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It contained a request that he would visit Myrtle Hazard, who seemed to be in a very excitable and impressible condition, and who might perhaps be easily brought under those influences which she had resisted from her early years, through inborn perversity of character. When the Rev. Mr. Stoker received this note, he turned very pale, which was a bad sign.
From the glint of the raised weapon he bounced backward against the rail, where he leaned incoherently snarling like a cornered dog. "Hi didn't sign as no blymed stoker," he growled at last. "Hi won't go " "The stokehold or hell, it's up to you." Coulter's reply came in an absolute monotony of voice strangely at variance with the passionate stress of their labored breathing.
At this the stoker rejoiced and going out, bought sherbet of violets and rose-water and made him drink it.
Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck.
Holroyd was learning Spanish industriously, but he was still in the present tense and substantive stage of speech, and the only other person who had any words of English was a negro stoker, who had them all wrong.
They're just a run out and home again for you, and a row about the money and the grub." "Sure to be a row about the grub," murmured the stoker. "What are ships nowadays?" he went on, raising a shaking index finger. "Are they ships at all? They're run by companies on the make, and worked by factory hands who curse their own house-flags. It's a dirty game, I call it. Things are all wrong.
When the sun hung low over the sugar plantations that stretch in flat miles to the east and west beyond the levees, when all was quiet on land and water and ship, Neville walked slowly to the forecastle. "Sullivan," he called, "come with me." Dan climbed down from his bunk and came to the door; the big stoker searched Neville's face with a changed, sobered look.
"It will be a gr-reat race," he announced, "and I may have to kill a stoker. But " Then he dived below again.
But perhaps the ship had already gone to the bottom! Every one knew it all; every man had in some way or other been through this overcharged suspense as cabin-boy, stoker, captain, cook and felt something of it again now. Only the farmers were unaffected by it; they dozed, woke up with a jerk, and yawned audibly.
Stoker was now helpless, faithfully and tenderly waited upon by his own wife, who had regained her health and strength, in no small measure, perhaps, from the great need of sympathy and active aid which her unfortunate husband now experienced. It was an astonishment to herself when she found that she who had so long been served was able to serve another.
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