Roy Norton

“ The steam was slowly clearing when I staggered to my feet and ran toward him in the stifling haze. As I stooped a stoker ran past me. Without straightening up I grabbed him by the leg and threw him to the floor. They began to dash out as if to run were their only salvation, and I jumped to the foot of the steel steps leading up to the mid-gratings and struck like a madman to drive them back, the impact of my fists against terrified, grimy faces spatting loud and sharp above all the hiss and hell that had been stirred up by the waves outside. ”

“ When the defeated sea was smooth they conquered the leak and rigged sails against the twisted funnels and ventilators of the Lauritan, and the passengers above danced, and sang, and played shovel-board while we drifted and sailed far away to the blue Azores—a travesty of joy and heedlessness above and a fight for maimed life below. ”

“ It settled back, and I threw my arm out and struck as I never struck before or since and gloated as I felt the biting edge of the chisel eating home through the thin spot of the beam above and knew that each chip of riven steel meant one more chance for the lives of those who were depending on my straining thews.
“Bang! Bang! Bang! I struck with feverish energy when I had space to move my arms, and then would come that awful, horrifying moment when the boiler lifted itself in an effort to end my work and my life. ”

“ There was an instant’s pause as we realized the danger, then there were shouts, screams, and curses as we, a lot of gibbering, begrimed, and frantic men, tore up and down that steel coffin through the mist of dying steam, seeking some way of holding our loosened giants. ”

“ In the runway stood Bob Gaines, squarely planted on his feet, and he was striking, too, trying to whip into submission the fear that men call panic.
“When the screw stopped, the Lauritan sloughed round into the trough. Another noise held us in thrall. Thump! Thump! Thump! The great boilers, round-bellied and hot, began swinging in their loosened cradles as the ship felt the roll. Now they swayed and struck like huge loosened devils bent on hammering themselves through the plates, plunging out into the sea, and beating us in the final dive to the bottom. ”

“ A chip wrestling with the sea, that’s all the Lauritan was, and every minute made all of us more anxious. In the first few hours of this smash a wave came ripping over its crest, half drowning the man in the crow’s-nest and slatting the ribs of an officer against a stanchion until he was off duty for a month. We fellows down in the engine-rooms heard about it and, as I said, were anxious; but with the screw racing in spite of all we could do, and a leak aft which was drenching the bilge and the runway of the shaft. ”

“ Looking more keenly I saw that, beneath the grease of the engine-rooms which we of the engines wear, his face had the thin pallor of one who has known hospitals and that grim suffering which grabs a man by thew and bone and twists him into a writhing, squirming thing which moans between shut teeth and stares from dim, unrecognizing eyes at those who come around. ”

“ We didn’t waste words or loud talk, we four engineers who would ask no stoker to give his life, for we understood that probably the first two men lifted up for the work would have to die, and that between the other two the big chain must be passed through the hard-bought hole to save the Lauritan and those aboard. I pulled a coin from my pocket. The other three understood, and we matched to see who would die first, who would die second, who—third—would have a chance, and who should be the fourth and last man to carry out our uncompleted task. ”

“ I lived days, years, and ages up there on that asbestos things until I grew old and nervous and desperate and my anger gave way to other thoughts which tore through my mind at such pace that the cells of my brain bear blotted records of that terrific mental turmoil. ”

“ I knew what it meant—that with hammer and chisel in hand some of us, lying outstretched on the asbestos covering above those swinging, plunging masses, with but eighteen inches of space between their thousands of tons and the cold, hard steel above, would pay our lives for the endeavor. The cargo deck above was so deeply laden that to clear its burden and work from a point of safety would have required hours instead of minutes. ”

“ We were all down there, even the men off watch, because a bunch of flying, whirling, straining steel needs mothering. They’d just got the leak aft blocked, and we were high with hope that we could clear our flooded engine-rooms of water and give the stoke-hole a chance. As you know, the old Lauritan had transverse boilers teamed in six, that fool method which placed them with their back ends square up against a ship’s sides and cut out the bunkers to give room for stokers in a runway where there wasn’t good ventilation. ”