Page 20 of The Death Ship


  31

  The last word of Stanislav on leaving me had been that it would cost life-blood if grate-bars fell out. He had meant one bar. Now six had dropped.

  I soon learned that to put them back into their berth not only cost blood, not alone flesh torn off, large pieces of skin scorched, but cost bleeding sperm, shredded tendons, and painfully twisted entrails. The joints of all limbs cracked like broken wood. The marrow in one’s bones appeared to flow out like hot lava. While we worked like Egyptian slaves to bring the bars in again, the steam was falling and falling. Ahead of this hard work we saw already, crawling upon us, the hard work that was to follow to bring the steam up again to its full pressure. The longer we had to work with the bars, the lower fell the steam. I may justly say, though, that since that night, my first night with grate-bars in the ash-pit, I feel myself standing above the gods. I am free. Unbound. I may do now whatever I wish. I may curse the gods. They cannot punish me any more. No human law, no divine commandments, can any longer influence my doings, because no longer can I be damned. Hell is now paradise. However horrible hell may be, it cannot frighten me any more. There is nothing under heaven or in hell that can be compared with putting back fallen-out grate-bars on the Yorikke.

  To know what it meant makes anyone understand that the swearing of my fireman was not swearing at all, but in fact only a sweet love-song. His language, rich as it was, could not meet the situation. No language, not even the Chinese, could possibly express in words the feeling any sane person simply had to have when confronted with a problem like setting in dropped grate-bars in the stoke-hold of the Yorikke.

  Paradise, whatever it may mean, was for the black gang of the Yorikke not the opposite of hell, but was simply freedom from the obligation to set in their place dropped grate-bars.

  The skipper never came into the stoke-hold; neither did the two mates. I have never heard that one of them ever even went below to the engine-hold. They even avoided passing too closely to the hatchway that led below to the stoke-hold.

  The engineers dared enter the stoke-hold only when the Yorikke was snugly lying in port and the black gang was wiping and greasing and doing odd jobs about the boilers and the engine. Even then the engineers were soft-footed with the blacks. The firemen and the drags on the Yorikke were always, even in port, in a state of exaggerated anger, ready any second to throw at the engineer a hammer or a wrench. Prison, hangman, or the like did not mean a thing to any of the blacks. It would have been only liberation from the grate-bars of the Yorikke.

  The engine was set up in a hold which was so small that the engineer on watch had to move about carefully to avoid being caught by the engine. Towards starboard there was in the engine-hold a heavy work-bench with tools for emergency work on the engine, the boilers, or the pipes. This bench could not be set up anywhere else. So it had to be in the engine-hold. Between the bench and the engine there was a space hardly two feet wide. On the other side of the engine, toward port, there was a space of only one foot, which had to be sufficient for the engineers when they wanted to go round the engine to look after the greasing. The slightest slip at either side would have been the last of the engineer. He would have fallen into the running engine. Both engineers were hard drinkers. They could get drunk like a Dane at the funeral of his mother-in-law. And they got soaked whenever the Yorikke was in port. But I have never seen either of them drunk, at least not in full, the same day or the same night the Yorikke was putting out. They knew that being drunk in the engine-hold of the Yorikke on high sea meant death surer than by the noose of a lynching party in Kentucky.

  There was a good reason why the engine-hold was so narrow. On either side of the engine-hold coal-bunkers had been built in. Coal-bunkers must be. But since they do not carry any payload, they are built in any space that cannot be used for any other thing. At least so it was on the Yorikke.

  From the stoke-hold, along starboard and along port side, a very low and narrow gangway led to these bunkers alongside the engine-hold. At the back of the boilers, toward starboard, an iron door led into the engine-hold. This door was supposed to be sea-tight to shut off the engine-hold from the stoke-hold in case water should break in. Since nothing was sea-tight on the Yorikke, no one expected this door to be tight. And it wasn’t. It was this door that was used by the engineers when they wanted to enter the stoke-hold. When they wanted to go from deck to the engine-hold they had, of course, a separate hatchway.

