Still deeper down went the descent, to where, from numerous shovels handled by almost naked helots, coal was flying into the white heat under the boilers, into a row of gaping jaws of fire. Frederick felt as if he had reached the heart of a crater. It was a black shaft smelling of coal, slag, and burning things. Apparently it was lighted only by the constant opening of the furnace doors, spitting white heat. How was it possible for such a conflagration to be contained in the Roland's interior without reducing the whole to ashes? What a conquest to fight such a sea of fire, to keep it in check, and carry it through sea and storm; to manage that it should carry itself three or six thousand miles in the ocean in fair weather or foul, hidden away and absolutely innocuous.
Frederick panted for breath. The glowing heat of the abyss instantly brought the perspiration pouring out on his face and neck. He was so absorbed in the novelty of the impressions that he completely forgot he was surrounded by water about twenty feet under the surface of the sea. Suddenly, he became aware of Doctor Wilhelm's presence, and in the same instant saw a man entirely naked stretched out like a corpse, a white body on the black coal dust. The man had ceased to breathe.
In a second Frederick, now wholly the physician, had Doctor Wilhelm's stethoscope in his hand and was listening to the man's heart. His mates, blackened with coal from head to foot, were ceaselessly at work in the engine's unremitting service, shovelling coal, opening the furnace doors, and slamming them shut. They scarcely cast a glance at their fallen comrade, and that only when they stopped to gulp a glass of beer or water.
"It was hardly three minutes ago," said Doctor Wilhelm, "that he broke down. That man over there, the one who has just washed himself, is his successor."
"He was just about to throw coal into the furnace," explained the engineer who had called for Frederick, shouting at the top of his voice to make himself heard above the clanging of the shovels and the banging of the iron doors, "when his shovel flew out of his hand about twelve feet away and almost struck a coal-trimmer. He was hired in Hamburg. The moment he set foot on board, I thought, 'If only you pull through, my boy.' He joked about himself. He said, 'If my heart is good.' I was sorry for him. He wanted to cross the great pond, and that was his only way of getting over. He wanted, no matter how, to see his brother again, his only living relative, or somebody else. They hadn't seen each other for fourteen years."
"Exitus," said Frederick, after a prolonged investigation of the man's heart. Even a few moments after the stethoscope had been removed, one could see the ring it made on his bluish, waxen skin. His chin dropped. They put it back in place, and Frederick bound his jaws with his white handkerchief. "He had a bad fall," Frederick remarked. It may actually have been the unfortunate fall to which the helot owed his death. There was a deep bleeding gash in his temple from the edge of a large nut. "Probably a heart stroke," Frederick added, "the result of the heat and over-exertion." He looked at the dead man, then at his mates, naked, blackened, illuminated by the jaws of the glowing furnaces, and thought of the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." If we were to take the commandment literally, how far should we get?
The physicians mounted on deck, and several of the men picked up the victim of civilisation, the modern galley-slave, still covered with the sweat of his fearful occupation. With the handkerchief about his head, he looked as if he were suffering from toothache. They carried him up out of the glowing pit to the cabin set aside for dead bodies.
Doctor Wilhelm had to notify the captain. Nobody on deck, where the band was playing the last measures, was to suspect that a stoker had died. With the help of the Red Cross sister, they stretched him on a mattress, and within a short time a circle of the higher officials of the vessel, at their head the captain, and among them the purser and the physicians, were gathered about the corpse.
Captain von Kessel ordered the stoker's death to be kept secret, particularly requesting the two physicians not to mention it. Formalities had to be gone through, documents had to be drawn up and signed. This kept them busy until dark, when the first call for dinner was trumpeted across the deck and through the gangways of the first-class section.