“Phe-ew, but that’s hot!” he exclaimed, and, taking out his handkerchief, he used it to protect his hand as he descended—a precaution which his brother also adopted.
When at last the boys stood on the floor, they could scarcely breathe, so terrific was the heat from the furnaces, as men, stripped to the buff, jerked open the iron doors beneath the huge boilers and shovelled coal into the roaring flames or levelled the fires with long pokers.
While the captain was talking with a man whom the young passengers decided was the assistant engineer, they followed a line of men with great iron wheelbarrows through a door and found themselves in the coal bunkers.
The men returning with the empty barrows seized shovels and began to load, every now and then pausing to pick up a sledge-hammer and break up a huge chunk of the soft coal. And as fast as one was loaded, he pushed his barrow, staggering and swaying to meet the pitching of the boat, into the fire room.
“I don’t see how you can keep your feet,” exclaimed Phil to one of the men.
“Oh, this is nothing. You ought to see us when there is a storm and she’s pitching and rolling. Then it is some trick to keep on your ‘pins.’ Why, I’ve seen the time when I had my barrow dump four times in succession before I could get out of the bunkers, and the firemen yelling like Indians for more coal. Yah, this is nothing—after you get used to it.”
Too fierce for the boys to linger long was the combination of heat and coal dust, and, choking and coughing, they returned to the boiler room.
“Think you’d rather be a ‘coal passer’ than an oiler?” smiled the captain, but before either of his passengers could reply, he caught sight of a passer sneaking into the bunkers with a pail from which protruded a piece of ice. “Hey, you, bring that pail here!” he shouted.
Surlily the passer obeyed.
“Don’t you know better than to take clear ice water in there?” demanded the skipper, sternly.