Sullivan republican. [volume] (Laporte, Pa.) 1883-1896, 1891-08-14
DOWN In A STEAMSHIP.

My father was rich man when I left
New York. His partners only daugh-
ter was to be my wife when 1 should re-
turn.
was student in Vienna hospital
when l received cable from home that
the old house had failed It proved to
be au honest failure and both families
were beggars.
counted my pocketbook from cover
to cover. had just enough to leave
free of debt and get to Liverpool. How
to crosse Well, swim if necessary.
In the Liverpool steamer office was an
old Harvard College mate. This en-
barrasscd me. He owed me grudge
from the football days at Berkeley Oval.
Determined to work my passage over,
l entered what l supposed was not the
office where my old competitor was man
ager. l did not see him, but he must
have caught sight of me. l was sur
prised with the promptness with which
was told to 60 on board the c., and
something would be found for me to do.
Two days out l was called to the cap
tain's own room, insulted with the
charge, at first politely put, of being
stowaway, and finally stung to madness
bitter enough to obey silently when the
officer said: 'If you really don't want
20 steal your passage, go report to the
engineer and shovel coal"
This did. My experience want to
describe. 1t is common enough to hun
dreds of poor scamps this momert all
over the seas. But, God pity them, they
have not the tongue to tell,
nor, perhaps, always the sensibility to
feel, what their life really is.
Dizzy already with the tossings of the
sea staggered down those series of iron
stairways till | stood at last on the ships
lowest deck Behind me were the vast
bunkers of coal that glistened from
million eyes when the furnace doors were
opened, and then faded out of sight.
Before me the huge pillows rose, not
silent, but roaring monsters, so hungry
that the toiling pygmies who fed them
jumped to their tasks till the sweat rolled
from their bare backs. The heat was, to
one descending from the pure breath of
the Atlantic, something fearful. l was
dressed in my ordinary attire, and even au
overcoat at that, so precpitate had been
my action. The smell of baking lubri-
cants and red hot iron, the dead air,
poisoned with coal gas and bilge water
odors, the dust, despite all showering,
but most of all the sudden transition
from white light to blacklist darkness,
momentarily proceeding, as this and that
furnace door was opened and shut, almost
felled me to the floor.
As stumbled and caught my hold on
the stair rail, again the hardy fellows
shouted: "Give us your shilling and go
back!" supposing that was a curious
passenger seeing the sights of the ship.
The voices of derision reused me. l
was no passenger. Twas an honest beg
gar like the rest; and here was to be
imprisoned for Il week, watch on and
off
In frenzy l tore off my clothing till
l stood in my trousers and shoes like my
fellows. stated my hiring to the fell
low in charge of the watch, and he gave
me my shovel with pitying laugh.
l was put at the boiler nearest the
stair. The midships would have been
less drunken spot, but | leaped at the
hardest task.
My head grew dizzy. Ipanted for a
full vital breath. The corrugated floor.
ing, polished till it was glossy smooth in
spots, tangled my poor feet so that re-
peatedly fell. All, that sense of whirl-
ing, whirling, whirling! How little the
fair folk In the cabins, know of all this
plutonian hole beneath their carpets.
Really, l thought l could describe
somewhat that lurid fantasia amid these
scarlet skinned, good natured demons,
but cannot. Vertigo struck me down
in less than half hour. The next l
knew l was being revived in the com
panionway, and the sea air was so CRATE
full. The ships surgeon asked me if l
felt able to go to work again, and
courteously recognized that was not
laborer. / was graceless enough to
growl out my spleen and reassert that
was no stowaway, which the good doc
tor did not understand.
turned to the assistant engineer, who