the stuff in her like that, and three
men can do the work of seven."

"I'll have a look 'round, I believe," returned S. Behrman.

"Right--oh," answered the mate with a nod.

S. Behrman went forward to the hatch that opened down into the vast hold
of the ship. A great iron chute connected this hatch with the elevator,
and through it was rushing a veritable cataract of wheat.

It came from some gigantic bin within the elevator itself, rushing down
the confines of the chute to plunge into the roomy, gloomy interior
of the hold with an incessant, metallic roar, persistent, steady,
inevitable. No men were in sight. The place was deserted. No human
agency seemed to be back of the movement of the wheat. Rather, the
grain seemed impelled with a force of its own, a resistless, huge force,
eager, vivid, impatient for the sea.

S. Behrman stood watching, his ears deafened with the roar of the hard
grains against the metallic lining of the chute. He put his hand once
into the rushing tide, and the contact rasped the flesh of his fingers
and like an undertow drew his hand after it in its impetuous dash.

Cautiously he peered down into the hold. A musty odour rose to his
nostrils, the vigorous, pungent aroma of the raw cereal. It was dark. He
could see nothing; but all about and over the opening of the hatch the
air was full of a fine, impalpable dust that blinded the eyes and choked
the throat and nostrils.

As his eyes became used to the shadows of the cavern below him, he
began to distinguish the grey mass of the wheat, a great expanse, almost
liquid in its texture, which, as the cataract from above plunged into
it, moved and shifted in long, slow eddies. As he stood there, this
cataract on a sudden increased in volume. He turned about, casting his
eyes upward toward the elevator to discover the cause. His foot caught
in a coil of rope, and he fell headforemost into the hold.

The fall was a long one and he struck the surface of the wheat with
the sodden impact of a bundle of damp clothes. For the moment he was
stunned. All the breath was driven from his body. He could neither
move nor cry out. But, by degrees, his wits steadied themselves and his
breath returned to him. He looked about and above him. The daylight in
the hold was dimmed and clouded by the thick, chaff-dust thrown off by
the pour of grain, and even this dimness dwindled to twilight at a short
distance from the opening of the hatch, while the remotest quarte