For Jacinta

by Harold Bindloss

He flung open another door, and Austin took a shovel from a weary man. He had studied the art of firing up on deck, where it was considerably cooler, before the locomotive boiler, but he discovered that the work now demanded from him was an entirely different matter. The heat was overpowering, the bed of glowing fuel long, and it was only by the uttermost swing of shoulders and wrench of back and loins that he could effectively distribute his shovelful. He felt his lowered face scorching, and the sweat of effort dripped from him, but he toiled on in Berserker fury while Tom encouraged him.

"Spread it!" he said. "Next lot well down to the back end. You needn't be afraid to move yourself. Keep her thin!"

Austin wondered whether he had any eyebrows left when that furnace was filled, but it was done at last, and then there was coal to be trimmed from the bunkers. The dust that whirled about the shovels blackened and choked him, but he worked on savagely. Every man was needed, with half the Spaniards sick, and he felt that if this was the cost of success it was not fitting that he should shirk his part in it. Social distinctions counted for nothing there; the barriers of creed and nationality had also melted. They were all privates in that forlorn hope, with death as the penalty of failure, and while they could not be more, none of them that day dared be less, than men.

He never remembered all he did. There was a constant clanging of shovels, whirring of coal trucks, and slamming of iron doors that opened to let out fiery heat and radiance and take the flying fuel in. Men came and went like phantoms, gasping, panting, groaning now and then, and the voice of their leader rose stridently at intervals. He was a man of low degree, and his commands were not characterised by any particular delicacy, but he was the man they needed, and when he emphasised his instructions with a grimy hand, and now and then the flat of the shovel, nobody resented it. During one brief interlude he found breath for a deprecatory word or two with Austin.

"If she was doing her eight or ten knots it wouldn't be as hard as this," he said. "Then the ventilators would cool her down. The fires won't burn themselves now—you have got to make them; but you'll find her steam sweet and easy when she's going up the trades head to breeze."

"I wonder," said Austin grimly, "how many of us will be left when she gets there."

Then Bill, who had been busy at the locomotive boiler, came down the ladder with a message, and he and Tom vanished into the engine room, while Austin, who greatly desired to go with them, put a restraint upon himself. For some minutes he felt his heart beat as he listened to a premonitory wheezing and panting, and then his blood seemed to tingle as this merged into the steady rumble of engines. The faint quiver of the floor-plates sent a thrill through him, and he drew in a great breath of relief when beam and angle commenced to tremble. The rumbling grew steadily louder, the whirl of the reversed propeller shook the ship, and it was evident that the engines were running well.

After that, however, the work became harder still, for the big cylinders must be fed, and it was with a sensation of thankfulness that he had not broken down beneath the strain Austin dragged himself up the ladder when a message was brought him that he was wanted to drive the after winch. It was raining heavily, but he found it a relief to feel the deluge beat upon his beaded face and scorched skin, though he could scarcely see the mangroves to which the wire that ran from the winch drum led. It was shackled to a big bridle, a loop of twisted steel that wound in and out among a rood or two of the stoutest trees. The winch was also powerful, and it remained to be seen whether it would heave the Cumbria out of her miry bed, or pull that portion of the watery forest up bodily. A great cable that slanted back towards him rose out of the water forward in a curve, and he could dimly see Jefferson's lean figure outlined against the drifting mist high up on the bridge. On the forecastle beyond it more shadowy men stood still, and Austin wondered whether their hearts beat as his did while they waited. The man beside him stooped ready, with body bent in a rigid curve, and bare, stiffened arms, clenching the wire that led to the winch-drum. There was a minute's waiting, and then Jefferson, moving along the bridge, flung up a hand.

"Heave!" he said.

Austin felt his pulses quicken and a curious sense of exultation as he unscrewed the valve, for it seemed to him that flesh and blood had borne the strain too long, and now they had steel and steam to fight for them. The deck beneath him quivered as the screw whirled faster, and he could see the poop shaking visibly. Then the winch wheezed and pounded, and there was a groaning forward as the rattle of the windlass joined in. Wire and hemp and studded chain rose ripping from the river, creaked and groaned and strained, but when they had drawn each curve out they could get no inch of slack in. Austin clenched his fingers on the valve-wheel, but his eyes were fixed on the lonely figure pacing feverishly up and down the bridge, and just then he felt all the bitterness of defeat. The rattle forward died away, and though the winch still whirred and hammered, none of the wire rope ran over the drum into the crouching Spaniard's hands. The tension lasted for some minutes, and then Jefferson's voice came down harshly through the rain.