Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... XIV Alone in the firehole, Slim stared at Cagey3 s huge watch, which hung over the canvas seat from a bit of wire. Then in three minutes he threw coal on all four fires and sank back, panting, on the hot floor of the ship. Sweat ran on his contorted body ready as blood. He felt as if he were bleeding all over, and he could mark his strength ebb, as it was sucked into the yellow entrails of the fireboxes. The maze of steel ladders overhead wavered in thick gloom; they were crooked, and went curving into impossible places, like ladders in a dream. Fantastically half in lethargy, he doubted them. Were they real, were they feasible? Or were they not rather imponderable ladders, crawling up the black sides of this pit, against whose walls he must strive in vain? Ah! He jerked himself together. The thick heat was bearing down his brain, as cold would numb it. He looked at the watch. He thought he had been alone with these fires since time began; and Cagey had been gone five minutes. Yet Cagey had nursed them on watches without end. Slim's head sagged on his shoulders. He knew that now he should throw on more coal, but he suddenly perceived that Cagey stayed on deck to plague him, and his arm was leaden. Let the ship stop then. Perhaps the second was asleep. Must be asleep. Steam at 120 and no sign of him. Or was it that he was afraid, afraid to come out, afraid of his friends'? Slim was tortured by something grotesque and unescapable about the place. The baleful boilerfronts seemed to press him back, and shrivel him like an unwary spider. There was a mournful light on shining-hot steel rungs, a menace in the monstrous hooks, ten feet apart, in which the smoking bars and rakes were cradled; and in the still glowing ashes, which he must shovel...