Part 22 (2/2)
The bags burst when they dragged them into piles and laid them upon the sling, while when the winch swung them up, a rain of kernels and slimy water came pattering and splas.h.i.+ng down. Putrefying kernels floated up into every hole they made, and now and then a man sank waist deep among the crumbling bags. Still, there was no stoppage or slackening of effort. Forty dollars is a large sum to a seaman of the Canaries, who can bring up a family on one peseta, which is rather less than ninepence, a day, while the bonus contingent on getting the _c.u.mbria_ off would set up most of them for life. They remembered it that day as they floundered and waded about the stifling hold, for the work of the big pump had renewed their ardour.
Still, the task before them was one most men would have shrunk from. The heat below decks was suffocating, the smell of the steaming, fermenting ma.s.s of slime and oil and kernels nauseating. The water it swam in was putrescent, and the weight to be hauled out of it and sent up into the sunlight apparently enough to keep them busy for months ahead, though they had, as everybody knew, very little time to move it in. It was to be a grim struggle between man and inert material, for unless the _c.u.mbria_ was hove off when the rains came, it seemed very probable that she would stay there until she fell to pieces.
They set about it in silence, which, in the case of Spaniards, was a significant thing; but n.o.body had any breath to spare, and Austin gasped distressfully as he toiled, almost naked, in their midst. His hair was filled with grease, clots of oil smeared his shoulders, and the bags that burst as he lifted them abraded his dripping skin. Still, they went up, opening as they swung out of the dusky hold, and the winch rattled on, while there could be no rest for any man while sling succeeded sling.
He was half blinded by perspiration, the wounds on his raw hands had opened again, and there were now red patches on his uncovered breast and arms. His muscles had, however, grown accustomed to the strain since the first arduous day, and he did a man's part, as their comrade, with the rest. There were no distinctions down in the stifling hold. It was a community of effort for the one result, and again Austin wondered at the forethought of the fever-wasted man above who drove the hammering winch.
Jefferson was, beyond all question, boss; but with singular clearness of vision, or, perhaps, that higher, half-conscious faculty of doing the right thing, that characterises the leader of men, he had recognised that what he called bluff was of no service here, and had gone straight to the strength there is in simple human nature. There was, those untaught sailormen knew, no labour he was not ready to bear his part in, and no command was flung at them for a show of authority. Jefferson spent his strength and dollars freely, and while he asked no more than a hundred cents' worth for the latter, he got it with interest, a hundredfold.
It grew hotter and hotter, and there were curiously mingled e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of Latin prayer and imprecations that had somehow lost their sting. The man with calumniated ancestry took it as a jest, and amidst the roar of running chain and fierce rattle of the winch the work went on. The rains were coming, there was very much to be done, and human courage braced itself to the task. Hard hands were torn and bleeding, veins showed gorged on dusky foreheads, muscles rose and bunched themselves under the olive skin, and Englishman and Iberian gave freely all that was in them, the sweat of the hard-driven body and tension of controlling will. They were alone in the land of the shadow, with a deadly climate against them, but the conflict they were engaged in has been waged before by Spaniards and Englishmen in half the wilder lands.
Then the winch stopped suddenly, and Jefferson came backwards down the ladder. He alighted knee deep in water among the rotten bags, and all his observations were not recordable. He had put off conventionality, and was once more the reckless sailor and the optimistic American, so he spoke of the lower regions, and called the men who had stowed the _c.u.mbria_'s cargo condemned loafers in barbarous Castilian and good American, while the olive-faced Canarios gasped and grinned at him.
”The man who packed those bags there should be hung,” he said. ”We can't break the bulk out until we've s.h.i.+fted most of them. Then I'll send you down the sling-tub, and we'll heave the stuff to ----! It's sixty dollars now for the man who finds the gum.”
”No sign of it yet,” said Austin. ”They'd never have stowed it among the bulk kernels. They're worth something. Hadn't you better make sure of them?”