  This gangway was about four feet wide and so low that if you forgot about it you hit your head severely against the iron beams which strengthened the boiler-walls against the ship’s hull. Like everything else aboard the Yorikke these gangways were dark like a coal-mine, day and night alike. Since they ran alongside the boilers they were so hot that a Turkish steam-bath seemed to be at freezing-point compared with their permanent heat.

  We, the drags, could find our way in these two gangways just as easy as a drunken mole coming home at midnight. Because these gangways played a great part in the tortures that the coal-drags had to undergo on the Yorikke. Through these gangways we had to shovel and to haul and to squeeze numberless tons of coal toward the front of the boilers. So it will be understood why these gangways, and the labyrinths of the bunkers next to the engine-hold, held no secrets for us. Other people, among them our two engineers, did not know these gangways so well.

  Suppose the steam, for one reason or other, began to fall. Then the engineer had to do something about it, because that was what he was paid for. Now, the first engineer never entered the stoke-hold when the Yorikke was on high sea. A broken shoulder would always remind him that the boiler-gang must not be molested when the ship is in the open. But since he had to do something about the falling steam, he went to the hatchway on deck leading to the stoke-hold, and from here he cried: “Steam goes down!” No sooner had he spoken than he fled away from the hatchway like the devil from an open church. From below a yell sprang up: “Damned greaser, go to hell and stay there. Just hop below, reception service is ready.” And right after this a mighty piece of coal was flung upwards toward where his face had been for a second.

  No use to preach to the working-man courtesy and politeness when at the same time the working-man is not given working conditions under which he can always stay polite and soft-mannered. One must not expect clean speech from a man compelled to live in filth and always overtired and usually hungry. Well fed, and sitting in a deep soft seat in an Episcopalian church, it is a godly pleasure to listen to a high-powered sermon about the wickedness of an ever unsatisfied working-class. Make all the wicked sailors and restless workers, after a good meal, sit in the same soft church seats, and they will listen with the same joy as do the others to the sermon about the lost proletarians who won’t believe in God or heaven.

  The second engineer, the one I thought a pickpocket and a horse-thief, was still rather young. Perhaps thirty-five. He was very ambitious and hoped to be, some day, first engineer on the Yorikke. His idea was that he could show his ability to make a good first engineer no better than by chasing the black gang, especially when the Yorikke was in port, for then he was in full command of the black gang. I, for one, did not think he had a chance ever to make a good first engineer — a chief, as we would express it properly. He learned very slowly. In fact, he could not learn at all how to get along with the black gang. At least not with a black gang like the one the Yorikke had. Maybe most of us were wanted, somewhere or everywhere, for murder, more or less, or the like, or pretty near the like. Who knows? But no matter what we had been before, and no matter for what reason we had come to sign on for the Yorikke, the firemen and the drags on the Yorikke were workers such as hundreds of decent ships would like to have and would pay real gold to have.

  There are chiefs by whom the black gang swears. I knew a skipper once who was worshipped by the boiler gang as no god would ever be adored by them. That skipper every day went in person to the galley: “Cook, I wish to see and taste the food my firemen and coalers are t
o have today. Well, cook, this goes overboard. My blacks are no pigs. Understand. They have to get food. Real food. And when I say real food I mean it, or you and me are through. This steam-bucket is run by my firemen and by nobody else.” And when he met a fireman or a coal-drag occasionally on deck, he would halt him and ask: “Fireman, how was the grub today? Enough to eat? Well, tonight you are to get an extra ration of bacon and eggs. By the way, does the boy bring you below regularly the iced tea I ordered for you? Just tell the truth. I cut his ears off if he doesn’t do as he has been told to.” The natural result was that you could go a long way through trouble in the stoke-hold before you would hear the fireman or the drag yell a couple of sons of bitches or something to that effect. You could have invited the whole black gang to a Rotarian’s luncheon, and the Rotarians would have thought that these boys had come straight from the reception given in honor of the ambassador of Wortisdansikan in Washington. Yes, sir. A worker only blares back what he is blared at. In his face you see the face of those who make him the way he is.

