41 Lure O Gold 1904

"
The Lure o
Gold
t .
the men, who were now ripping the cargo battens from
the inside of the hold.
He stormed about and ordered
all hands down there steward s men, pantrymen,
freight-handlers, coal-passers,
oilers and all the lesser
officers
everybody
"
Lively there "
lively !
save the firemen.
he
kept calling.
"
We ve
got to keep those boilers hot or we ll run down to halfspeed.
Mr. Nason, keep em at the battens good and
hard. We can t let
up a minute. We ve simply got
to make port by the first."
The men flung at their work, ripping off the long
battens with axes, adzes and other tools, and filing with
their burdens into the hot fire-room, where the furnace
doors were hardly closed for a moment at a time.
"
More steam ! Can t
you get up
more steam ?
I
heard the Captain calling down the pipe,
and was near
enough to catch the chief engineer s reply:
"The dashed stuff is too light,
sir. The draught
throws it out of the stack before it s half-burned. I ve
tried wetting it, but it s no good no good
at all. I
can t get up any kind of pressure."
"Send Nason up here," bawled the Captain.
"I ll
do better than eight knots if I have to burn up the whole
insides of her."
[170]