Jefferson laughed grimly. ”They're worth--how do I know? Call it 12 a ton when they're not rotten. It's the gum we came for, and I'm going to find it if I tear the ballast tanks and limbeys out of her. Clear that bag bulkhead, and then stand by for the sling-tub. We'll heave every blue-flamed kernel over.”
The tub came down by and by, in fact, two of them, and those who had no shovels bailed up the slimy kernels with their hats and hands; but each time the chain swung through the hatch the tub below was full. It was two o'clock when they desisted, and some of them were waist deep in water then, while soon after they came up the big hose splashed in again. There were steampipe collars to unbolt and pack, and bolt again, before that was done; while when Austin came upon Jefferson, he held up one hand from which the scalded skin was peeling.
”I can run the ---- winch if I drive her with my mouth and foot,” he said. ”Get the comida into you, and then back into the hold again. We're going to make her hum.”
Austin glanced suggestively towards the men, who stood with backs still bent with weariness, about the entrance to the forecastle.
”I suppose so,” he said. ”Still, the question is, can they stand it long?”
Jefferson laughed harshly. ”They'll have to. We have the blazing sun against us, and the evening fever-mist; in fact, 'most everything that man has to grapple with, and the worst of all is time. Still, they can't break us. We have got to beat them--the river, the climate, and all the man-killing meanness nature has in Western Africa.”
He stopped a moment, and, standing very straight, a haggard, grim-faced scarecrow, flung up his scalded hands towards the bra.s.sy heavens in a wide, appealing gesture. ”When you come to the bottom of things, that's what we were made for. There's something in us that is stronger than them all.”
Austin said nothing, though once more a little thrill ran through him as he slipped away quietly in search of his comida. What they were doing had, he felt, been sung in Epics long ago, and Jefferson had, it seemed, blundered upon the under-running theme. It was the recognition of the primal ban again, the ban that had a blessing for man to triumph in, and by it win dominion over the material world and all there is therein. He and his comrade were men whose creed was crudely simple, though it was also, on points they did not often mention, severe; but they bore the bonds of service, which are never worn without compensation, willingly, and the tense effort of will and limb had clarified and strengthened the vague faith in them until they were ready to attempt the impossible.
Still, Austin had little time for his comida. The men in the forecastle were very sick indeed, and he packed them in foul blankets, and dosed them with green-lime water, boiling hot to start the perspiration, which was, he recognised, likely to accomplish more than his prescriptions.
There were limes in Funnel-paint's village, and they had not scrupled to requisition them. One of the men lay still, moaning faintly through blackened lips, and the other, raving, called incoherently on saints and angels. It seemed to Austin, standing in that reeking den, that there was small chance for his patients unless they heard him. Two of those whose names he caught had once, he remembered, been, at least, fresh-water sailormen, and half unconsciously he also appealed to them.
One creed appeared much the same as another in that dark land, and something in him cried out instinctively to the great serene influences beyond the shadow. When he had finished his work of mercy the Spaniards were stripping the covers off the after hatch, and he had scarcely a minute for a mouthful before he joined them to heave the kernels up by hand. They went up, basket after basket, and splashed into the creek, but there was no sign of a gum bag or package anywhere among them. Bill, who hove them out through the open gangway, once turned to grin at Austin, who stood next the hatch.
”I've never been a millionaire, an' it's ---- unlikely that I'll ever be one, either; but I know what it must feel like now,” he said. ”Here are you an' me slingin' away stuff that's worth twelve pounds a ton, an' one o' them goes a long way with a man like me.”
Austin said nothing. He had no breath to spare, but he thrust a br.i.m.m.i.n.g basket upon the fireman, and that did just as well. They toiled throughout that afternoon, under a broiling sun, but when the black darkness came again they had still found no gum. Then, as they ate together, Austin looked at Jefferson.
”You are sure the gum was really put into her?” he said.
”It was,” said Jefferson, with a little grim smile. ”Whether it's there now, or not, is another thing. We'll know when she's empty, and if we haven't found it then, we'll consider. Not a pound reached Grand Canary, and it's quite certain that the fellows who went--somewhere else--took none of it with them.”
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