ning thousands of tons of soft coal, which the men
called "trimmers" kept shoveling out to the stokers. As the voyage went
on, Joe told me, these trimmers had to go farther and farther back into
the long, black bunkers, full of stifling coal-dust, in which if the
ship were rolling the masses of coal kept crashing down. Hundreds of men
had been killed that way. In the stokehole the fires were not yet up,
but by the time the ship was at sea the furnace mouths would be white
hot and the men at work half naked. They not only shoveled coal into the
flames, they had to spread it out as well and at intervals rake out the
"clinkers" in fiery masses on the floor. On these a stream of water
played, filling the chamber with clouds of steam. In older ships, like
this one, a "lead stoker" stood at the head of the line and set the pace
for the others to follow. He was paid more to keep up the pace. But on
the fast new liners this pacer was replaced by a gong.

"And at each stroke of the gong you shovel," said Joe. "You do this till
you forget your name. Every time the boat pitches, the floor heaves you
forward, the fire spurts at you out of the doors and the gong keeps on
like a sledgehammer coming down on top of your mind. And all you think
of is your bunk and the time when you're to tumble in."

From the stokers' quarters presently there came a burst of singing.

"Now let's go back," he ended, "and see how they're getting ready for
this."

As we crawled back the noise increased, and it swelled to a roar as we
entered. The place was pandemonium now. Those groups I had noticed
around the bags had been getting out the liquor, and now at eight
o'clock in the morning half the crew were already well soused. Some
moved restlessly about. One huge bull of a creature with large, limpid,
shining eyes stopped suddenly with a puzzled stare, then leaned back on
a bunk and laughed uproariously. From there he lurched over the shoulder
of a thin, wiry, sober man who, sitting on the edge of a bunk, was
slowly spelling out the words of a newspaper aeroplane story. The big
man laughed again and spit, and the thin man jumped half up and snarled.

Louder rose the singing. Half the crew was crowded close around a little
red-faced cockney. He was the modern "chanty man." With sweat pouring
down his cheeks and the muscles of his neck drawn taut, he was jerking
out verse after verse about women. He sang to an old "chanty" tune, one
that I remembered wel