“There are a few hundred bales of cotton piled on top of them and behind them.”
“The dickens!” snorted the captain. “Get ’em out, and be quick about it.”
Instantly word was passed to the roustabouts to stop loading and take their trucks into the hold. But the roustabouts could not shift the cargo fast enough to suit Captain Lansford.
“Get your donkey-engine ready to hoist those hemp bales out,” he ordered.
The engine had been stowed forward. Skids were put under it, the engine was shifted into position, the belt slipped on, and the foremast derrick-boom unlashed and coupled up with the engine.
Meantime the roustabouts had been taking the cotton bales from the nose of the ship and trucking them aft of the forward hatch, where they dumped them down without order. The result was that the forward hold speedily filled and the cotton began to pile up under the hatchway.
When Captain Lansford noticed it he exploded with anger. “Get those bales out of that,” he shouted at the roustabouts. “We want the hatchway clear for hoisting.”
Not all the cotton had yet been removed from the forehold and the way aft was blocked by the cotton that had been thrown helter-skelter by the roustabouts.
“Start your engine,” called the captain, “and jerk some of those bales out on deck.”
The donkey-engine was started and bale after bale lifted to the deck, while the roustabouts below were struggling desperately to shift the bales away from the hatchway. In the haste the cotton was handled recklessly. Some of the metal bale straps were broken, the white, snowy contents bulging out of the sacking like pop-corn swelling out of an overfilled popper. But finally all the cotton was got out of the road. The deck about the hatchway was piled high with it, and the hold near the hatch was heaped with disorderly piles of it.