  While the grate-bars were worked into the frame the steam was falling and falling. The second engineer, then on duty, crawled through the gangway and came into the stoke-hold. Or, to make it clearer, he stopped where he just could let us see his head. From there he said: “Hell, what’s the matter with the damn steam? The bucket will stop now any minute.”

  At this moment the fireman happened to have in his hands the red-hot poker with which he was just about to lift the bars. When he saw the second peeping in, hearing him talk utter nonsense, blood shot into his sweat-covered eyes, and his mouth became frothy. He yelled some inarticulate row of sounds, straightened up, and then, with superhuman force, he ran the poker toward the second with the intention of running him through and pinning him against the boiler-wall. The engineer, having seen the move in time, and the fireman, on account of the heavy weight of the poker, missed each other. The engineer fled, with all the speed he had, through the gangway back to the engine-hold. Since he was not so accustomed to this gangway as we were, he smashed his head several times against the iron bars.

  The poker of the fireman went into that corner of the wall from which at that instant the engineer had disappeared. With so much power was the poker shot against the wall that a thick piece of that wall was broken off like so much pie. The fireman was not yet satisfied. He dropped the poker and ran after the engineer into the gangway. If he had caught him, not a pound of the engineer’s body would have kept together. The second engineer, knowing that his life was forfeited if he failed to reach the door to the engine-hold, was by far quicker than I had ever expected him to be. He made the low door all right, though bleeding all over, and had just bolted the door behind him when the fireman bounced against it with a heavy bolt in his hand.

  The second engineer did not report the attack. Perhaps he knew he would lose the case. As he, or anybody else on earth, would have lost the case against any member of the boiler gang of the Yorikke as long as one member of this gang was the only witness. What I would have done, any other of the gang would have done. If I had been asked to testify, I would have sworn, on any amount of Bibles, that the second engineer had come into the stoke-hold with a wrench in his hand to kill the fireman, because the steam had come down, and because the second was stink-full drunk. And why should I not testify against the trouble-maker? Right or wrong, my country. All right. Justified. Agreed. But then I am also entitled to say: Right or wrong, my fellow-worker; we work together, we suffer together, we laugh together, we die together. Now come on, who wants to blame me? My closest countryman is the one who burns his skin at the same furnace I do. After we have settled this relationship, then let’s talk about nationality.

  Next day the chief asked the second when and how he had received so many holes and bruises on his block. The second said that he had obtained them in the low gangway when making his get-away from the savages in the stoke-hold.

  The chief, cleverer and with a better understanding of the worries of the blacks, did not report the case to the old man either. He ignored the case entirely, for he also knew it would be useless. For what could the skipper do? Lay us in irons? The Yorikke could not afford such a luxury. Every man was needed. In the trenches, when an attack is expected any minute, the soldier is at liberty to beat or to insult his officers as much as he likes. If you shoot him you may lose the trench. Here it was the same. If you laid a fireman in irons, the Yorikke in turn might never weather off a gale.

  Said the chief in answer to the complaints of the second: “Man, you are lucky. Don’t ever try that again, if you want to live. When grate-bars have dropped, then don’t go near the stoke-hold. Let the steam go down. They will bring it up all right as soon as they have a chance. But if you go in to bother them, or even to let them see your face, then I haven’t

  to be a crystal-gazer to foretell your fate. You cannot get away if they catch you. They eat you up alive, they tear you to little pieces, and they put you into the furnace, and when the relief comes they throw you overboard with the slags. No one ever will know what has become of you. That’s what you ought to blame, not the black gang, but the grates we have on this can. Try it once yourself. Ought to. And if I drop in and ask you why the steam is dropping, you will do exactly the same and throw me into the furnace without mercy. Better leave them alone. Well, I warned you. Keep out of their way when they are hard at it. That’s all I can say.”

