Free Down to a Soundless Sea by Thomas Steinbeck Page B

no light was allowed to enter these narrow cells, as an open flame or electrical spark might ignite the coal dust and literally blow the ship out of the water. The measured use of fuel from all six bunkers was required for the ship to maintain its equilibrium.
    Depending on the location and stability of heavy cargo, coal might be reshipped from one bunker to another to trim the vessel by the bow or stern, whichever applied to the prevailing requirements. This was arduously accomplished one shovelful at a time, hour after hour, day after day, and night after night. Chapel judged ship’s boiler decks and coal bunkers to be any Christian’s vision of hell. He was therefore fascinated by the ease with which the Filipino stokers, a very orthodox clan, cheerfully managed to disregard their surroundings altogether. They simply immersed themselves in reinforced memories of home and family. The significance of their sacrifice held the stokers in a common bond of mutual support. Every man’s children would have a better life than their fathers, even if it meant they spent years slowly expiring in the belching black guts of a stinking Yankee freighter.
    Chapel thought it interesting that most of the black gangs he had ever come across were always akin in some fashion. There were exceptions to the rule to be sure, but he had noticed how many stokers on any given ship were all Portuguese or Cubans, Irish or Chinese or, in this case, Filipino.
    He surmised that the burdens of the black gang being what they were, it would represent greater safety and fellowship if the stokers were all of the same tribe. He had known of ships whose owners had taken on the strangest mix of crews. There was the
Prince William
out of Sydney, for instance. That vessel registered Peruvian owners, but her captain was Dutch–South African, her deck officers Italian, her able seamen all Danes, her engineers German, and her black gang, appropriately enough, Welsh coal miners. Chapel often wondered how many translations an order would require to make it from the bridge to the bunkers on the old
Prince Willy
.
    While Chapel and the black gang shoveled coal, the
Los Angeles
began experiencing a particularly bad turn. The wind, tide, and waves caused the ship to pitch and shudder with ever-increasing ferocity. It made work in the dim bunkers hazardous at best.
    Tino Bracas and Chapel were moving coal toward a bunker chute that fed the open scuttles in the boiler room, but the coarse motion of the ship obliged them to halt their work and brace themselves upon their shovels on every downward pitch of the bows.
    Chapel heard the distant clangs of the engine-room telegraph over the pounding of the great steam pistons. It was obvious from the repeated code that the ship was changing course and speed, possibly to address the prevailing seas from another quarter. It was curious how well one could knoweverything about a vessel’s movements from the blind depths of her bunkers or engine room. Chapel was reflecting in this manner when suddenly the whole ship trembled and shuddered with such violent force that both he and Tino were thrown off their feet.
    In that same instant a great granite claw came gouging through the chine of the hull, ripping the iron plates like paper as it traveled toward them from bow to stern. The seas immediately flooded in behind the advancing claw, and in seconds Chapel and Tino were up to their waists in freezing black water. Both men scrambled up and out of the bunker just in time to warn the rest of the black gang to close the firebox doors and get the hell out of there. Chapel herded his charges out of the boiler room like a barking terrier, and as the last man out he closed and secured the boiler-room hatch. Even as he did so Chapel could see broad channels of black water cascading over the top of the bunker they had just occupied.
    Chapel immediately looked about for Mr. Gladis, but could not spot him in all the confusion of frightened seamen