As though in protest against the riotous exhibition, the engines stopped, a circumstance that regular firemen secretly desire, for it means a respite in their conflict with the blazing furnace and grates, with the excitement of uncertainty added. The pause may continue for a minute or an hour. At any rate the trouble in this case had been shifted to the engine room.
Before the engines first stopped I thought I heard a noise, but it wasn't loud enough to attract the attention of others, so concluded it must have been a slight shift in the cargo near us and gave it no further thought.
Hiram accompanied me to the far end of the furnace room for water, after which we returned and sat down on the hot, iron-sheeted floor against the bulkhead that flanked our station, from which point we viewed the whole length of the narrow corridor between the battery of blazing furnaces that generated the ship's power.
"Did you ever read Dante's Inferno?" he surprised me by asking.
"Yes, but not recently."
"A tutor made me read it as punishment. You know, I never would study. I guess that's what makes the Governor so sore. I tried three colleges and flunked. I was so infernally worthless that I wouldn't even go in for athletics; but what I started to say was that I believe Dante must have known about the furnace room of a steamship, when the engines were at a standstill." He said all this with a sleepy grin.
I could see what he meant. The engines had been stopped but a few minutes when the entire fire-room crew succumbed to a lethargic sleep. A serrated ridge of coal two feet high extended the entire length of the room, on which they had disposed themselves in all sorts of postures—some curled up like animals going into hibernation, others sprawled out full length, and there were many who lay as though stricken dead while in a reclining position. Most of the crew who worked in overalls, with bodies bared above the waist, black and grimy to the tousled hair now matted with sweat, laid carelessly about as in death from convulsions. In some cases they were in such a position that the fierce light from the cracks in the furnace doors gave their faces a weird, deathly appearance, and after noting this, I glanced at Hiram and saw that he, too, had succumbed, his head resting heavily against the supporting bulkhead.
A sweet, irresistible languor now dulled my perseverance to keep awake. How long I slept was uncertain, but I do know that I was awakened with a start by dreaming of an immense wave, much higher than the ship, a solid perpendicular wall of green sea bearing us down—a veritable tidal wave. I was sure the ship could not survive. Hiram was tugging at my sleeve.
"Ben—Ben, wake up; we have struck something and the ship is sinking!" He did not seem frightened, just urgent.
"What!—What's that?" I asked, wondering if I was still dreaming.