"'Mr. Andrews,' I shouted, 'send this woman to her cabin.'

"'Oh, go to hell! Tumble down every one of you, or I'll damn soon
make you,' cried Andrews.

"He was in a vile temper, being responsible for the snugness of the
cargo, and the cargo lay about as snug as a dormitory of devils. He
was sorry afterwards, poor chap, for his lack of courtesy, but at
the moment he didn't care who went down into the hold, or who was
killed, so long as this infernal cargo was righted and the crazy
old tub didn't go down.

"So I descended. It was ordained. Liosha followed. And once down we
were carried away out of ourselves by a nightmare of toil and
peril. Andrews and second were there yelling orders. We obeyed in
some subconscious way. How we heard I don't know. For peace and
quiet give me a battlefield. Twenty men in semi-darkness, scarce
able to stand, fighting blind, mad forces of half a ton each. The
huge crates of deal seemed so innocent and harmless on the
quay-side, but charging about that swaying, rocking lower deck,
they looked malignant, like grimy blocks of Hell's anger. I don't
know what I did. All I can say is that I never before felt my
muscles about to snap--queer feeling that--and I think I'm about as
tough as they make 'em.

"Liosha worked as well as any man in the bunch. I only caught sight
of her now and then . . . you see what we had to do, don't
you? . . . We had to secure all these infernal things that were
running amuck and ease up the rest of the cargo that had got
jammed on the port side. There were accidents. Three or four were
knocked out. Petersen, the Swede, had his leg crushed. I don't know
what was wrong at the time. He was working next me, and a roll of
the ship brought an ugly crate over him. He couldn't get up. He
looked ghastly. So I took him on my back and clawed my way up the
iron ladder and reached the deck somehow, and staggered along,
barging into everything--it was blowing half a gale--and once I
fell and he screamed like a pig, poor devil. But I picked him up
and got him into the fo'c'sle and stuck him in a bunk. The Portugee
cook, sick of fever--I think he's a blighted malingerer--was the
only creature there. I routed him out, in the dim mephitic place
reeking of sour bedding, and put Petersen in his charge.