The music was still playing, the sun was still shining from a slightly
clouded sky. On the dry deck the travelling city, in the gayest, most
superficial mood, was still dancing in the face of the infiniteness of
heaven and sea. A steward came up to Frederick and presented the second
engineer, who brought a message from Doctor Wilhelm asking Frederick to
come to him immediately. The engineer led Frederick to the engine-room
and down a perpendicular iron ladder. The warm, heavy smell of oil almost
robbed Frederick of his breath. The downward climb seemed endless.
On all sides the engines were working. Frederick glanced at the gigantic
cylinders, in which the compressed steam was moving pistons up and down
like pump handles. The pistons communicated their motion to the big shaft
running aft along the keel to the stern, and the revolutions of the shaft
in turn produced the revolutions of the screw propelling the vessel
across the Atlantic.
Oilers holding oil cans and waste clambered in and out of the rotating
masses of iron with astounding sureness and boldness. To graze one of the
fly-wheels, or to step one inch within the unguarded circle of their
revolution, was to receive a deadly blow. Here was the heart and soul of
the vessel, the real modern miracle of strength, the like of which no age
in the past has been able to produce. An iron soul, a steely heart. It
was as if one were descending below earth into the glowing workshop of
Vulcan of old, the lame god, who did not demonstrate the full skill of
his divinity until our times.
Still deeper down went the descent, to where, from numerous shovels
handled by almost naked helots, coal was flying into the white heat under
the boilers, into a row of gaping jaws of fire. Frederick felt as if he
had reached the heart of a crater. It was a black shaft smelling of coal,
slag, and burning things. Apparently it was lighted only by the constant
opening of the furnace doors, spitting white heat. How was it possible
for such a conflagration to be contained in the _Roland's_ interior
without reducing the whole to ashes? What a conquest to fight such a sea
of fire, to keep it in check, and carry it through sea and storm; to
manage that it should carry itself three or six thousand miles in the
ocean in fair weather or foul, hidden away and absolutely innocuous.
Frederick panted for breath. The glowing heat of the abyss instantly
brought the perspiration pouring out on his face and neck. He was so
absorbed in the novelty of the impressions that he completely forgot he
was surrounded by water about twenty feet under the surface of the sea.
Suddenly, he became aware of Doctor Wilhelm's presence, and in the same
instant saw a man entirely naked stretched out like a corpse, a white
body on the black coal dust. The man had ceased to breathe.
In a second Frederick, now wholly the physician, had Doctor Wilhelm's
stethoscope in his hand and was listening to the man's heart. His mates,
blackened with coal from head to foot, were ceaselessly at work in the
engine's unremitting service, shovelling coal, opening the furnace doors,
and slamming them shut. They scarcely cast a glance at their fallen
comrade, and that only when they stopped to gulp a glass of beer or
water.
"It was hardly three minutes ago," said Doctor Wilhelm, "that he broke
down. That man over there, the one who has just washed himself, is his
successor."
"He was just about to throw coal into the furnace," explained the
engineer who had called for Frederick, shouting at the top of his voice
to make himself heard above the clanging of the shovels and the banging
of the iron doors, "when his shovel flew out of his hand about twelve
feet away and almost struck a coal-trimmer. He was hired in Hamburg. The
moment he set foot on board, I thought, 'If only you pull through, my
boy.' He joked about himself. He said, 'If my heart is good.' I was sorry
for him. He wanted to cross the great pond, and that was his only way of
getting over. He wanted, no matter how, to see his brother again, his
only living relative, or somebody else. They hadn't seen each other for
fourteen years."
"_Exitus_," said Frederick, after a prolonged investigation of the man's
heart. Even a few moments after the stethoscope had been removed, one
could see the ring it made on his bluish, waxen skin. His chin dropped.
They put it back in place, and Frederick bound his jaws with his white
handkerchief. "He had a bad fall," Frederick remarked. It may actually
have been the unfortunate fall to which the helot owed his death. There
was a deep bleeding gash in his temple from the edge of a large nut.
"Probably a heart stroke," Frederick added, "the result of the heat and
over-exertion." He looked at the dead man, then at his mates, naked,
blackened, illuminated by the jaws of the glowing furnaces, and thought
of the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." If we were to take the
commandment literally, how far should we get?
The physicians mounted on deck, and several of the men picked up the
victim of civilisation, the modern galley-slave, still covered with the
sweat of his fearful occupation. With the handkerchief about his head, he
looked as if he were suffering from toothache. They carried him up out of
the glowing pit to the cabin set aside for dead bodies.
Doctor Wilhelm had to notify the captain. Nobody on deck, where the band
was playing the last measures, was to suspect that a stoker had died.
With the help of the Red Cross sister, they stretched him on a mattress,
and within a short time a circle of the higher officials of the vessel,
at their head the captain, and among them the purser and the physicians,
were gathered about the corpse.
Captain von Kessel ordered the stoker's death to be kept secret,
particularly requesting the two physicians not to mention it. Formalities
had to be gone through, documents had to be drawn up and signed. This
kept them busy until dark, when the first call for dinner was trumpeted
across the deck and through the gangways of the first-class section.