Softly Tod stole back to his barrow. The men would rouse one of the other watch in the firemen's forecastle to take the Italian's place; while Tony, baffled by this life, would be imprisoned in the darkness of a locker below deck.
Bitter thoughts welled up in Tod. On the voyage out, he had taken it for granted that the scorn heaped by the officers and deckhands on the firemen was well founded. Swine, they had been called, and scum and offal. They had been treated as beneath contempt. Drunk in port, carried aboard ship before sailing time, illiterate, their brains working ponderously over their little world of brute force, dirty and laughed at and cursed for their dirt, now Tod began dimly to perceive that the stokers were what the ship had made them. They were spawned by a sharkish sea. When he himself climbed that iron ladder of the fiddley to the deck above, would he care whether he were washed or not, whether all the grime of his work were off his face and body? When he lifted his shovel and thrust the blade beneath the coal, when his tired shoulders carried the weight of the laden barrow and he stumbled down the alleyway, he had no thoughts of a cold bath in the washroom. Only one desire pervaded him— to stretch his weary body in his bunk and sleep.
He sent his barrow of coal sliding downward, then paused as a familiar voice came to him. Neil's. Neil had taken Tony's place; roused from his well-earned rest, he had turned out to come below once more.
With a sigh Tod resumed his work. His thoughts reverted to the stokers again. True, he had never been so unimaginative that he had seen the men with the eyes of the deck crew. He had always envisioned them as tiny cogs in a great machine, dirty perhaps and greasy, yet cogs which were a part of the immense throbbing heart that drove the vessel onward. Now he himself was a cog; and it came to him ironically that he felt no thrill of ecstasy at the thought of his work so necessary to those engines beyond the bulkhead. Instead, they became a crying burden, and the furnaces only yawning Molochs which lifted insatiable mouths in never-ending greed.
He must be a lubber; he should never have gone to sea. And yet, and yet. . . . Had he not always turned his eyes westward to the sea? When he had reclined of a soft summer evening in the hammock of his garden, his mind submerged in a soothing ecstasy of dreams, had it not been pictures of the sea that he envisioned? Oh, those books—those sea books! How they lured one on to disenchantment.
His shovel, missing the barrow, sent a cloud of black smoke upward. He worked furiously now. A resolve took possession of his mind. He would open that iron door in the bulkhead and peer into number three hold.
Presently he slipped down to the stokehole. "Neil," he shouted, "how long will that coal last?"
His brother turned a blackened face. "Ten minutes," he answered.
Ten minutes! Tod Moran raced back to the bunkers, whirled to the left, and in a moment had reached the after bulkhead. Lifting his shovel he drove it against the handle of the watertight door. It gave by slow degrees; its finger pointed upward. He glanced round with a quick, furtive movement. The only sound was the steady pulse of the engines, muffled by their walls of coal.
He swung the door open.
Facing him and completely blocking the little doorway was a tier of cases, marked Olio di Lucca. He hesitated a second before those words. Olive oil destined for the innumerable Italian sections of California. Was he mistaken?
In feverish eagerness he set about tearing a case apart. With the shovel end he pried open a box. It broke with a shrill screech that made him glance over his shoulder in terror. The bunkers, however, loomed dark and silent about him. He turned to the case again. Two five gallon tins, he saw, lay within. How could he open one? A nail—but he had none. Desperate now, he lifted his shovel and drove the corner of the blade into the tin near the top.
A clear liquid shot out for a second, then dripped down the sides of the container. His heart leaped. It was too thin, too transparent for olive oil. He put up his hand. It came away wet. Water—clear water!
He leaned weakly against the bulkhead. The Araby carried a false cargo.
CHAPTER IV
MIDNIGHT
LOOKIT the kid. Hell's bells, he's tryin' to shave!" "Ain't 'e the toff? I arsks you now, wot's 'e shavin'—dirt?"
Tod Moran turned from the cracked mirror nailed to the cupboard and grinned. "Pipe down, Toppy. You talk too much."
"Yah—yah. Thad faller always got his trap open." Swede Jorgenson nodded approval.
"Shut yer bloody marf, you squarehead," retorted Toppy with venomous fervour. "Cawn't a bloke say nothin' in 'is own fo'c's'le? When the kid's got 'air on 'is chest, then 'e can talk back—see? Blimey, you wants t' shut me up like Tony the Wop."
The words struck the forecastle into silence. A day had passed since the fireman had been imprisoned in a locker amidships; his pitiful cries and curses were to be heard when one went down the port alleyway. Now, in whispers, the seamen in the dog watch below discussed the plight of the fireman.
"The blarsted, bloomin' hofficers—they treat us like swine."
"Yah, und the cap'n drunk und never showin' his-self on the bridge."
"A nice blighter 'e is. Gimme a coffin nail, Swede. Thanks. When we hits Frisco I'm through with this tub, I am."
Tod Moran went on with his precarious task. It was a thin, slightly pale face that surveyed him in the mirror. The gray eyes were shadowy in their sockets, the mouth and jaw, when he scraped away the lather, firm yet youthful. It was hardly the face, though, of the boy who had so blithely set sail on the Araby two months before with the wide world beckoning over the horizon. As he slid the razor with a flourish down his smooth cheek, he wrinkled his brows. He had only been a kid when he came aboard; now he was a man. He repeated the phrase to himself, then turned in trepidation for fear someone might have heard his moving lips.
"Seven bells," the boatswain murmured. "Who's crick at the wheel?"
"Mine," replied Swede Jorgenson from his bunk.
"And me the bloomin' lookout," Toppy volunteered. "Let's 'ave a game fust, bose."
Tod Moran crossed to his bunk as the men settled themselves about the table for a game of coon-can.
"Say, kid, yoost come here minute."
Tod placed his safety razor in a small hammock swung between his bunk pipes and turned to the opposite tier. "Yes?"
Swede Jorgenson gave him a mysterious smile. "I almos' forget. The cook, he give me letter for you."
In puzzled surprise, Tod took the folded paper which the big seaman proffered. He glanced round quickly; the men were intent on their game. He jumped into his bunk and pulled the light-curtains as though he were turning in for a half hour's rest before going on duty in the bunkers below. With trembling hands he opened the note. It was written in a plain large script.
Dear Joe Macaroni:
Don't think I've been asleep. I'm standing by—waiting. I've missed you in the galley and hope the officer's steward falls overside and into a shark's mouth. I have news. Come to my cabin before you go on watch below at eight bells.
T. Jarvis.
Tod folded the note and thrust it into his pocket. He had confided his discovery in number three hold to Neil only; indeed, he had been so fatigued when he had climbed up the fire-room fiddley that he had had only one thought—rest. He pulled back his curtain and slid over the bunk board to the floor. Casually, he went up the companion steps to deck, where he crossed to the firemen's forecastle and gazed within. Through the blue haze of tobacco smoke, he made out his brother's form, outstretched on his mattress, apparently asleep.