'
"We tried. We battened down everything, and still she smoked. The smoke
kept coming out through imperceptible crevices; it forced itself through
bulkheads and covers; it oozed here and there and everywhere in slender
threads, in an invisible film, in an incomprehensible manner. It made
its way into the cabin, into the forecastle; it poisoned the sheltered
places on the deck, it could be sniffed as high as the main-yard. It
was clear that if the smoke came out the air came in. This was
disheartening. This combustion refused to be stifled.
"We resolved to try water, and took the hatches off. Enormous volumes
of smoke, whitish, yellowish, thick, greasy, misty, choking, ascended as
high as the trucks. All hands cleared out aft. Then the poisonous cloud
blew away, and we went back to work in a smoke that was no thicker now
than that of an ordinary factory chimney.
"We rigged the force pump, got the hose along, and by-and-by it burst.
Well, it was as old as the ship--a prehistoric hose, and past repair.
Then we pumped with the feeble head-pump, drew water with buckets, and
in this way managed in time to pour lots of Indian Ocean into the main
hatch. The bright stream flashed in sunshine, fell into a layer of
white crawling smoke, and vanished on the black surface of coal. Steam
ascended mingling with the smoke. We poured salt water as into a barrel
without a bottom. It was our fate to pump in that ship, to pump out
of her, to pump into her; and after keeping water out of her to save
ourselves from being drowned, we frantically poured water into her to
save ourselves from being burnt.
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