  The second never again entered the stoke-hold when grate-bars were out. At times he would come in when the steam did not rise. He then just looked around without saying a single word. He would look at the steam-gauge, would hang around for a little while, offer the fireman and the drag each a cigarette, and then would say: “A rotten cheap coal we have bunkered this time. There is no fireman on all the seven seas who is apt to keep up steam with stinking fuel like that.”

  The fireman, of course, understood quite well what the second meant. He did his best to bring up the steam. He worked his whole body into rags to get the right pressure. Not alone the swell guys with money, but also working-men, no matter how low they may seem, have got the true spirit for sport. They feel as proud of a job well done as the Harvard guys feel when they have won a football game. Only no one cheers up the black gang with Rah-Rahs when in a heavy sea, with all the dead-wind that can blow, they have to keep the steam up with a fuel which would not be good enough for Mother to cook a proper meal of corned beef and cabbage. Our quarter-backs in the stoke-hold of the Yorikke sure were filthy and dirty; but that does not mean that they were not quarter-backs as noble in spirit and as brave in work as any fine quarter-back of Princeton. There would be no dukes if we all were princes.

  No man could have a better college than the college represented by the Yorikke. Six months shipping before the mast on the Yorikke, and you no longer have any idols left to worship. Help yourself and do not depend so much upon others, not even upon your union officials. Kick off the authorities who want to wisecrack at you and mold you to a uniform opinion of what is good for you. If you do not know yourself, nobody can tell you, no matter how much you pay to be a member of something.

  Of all the schooling the Yorikke had to offer, there was nothing which could yield better results than fishing dropped grate-bars and setting them back into the grate-frame.

  Each of the three boilers had three furnaces. Two of these furnaces were side by side, with a space of about two feet between them. The third furnace was squeezed in between these two, but above them. All three furnaces were actually located inside the boiler. The furnaces were not square, but cylindrical. The fuel rested upon a grate. This grate was a heavy iron frame along the length of which were lying nine bars which could be removed from the frame one by one. Each bar was about five feet long, about an inch and a half thick, and four inches wide. In front and at the back the frame had a rim upon which the bars rested. This rim was less than a half-inch deep. Hence the bars rested rather uncertainly. Neither in front nor at the back was there
a higher rim against which the bars would have found a brace. It was only this three-eighths of an inch against which the bars could be fixed. Each bar weighed between eighty and a hundred pounds.

  The grates were really simple affairs. Only the use of these grates made them such a horror. When the boilers and the grates had been new, which, as I figure, must have been about the time when the good old British Queen married, even then it must already have been quite a job to hold these bars in the frame, or to put them back after they had dropped. In the course of so many thousands of trips the Yorikke had accomplished to make money for her owners these rims had burned away.

  The slightest disrespect of the fireman toward the grate when knocking off the slags was inevitably punished by a bar dropping into the ash-hole. As soon as this happened the fire had to be left alone, and the combined efforts of the fireman and his drag had to be exerted to set the bar back into its berth.

  First thing to do was to fish the bar out of the ash-hole. This was done with the help of a pair of tongs which weighed about forty pounds. These tongs did not work the way the tongs a blacksmith uses work. They were, like all things on the Yorikke, the other way round. That is to say, if you pushed the handles together the mouth opened, and vice versa. It would have been too easy for us had it been otherwise.

  The bar was red-hot, and the furnace was white-hot. One of us held the bar up with the tongs, the other steered the bar into the furnace and then steered it alongside of those bars still quietly resting in their berth, until the opposite end of the bar reached the rim at the back. There, with the help of the poker from beneath that is, from the ash-hole — the bar was slowly and carefully moved into the rim at the back. Then we worked to get the bar into the front rim too. One push too much toward the back rim, or one very slight pull too much toward the front rim, and the bar said good-by and dropped off again into the ash-hole. One of us lay flat on the ground to use the poker while the one that held the tongs tried once more to move, with tenderness, the bar back onto the rim. All this was done while the bar was red-hot, and while the open furnace roared into our faces, scorching face, hands, chest.