CHAPTER XXXI
Paul ran straight from the poop into the eyes of the Daphne. There the trail of gas led him. It was the coal in the fore hatch that had been exposed and wet. He went below through the chain locker, but only to remain a second. A sulphurous wave of heat drove him on deck, choking for breath. A furnace was back of it. There was no fire to be seen, but this man did not have to see it to know what the blast that repulsed him meant. He knew these Australian coal cargoes too well. This was not the result of the mutineers' abortive effort to destroy the Daphne. This was a fire of spontaneous combustion. It was deeply seated. These coals had been in the bark more than one hundred and sixteen days to his own knowledge, which was drawn from the log and the time since he had boarded her. How long she had lain in Sydney after being loaded there was no way of telling.
Coals of this kind, laden in hulls like the Daphne's, which were never built for such cargoes, generate gas after a certain period, and unless watched incessantly and ventilated properly fire is the certain result. The Pacific deeps hold the secret of many a ship brought to her doom through such a lading.
That night the constant northwesterly summoned a new freshness to its drive as if it sensed the Daphne's peril. When Paul relieved Emily at the wheel at seven o'clock she was crying with the pain in her arms. She had been standing there a full five hours. Not since they had been sailing to the eastward had Paul permitted her to take a trick beyond two hours. She had to walk up and down the deck swinging her arms and flexing her fingers to get the numbness out of them.
"Emily, I'd suffer any pain to take yours away," Paul said. "I feel like a whipped cur to see you going through all this terror and hardship—and to think I can't do anything to put any of it away from you."
His tenderness flooded her eyes with tears. Strife always brought him close to her.
"Don't, Paul, please," she said bravely, attempting to control her voice. "You will—you will have me breaking—going to pieces in a moment."
She put her hands to her face and leaned against the casing over the steering gear.
"Emily, I want you to get for'ard and get a bite to eat and then turn in," he said. "I'm going to try to let you sleep for three hours—maybe until midnight. I've everything battened down forward. The fire's all there. Not a sign aft—no temperature. It's this wind and our strength against the beast that's under decks."
He did not tell her what a beast he knew it to be.