"Yes, I know. I wanted some of them to serve as firemen for good pay. But they will not listen to me. I do not think they understood. Will you come and translate?"
We took revolvers, holding them ostentatiously in our pockets. I crossed the dizzy sunshine of the lower main deck. The negroes on the forecastle head were chattering together like a fair of monkeys, but they ceased when we came up, and stared at us with faces working with excitement.
"Which be head-man?" I asked.
A big fellow stood forward, hat in hand. "I fit for head-man, sar."
I told him hands were wanted for the stoke-hold, and that the gorgeous pay of four shillings English per diem was offered.
"We no fit for stoke, sar," said he. "We gentlemen wid money, sar. We passenger-boys, sar."
"Very well, daddy," said I. "But stoke you've got to. And if you won't do it civilly you'll do it the other way. Now my frien', pick me out twelve good strong boys. If you don't do it, I'll shoot you dead one-time; if they won't work, I'll shoot them. You quite savvy?"
We got the men and they went off to the stokehold, frightened and raging. Poor wretches, eight of them toppled over in the next twenty-four hours, and half-a-day later the engines stopped for the last time. I was smoking industriously under the alley-way, and Tordoff came and loafed near me.
"I'm a bally fine chief-engineer, aren't I?" said he.
"What do you mean?"