PAGE 4
"Against Orders"
by
“When I jumped in among the men the smoke was creepin’ out between the lids of the hatch. We ripped that off and began diggin’ up the cargo–crates of chairs, rolls of mattin’, some spruce scantling–runnin’ the nozzle of the hose down as far as we could get it. There were no water-tight compartments which we could have flooded in those days as there are now, or we could have smothered it first off. What we had to do was to fight it inch by inch. I knew where the explosives were, and so did the captain and purser, but the crew didn’t–didn’t even know they were aboard, and I was glad they didn’t. We had picked most of ’em up at Rio–or they’d made a rush maybe for the boats, and then we’d had to shoot one or two of ’em to teach the others manners. In addition to every foot of hose we had ‘board I started a line of buckets and then rushed a gang below to cut through the bulkhead to see if we could get at the stuff better.
“The men fell to with a will. Fire ain’t so bad when you take hold of it in time, and as long as there is plenty of steam pressure–and there was–you can almost always get on top of it, unless something turns up you don’t count on.
“That’s what happened here. I was standin’ on the coamings of the hatch at the time, peerin’ down into the smoke and steam, thinking the fire was nearly out, directing the men what to h’ist out and what to leave, when first thing I knew there came a dull, heavy thump, as if we’d struck a rock amidships, and up puffed a cloud of smoke and sparks that keeled me over on my back and nearly blinded me.
“I knew then that the fire had just begun to take hold; that thump might have been a cask of rum or it might have been a box of nitro-glycerine. Whatever it was, there was no time to waste in stoppin’ the blaze before it reached the rest of the cargo.
“Captain Bogart had felt the shock and now came runnin’ down the deck with the dog at his heels. He knew I’d take care of the fire and he hadn’t left the bridge, but the way she shook and heaved under the explosion was another thing.
“By this time the passengers were huddled together on the upper deck, frightened to death, as they always are, the women the coolest in the crowd. All except two little old women, sisters, who lived out of Rio and who had been with us before. Fire was one of the things that scared them to death, and they certainly were scared. They hung to the rail, their arms around each other–the two together didn’t weigh a hundred and fifty pounds; always reminded me of two shiverin’ little monkeys, these two old women, although maybe it ain’t nice for me to say it–and looked down over the rail into the sea, and said they never could go down the ladder, and did all the things badly scared women do, short of pitching themselves overboard, which sometimes occurs. The captain stopped and talked to ’em–told ’em there was no danger–his ears open all the time for another let-go, and the dog nosed round and put out his paw as if to make good what the captain had promised.
“The water was goin’ in now pretty lively–all the pumps at work–the light stuff bein’ heaved overboard as fast as it came out. By dark we’d got the fire under so that we had steam where before we’d had smoke and flame. The passengers had quieted down and some of ’em had gone back to their staterooms to get their things together, and everything was going quiet and peaceable–this was about nine o’clock–when there came another half-smothered explosion and the stokers began crawlin’ up like rats. Then the chief engineer stumbled out–no hat nor coat, his head all blood where a flying bolt had gashed him. Some of her bilge plates was loose, he said, and the water half up to the fire-boxes. Next a column of flame came pouring out of her companionway, which crisped up four of our boats and drove everybody for’ard. We knew then it was all up with us.