Читать книгу Into the Frozen South онлайн

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This day was memorable for two reasons. First, the Quest made her real start on her southward journey; second, I took my first spell in a ship’s stokehold, not as a spectator, but as a genuine working member of the black squad! There are some men, I believe, who consider stokehold work almost a pastime. I didn’t. To learn to become an efficient stoker you must first acquire the art of coal-trimming. You go down into bunkers packed tight with coal, breathless caves below the waterline, where the stench of bilge is thick and clogging, and you shift coal to within easy reach of the men who are tending the fires. You breathe coal dust and you absorb coal dust at every pore. In a little while, if you persevere, you actually begin to think coal dust—it’s everywhere. Coal is a very fine thing in its proper place—and that is on a fire—but the getting of it to the fire is an overrated sport. Coal dust as food leaves much to be desired; my mouth was full of it; so were my eyes and my ears and my hair and my nose and my lungs. Still, they say that ship’s firemen are a healthy race, so there must be some good in coal dust after all. But, having shovelled and breathed and eaten sufficient of the black and unpalatable stuff, I was deemed qualified to serve the fires, and contrived to get on well enough for a beginner, though the heat was excellent preparation for a future existence. Not that I’m grumbling, observe; I am merely trying to set down my early impressions as they came to me. I registered a solemn vow during those hours that my ambition should carry me higher than a steamer’s stokehold, or I’d know the reason why.