HOVE OFF
The rain came down in sheets, and the mangrove roots were hidden by the
yellow flood, when Jefferson stood, dripping, on the _Cumbria_'s bridge.
Her iron deck was level, the stumpy pole masts ran upright into the
drifting mist, and a column of black smoke floated sluggishly from her
rusty funnel. Dingy vapour also rose from the slender one of the
locomotive boiler, and cables--hemp and wire and chain--stretched
between the mangroves and the steamer's bow and stern. Jefferson,
leaning heavily on the bridge rails, considered them each in turn. He
shivered a little, though the rain was warm, and his wet face looked
unusually gaunt and worn; but his eyes were intent and steady, for at
last all was ready for the supreme effort of heaving the _Cumbria_ off.
He looked down when Austin stopped at the foot of the ladder. His face
and hands were black, and the thin singlet, which was all he wore above
his duck trousers, seemed glued to him.
"Hadn't you better keep inside the wheelhouse until we start the mill?"
he said.
Jefferson smiled drily. "Do you think you could? What are you wandering
up and down the deck for?"
"I'm not. I've been firing the locomotive boiler, and spent the last
twenty minutes in the forecastle. It isn't as dry as it should be
there."
He spoke lightly, though there was a suggestion of tension in his voice,
and it was evident that both of them were anxious. Indeed, Jefferson
fancied that his comrade found it difficult to stand still at all.
"Well?" he said.
"There are a third of them I daren't turn out, and two or three of the
others who are down with Tom look a good deal shakier than I care about.
Still, you see, I couldn't keep them in. They've had about enough of
this country, and I don't blame them. You can figure on about half of us
as reasonably effective, but what everybody wants to know is, when we
are to begin."
"When you can give me eighty pounds of steam. Then we'll shake her up
for an hour or two with reversed propeller, and heave on everything when
you get up to the hundred. Still, although we have blown a good deal of
the mud out forward, I expect she'll want another fifty before she'll
move."
Austin glanced at the gap in the forest beneath the bows, across which
the shattered mangroves were strewn. He and Jefferson had gone over all
this before, but since he had stopped by the ladder they must talk of
something, for silence would have been intolerable just then.
"I'll go down and stir them up, though I'm not sure that they need it,"
he said.
He disappeared round the deck-house, and now there was nobody to see
him, Jefferson paced feverishly up and down the bridge, until Wall-eye,
the steward, came pattering barefoot along the deck, with his arm in a
sling. Jefferson stopped him with a sign.
"Slip into Mr. Austin's room, and bring me the thermometer he keeps in
the little case," he said. "As usual, no comprenny? Casetta de cuero,
very chiquitita."
The man went away, and when he came back Jefferson, who went into the
wheelhouse, sucked the little clinical thermometer gravely for a minute
or two. Then he frowned as he looked at it.
"Ninety-nine, point something. I guess it's coming on again," he said.
"Well, one can go on working when it's a good deal more than that,
especially when he has to."
He came out, and, leaning down, dropped the case into the hands of the
man below.
"Put it back, and don't let Mr. Austin know," he said. "SeA+-or Austin no
savvy, you comprenny?"
Wall-eye grinned as he went away. He could, of course, hold his tongue,
but the little case was sodden already, and it could not have got so wet
as that in Austin's room.
In the meanwhile Austin had gone down to the stoke-hold. The place was
dimly lighted, and insufferably hot, for, with the _Cumbria_ stationary,
no more air came down the ventilator shafts than the fires would draw,
and they were burning sulkily. In fact, it was only by strenuous labour
that steam could be raised at all. Here and there the pale flicker of an
oil lamp emphasised the gloom, though there were three half-moon patches
of brightness in each of the two boilers, until a fierce red glow beat
out as Tom, the donkey-man, flung open a furnace door. Then Austin
gained some impression of his surroundings.
The bent figures of half naked men with shovels were forced out of the
shadows. Another man, dripping with perspiration, pushed a clattering
truck, and several more lay, apparently inert, upon the floor-plates,
with water thick with coal grime trickling from them. Only two of them
were professional firemen, and all were weakened by the climate or
shaken by the fever, while as the red light touched them, Austin could
see how worn they were, and the suggestive hollows in their uncovered
skin. There are also things which it is unfit that a white man should
do, and firing in a calm in the tropics is one of them. Austin,
however, had little time to look about him in, for Tom thrust an iron
bar into one of the Spaniards's hands.
"Stand by with the bucket, you. Now, out with the clinker!" he said.
It is probable that the last man addressed did not understand what was
said, but he knew how to clean a fire, and stood, half crouching, before
the furnace, with face averted, while he plied the bar. There was a
rattling beneath the grate-bars and an overpowering wave of heat, in the
midst of which the man stood bowed, with thin garments scorching and his
hair frizzling visibly. Austin could hear his gasping breath, and became
possessed by a sense of futile indignation. Toil of that kind was, he
felt, more than could be expected of anything made in the image of a
man. Then the Canario let the bar fall clanging, and seized another,
while the heat grew more intense when he raked out the ash and glowing
clinker from the flaming tunnel. Austin shrank back with a hand upon his
eyes and singlet singeing, and his voice broke through Tom's cry of
"Damp her down!"
