“Lauterbach! Get some kindling wood down here from the galley! Shake it up now, and mind you keep that kindling dry! And while you’re on the topside, tell the skipper I’m firing up the port boiler!”
“Iversen, you and Sharvell start breaking out the coal. Get plenty, and keep it in the buckets, out of this water!”
“Boyd! Spread the fuel in both furnaces in the port boiler as fast as it comes to you, and get an oil torch going, ready to light off when the water’s up to level!”
In the faint gleam of a few oil lamps in that frigid fireroom, off the men splashed through the ice water on the floorplates, an incongruous group for a black gang if ever there was one, as clad all in furs from hoods to boots they stumbled away to their stations in a temperature more suitable to the inside of a refrigerator than to a boiler room.
On deck, I heard the clatter of equipment and the banging of mauls, Cole’s shouts, the hoarse responses of running seamen, and the curses of Nindemann and Sweetman struggling to break out crossbars and handles frozen to the bulkheads and rig the hand gear for working the forward bilge pump—a tough job in that sub-zero atmosphere on the topside with everything iron shrunk by the cold, everything wood swelled by frost and moisture, and nothing fitting together properly as it should.
But long before they got the hand pump on deck assembled, I ran into troubles of my own. Bartlett, wrestling with the port sea cock (I had chosen that side because the ship being heeled to starboard, it was the only one still showing above water), his stocky frame and brawny shoulders straining against the wrench, sang out to me,
“This cock’s frozen, chief! I can’t get her open!”
I jumped to his aid. Together we heaved on an extension handle to the valve wrench. No movement. I was desperate. We had to get that cock open to the sea or we could not fill our boiler. More beef was needed on the wrench. I looked inboard. There in the dull light of the oil torch in his hand, before the port boiler waiting for fuel to arrive, was big Boyd, doing nothing.
“Boyd! Lend a hand here!”
Boyd shoved his torch into the cold furnace, splashed over to us. The three of us, fireman, coalheaver, engineer, braced ourselves against a floor stringer, put our backs into it, heaved with all our might against that wrench handle. The cock gave way suddenly, twisted open. I sighed thankfully, let go the wrench.