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"They were searching under the stoke-hold plates to get out some cotton waste that had got entangled about the rosebox of the suctions, which, as we found out, prevented the bilge-pumps from acting, when, all in a moment, just when all the stray dunnage had been cleared out, the ship gave a lurch and the plates buckled up, catching the lot of them, Mr Stokes and all, in a sort of rat trap.
Look sharp, Haldane, there's no time to lose; the poor fellow's in a very ticklish state and they want to get him up on deck in order to examine his injuries better than they can below in the stoke-hold!" "Aye, aye, sir!" I answered, darting aft immediately, to avoid further debation, towards the saloon door under the poop. "I'm off, sir, at once!"
"Good Lord, we're lost!" gulped out Mr Stokes as we all floundered together on the grating forming the floor of the engine-room, where fortunately the flood had washed us, instead of hustling us down the stoke-hold below, where all three of us would most inevitably have been killed by the fall. "A boiler's burst and the ship broached-to!"
The Japanese servant, whose station was at the forward-turret ammunition-hoist, reported the service of the whisky to his mates, and from here the news spread as news will in a cellular hull up to turrets and gun-rooms, through speaking-tubes and water-tight bulkheads, down to stoke-hold, engine-rooms, and steering-room; and long before Captain Blake had thought of taking a drink the whole ship's company was commenting, mentally and openly, and more or less profanely, on the story that "the old man was getting drunk in the conning-tower."
The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him the end of his watch was near. He sighed with content, with regret as well at having to part from that serenity which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts.
"There might have been a hundred-weight or two lying loose in the stoke-hold, but, for all practical purposes, we have used nothing but the Valparaiso bunker since we left port." "The rest of our coal was shipped at Coronel?" "Yes, sir." "You hear? It is exactly as I have told you," said Courtenay, glancing at the others. "I must explain to you, Mr.
Courtenay stooped and swung the other clear of the fight, for the second and third officers were using their fists, and Walker, even in the hurry of his ascent from the stoke-hold, had not let go of a spanner. The yells and curses, the trampling of dim forms swaying in the fight, the roaring of the gale, and the incessant crash of heavy spray made up a ghastly pandemonium.
I learnt later that he had explored the lascars' quarters, the forecastle, the engine-room, and had even descended to the stoke-hold; but this was done so unostentatiously that it occasioned no comment.
In the narrow stoke-hold, lit up by the ruddy glare of the furnace fires, the light from which enabled me to see the brackish bilge water washing about beneath the hole in the flooring and gurgling up through the broken portplates there, I saw that a group of half-naked firemen, and others, were bending over a pile of empty coal sacks heaped up against the further bulkhead, dividing the occupied apartments from the main hold, as far away as possible from the blazing fires, on which one of the stokers on duty pitched occasionally a shovelful of fuel, or smoothed the surface of the glowing embers with a long-toothed rake.
The lower deck was given over chiefly to stores, coal bunkers, the engine room, the stoke-hold, and to a large number of electric accumulators, which kept the electric lights going when the engines were not working. There were, however, on this deck the gymnasium, and a large room, directly under Mr. Pulitzer's bedroom, used to take the overflow from the library.
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