"Por misericordia," he said, "echadle agua!"
Somebody swung a bucket, and a cloud of steam whirled up; but the man
who had cleaned the fire let his scraper fall, and lurching with a half
strangled cry, went down amidst the vapour. He lay with scorched chest
and arms on the floor-plates, making little stertorous noises, until
Tom, who tore the bucket from his comrade's hands, flung the rest of its
contents over him.
"Drag him away!" he said, and turned to Austin. "He's the second one,
but he'll come round by and by. Did you come down to look on or give us
a hand?"
He flung open another door, and Austin took a shovel from a weary man.
He had studied the art of firing up on deck, where it was considerably
cooler, before the locomotive boiler, but he discovered that the work
now demanded from him was an entirely different matter. The heat was
overpowering, the bed of glowing fuel long, and it was only by the
uttermost swing of shoulders and wrench of back and loins that he could
effectively distribute his shovelful. He felt his lowered face
scorching, and the sweat of effort dripped from him, but he toiled on in
Berserker fury while Tom encouraged him.
"Spread it!" he said. "Next lot well down to the back end. You needn't
be afraid to move yourself. Keep her thin!"
Austin wondered whether he had any eyebrows left when that furnace was
filled, but it was done at last, and then there was coal to be trimmed
from the bunkers. The dust that whirled about the shovels blackened and
choked him, but he worked on savagely. Every man was needed, with half
the Spaniards sick, and he felt that if this was the cost of success it
was not fitting that he should shirk his part in it. Social distinctions
counted for nothing there; the barriers of creed and nationality had
also melted. They were all privates in that forlorn hope, with death as
the penalty of failure, and while they could not be more, none of them
that day dared be less, than men.
He never remembered all he did. There was a constant clanging of
shovels, whirring of coal trucks, and slamming of iron doors that opened
to let out fiery heat and radiance and take the flying fuel in. Men came
and went like phantoms, gasping, panting, groaning now and then, and the
voice of their leader rose stridently at intervals. He was a man of low
degree, and his commands were not characterised by any particular
delicacy, but he was the man they needed, and when he emphasised his
instructions with a grimy hand, and now and then the flat of the
shovel, nobody resented it. During one brief interlude he found breath
for a deprecatory word or two with Austin.
"If she was doing her eight or ten knots it wouldn't be as hard as
this," he said. "Then the ventilators would cool her down. The fires
won't burn themselves now--you have got to make them; but you'll find
her steam sweet and easy when she's going up the trades head to breeze."
"I wonder," said Austin grimly, "how many of us will be left when she
gets there."
Then Bill, who had been busy at the locomotive boiler, came down the
ladder with a message, and he and Tom vanished into the engine room,
while Austin, who greatly desired to go with them, put a restraint upon
himself. For some minutes he felt his heart beat as he listened to a
premonitory wheezing and panting, and then his blood seemed to tingle as
this merged into the steady rumble of engines. The faint quiver of the
floor-plates sent a thrill through him, and he drew in a great breath of
relief when beam and angle commenced to tremble. The rumbling grew
steadily louder, the whirl of the reversed propeller shook the ship, and
it was evident that the engines were running well.
After that, however, the work became harder still, for the big cylinders
must be fed, and it was with a sensation of thankfulness that he had not
broken down beneath the strain Austin dragged himself up the ladder when
a message was brought him that he was wanted to drive the after winch.
It was raining heavily, but he found it a relief to feel the deluge beat
upon his beaded face and scorched skin, though he could scarcely see the
mangroves to which the wire that ran from the winch drum led. It was
shackled to a big bridle, a loop of twisted steel that wound in and out
among a rood or two of the stoutest trees. The winch was also powerful,
and it remained to be seen whether it would heave the _Cumbria_ out of
her miry bed, or pull that portion of the watery forest up bodily. A
great cable that slanted back towards him rose out of the water forward
in a curve, and he could dimly see Jefferson's lean figure outlined
against the drifting mist high up on the bridge. On the forecastle
beyond it more shadowy men stood still, and Austin wondered whether
their hearts beat as his did while they waited. The man beside him
stooped ready, with body bent in a rigid curve, and bare, stiffened
arms, clenching the wire that led to the winch-drum. There was a
minute's waiting, and then Jefferson, moving along the bridge, flung up
a hand.
"Heave!" he said.
Austin felt his pulses quicken and a curious sense of exultation as he
unscrewed the valve, for it seemed to him that flesh and blood had borne
the strain too long, and now they had steel and steam to fight for them.
The deck beneath him quivered as the screw whirled faster, and he could
see the poop shaking visibly. Then the winch wheezed and pounded, and
there was a groaning forward as the rattle of the windlass joined in.
