“I was on a coal ship once, Frisco to Hong-kong. Fire started in the bunkers in mid-Pacific. We passed two or three ships while it was still smoldering and you could smell the coal gas a mile away.
“Think the old man would call for help? Not much. If he did, his owners would have jumped him for costing them salvage money! That’s another reason so many ships sink and are burned,” he added in parenthesis.
“Well, sir, that old fire went from bad to worse. The crew had to berth aft and the decks,—she was a steel ship,—began to get so hot that you had to walk pussy-footed on ’em. But still the old man wouldn’t quit.
“‘If we only get a wind,’ he says, ‘I’ll bring her into port even if she busts up when we tie to the dock.’
“‘If you get a wind,’ says I, ‘you won’t have to wait fer that. She’ll go skyrocketing without any by your leave or thank you.’
“‘Pshaw, Brown, you’re nervous!’ says he.
“‘Of course I am,’ says I; ‘who wouldn’t be, going to sea with a bloomin’ stove full of red-hot coals under their boots, instead of a good wholesome ship? Keel-haul me if ever I sail again with coal,’ says I.
“Things goes along this way for about two weeks, and then comes the grand bust-up. We couldn’t eat, we couldn’t sleep, we could hardly breathe.
“‘Get out the boats,’ says the old man at last, as if he’d made up his mind that it was really time to get away.
“Well, sir, to see the way those bullies jumped for the boats you’d have thought there was pocket money in every one of ’em, or a prize put up by the old man to see who’d be overboard first.