For Jacinta Part 35

"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 n.o.body 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 chiquit.i.ta."

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. "Senor 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 _c.u.mbria_ 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 sc.r.a.per 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, n.o.body 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 _c.u.mbria_ 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 p.o.o.p shaking visibly. Then the winch wheezed and pounded, and there was a groaning forward as the rattle of the windla.s.s 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 windla.s.s 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 windla.s.s 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 _c.u.mbria_ 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 _c.u.mbria_ 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 windla.s.s clanked its hardest, wire hawsers splashed, and the _c.u.mbria_ 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.

CHAPTER XXVI

JEFFERSON FINDS THE GUM