time the boat pitches, the floor heaves you forward, the fire spurts at you out of the doors and the gong keeps on like a sledgehammer coming down on top of your mind. And all you think of is your bunk and the time when you're to tumble in." From the stokers' quarters presently there came a burst of singing. "Now let's go back," he ended, "and see how they're getting ready for this."
"And the Russians in charge of the train are replaced by Chinese, are they not?" "Yes, with the exception of Popof, who goes through with us." "So that we shall have Chinese engine drivers and stokers? Well, major, that seems rather alarming, and the safety of the travelers " "Let me undeceive you, Monsieur Bombarnac. These Chinese are just as clever as we are.
In one huge cavern we saw the men who provided 30,000 men with bread each day, men working as the stokers in an ocean steamer labor amidst the glare of fires; we tasted the bread and found it good, as good as all French bread is, and that means a little better than all other bread. Then we slipped back into daylight and wandered along the face of the fortress.
I could not make out what was up at first, but looking out I saw the stokers, pokers, and engine-driver all calmly enjoying their pipes, seated on the footboard on the shady side of the train! Some one or two people remarked that the officials in this part of the world were lazy fellows, but the passengers generally appeared in no great hurry, and after a while the train moved on again.
Whether rocking on the Baltic, or waiting for the stokers to heave out coal at Liverpool, every moment not occupied by seaman's duties, Cook had filled by improving himself, by increasing his usefulness, by sharpening his brain, so that his brain could better direct his hands, by studying mathematics and astronomy and geography and science and navigation.
The Rabbis had modified the Biblical prohibition against having any fire whatever, and allowed it to be kindled by non-Jews. Poor women, frequently Irish, and known as Shabbos-goyahs or fire-goyahs, acted as stokers to the Ghetto at twopence a hearth. No Jew ever touched a match or a candle or burnt a piece of paper, or even opened a letter.
And closer still, from that "vile saloon" directly under the garden, I could hear wild shouts and songs and roars of laughter that came, I learned, not only from dockers, but from "stokers" and "drunken sailors," men who lived right inside the ships and would soon be starting for heathen lands!
"The blighters interrupted our rubber," said the consul, "and the governor was exceedingly put out. I told them the Noa-Noa couldn't proceed without the stokers, and as it carries the French mail, they patched it up to arrest them when they return. We quite lost track of the game for a few minutes." But the cruel war would not down.
Above each group of boilers rises 130 feet in height a funnel nineteen feet in diameter, which, if a tunnel, would easily admit the passage of two railway trains abreast." George saw the fires lighted, and when the furnaces required more coal, suddenly a whistle brought fifty stokers or firemen, the automatic furnace doors flew open, and a gleam of light flooded everything.
Crew and stokers were in a mass standing strictly at attention on the main deck. A whole bevy of destroyers crowded round the wounded warrior. On the deck of that battleship staggering along at a stone's throw was a vindication of war in itself; of war, the state of being, quite apart from war motives or gains. Ten thousand years of peace would fail to produce a spectacle of so great virtue.
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