Wire and hemp and studded chain rose ripping from the river, creaked and
groaned and strained, but when they had drawn each curve out they could
get no inch of slack in. Austin clenched his fingers on the valve-wheel,
but his eyes were fixed on the lonely figure pacing feverishly up and
down the bridge, and just then he felt all the bitterness of defeat. The
rattle forward died away, and though the winch still whirred and
hammered, none of the wire rope ran over the drum into the crouching
Spaniard's hands. The tension lasted for some minutes, and then
Jefferson's voice came down harshly through the rain.
"Let up!" he said. "Get down, half of you, and see if you can help them
with the firing. We'll try her again when you have raised more steam."
There was, by contrast, a curious silence when the roar of steam died
away, and the thudding of the big engines below decks sank to a lower
pitch. The men who could be spared went down in a body, and toiled for
another hour in a frenzy. The fierce Latin blood was up; they knew it
was the last round, and they would not be beaten now. The throbbing
blast which rushed skywards from the blow-off valve when they came up
again showed what they had done, and Austin walked aft, singed and
blackened, to his winch, with his heart in his mouth. It must be now or
never, for it was clear to him that the men were making their last
effort, and the boilers would not bear another pound of steam.
The windlass was groaning horribly when he opened the valve, and the
whole ship trembled with the whirring of the screw. He saw the drums
spin round futilely for a moment or two, and then the Spaniard, who
crouched behind one of them, howled, as a foot of the uncoiling wire
came back to his hands. Simultaneously, the groaning of the windlass
changed to a clanking rattle, and no sound had ever seemed half so
musical to Austin. The ship shook beneath him, and creaked in all her
frame, while the hammering and rattling swelled into a frantic din as
she commenced to move. He felt as though he were choking, and his sight
momentarily failed him; but as yet the battle was not quite won, and
closing blackened fingers on the valve-wheel, he watched the rope come
home with dazzled eyes. It ran in faster and faster; he could hear the
great stud-cable splashing and grinding as it came in, too, and for five
breathless minutes he held himself to his task, feeling the _Cumbria_
creep down stream, stern foremost, under him. Then her pace grew faster,
and the clanging of his winch seemed to deafen him, until at last a
shrill-pitched voice fell through the din.
"Bastante!" it said. "She's clear now! 'Vast heaving!"
Then the tension slackened as the long, rusty hull swung out into
midstream, and flesh and blood were left shaken, and, as yet, unable to
recover from the suddenly lifted strain in the silence, as winch and
engines stopped. Tom, the donkey-man, was chanting some incoherent
ribaldry forward; here and there a Canario howled or flung up dripping
arms; while the one beside Austin sat down upon the hatch and rocked
himself to and fro as he called upon the Queen of Heaven. Only Jefferson
stood very still, a tall, lean figure, on the bridge, with his torn and
drenched clothing sticking to him, and Austin leaned heavily upon his
winch. He did not wish to move, and was not sure he could have done so
had he wanted to. The _Cumbria_ was clear afloat, and they had won; but
there was nothing he could say or do which would sufficiently celebrate
that triumph.
Jefferson gave them five minutes to recover their balance, and then his
voice came down again. The windlass clanked its hardest, wire hawsers
splashed, and the _Cumbria_ had swung across to the opposite forest when
the big anchor rose to her bows. In the meanwhile the surfboat had been
busy, too; and when the winch whirred again they slid away, stern
foremost, with propeller churning slowly, against the muddy stream. It
was twenty minutes later when, with a roar of running cable, the anchor
plunged once more, and she brought up abreast of the creek where the
coal and oil were stored. Jefferson came down from his bridge and sat
down on the table in the skipper's room when Austin flung himself on to
the settee, with the water trickling from him.
"Well," he said, "we have floated her, but there's still a good deal to
be done. There are the coal and oil to get on board, and then we have to
find the gum."
Austin looked up at him with a little smile.
"That's rather a prosaic epilogue when one comes to think of it," he
said.
"Then you can paint a picture of it when you get home, if you fancy it
worth while," said Jefferson drily.
"I don't think it would be," and Austin smiled again. "After all, a
picture either goes beyond or falls a long way short of the real thing,
and the subject's rather too big for me. Man's domination symbolised by
a staggering scarecrow with a fireman's shovel."
Jefferson dropped his hand on his shoulder, and gripped it hard. "Well,"
he said, "you can drive a winch and sling a palm oil puncheon like a
sailorman. I guess that's 'most as useful as the other thing, any way."
"Ah!" said Austin, "you're skirting rather a big question, but we are
practical now. Are you going to dig the gum up before you heave in
cargo?"
"I'm not. It seems to me it's safer where it is in the meanwhile, so
long as Funnel-paint doesn't know where to look for it. If you'll give
me a dose of quinine I'd be obliged to you."
Austin glanced at him sharply. "Have you any special reason for asking
for it?"
"I've been in the rain quite a long while now, and it's a good deal
wiser to head off a fever than wriggle out of its clutches once it gets
a good grip on you. One gets cautious in this country."
Austin said nothing further, for he was by this time well acquainted
with his comrade's characteristics, but he was not quite contented with
the latter's reason when he lugged out the medicine chest.