XIII --

DAWN

Strange noises! The myriad voices of the ship talking one to
another--the creak and grind of girders and stringers; the grunting,
faintly from far above, of the wooden superstructure; the whine and
complaint of the deck-beams as the vessel lurched to the sea; the
sibilant hiss and whir of the racing screws lifting from the water; the
swift infuriated response of the unfettered engines, chattering
angrily, as it were, in wrath for the scurvy trick played upon them;
the eternal dull, moaning throb, throb, throb from everywhere, that
seemed finally to absorb these voices unto itself and stand as
spokesman for them all. Strange noises--a medley of pain, of travail,
of strain, human almost in its outcry, seeking relief from unendurable
effort and distress.

For days and days they had talked like that, and Jean had
listened--listened through the watches of the day and night, listened
through the hours of his own toil and pain, and the cursings of the
raw-boned, wizened apparition that came and went through the murky
gloom of the bunker, and croaked continually like some ill-omened thing
for coal, coal, coal, lifting a brutal fist at times to enforce the
words. But, too, as he had listened, through the plaint of this
strange medley had come the lilt, underlying all, of another refrain
that all these voices seemed to sing--a refrain that found a deeper
echo in his own soul, that seemed to make the kin between him and these
inanimate things the closer, a refrain of hope, a refrain in which lay
immortal happiness.

"In five days ... in three days ... in one day more we shall reach
France, France, France--and the end of strife--France--and the end of
strife."

And now that refrain was changed again, and it made his heart leap, and
he laughed out in pure joy, as he swept the great sweat beads from his
forehead.

"To-day--to-day--_to-day_ we shall reach France--reach France--reach
France!"

Over yonder through the murk of the dimly lighted bunker, through the
swirling coal dust, another trimmer shovelled his barrow full of coal,
and then the wheel _clacked, clacked_ over the steel deck plates, and
steel rang against steel as the barrow was whipped over on its side to
send its load tumbling down the chute to the boiler-room below--but
Jean's own barrow lay idly for a moment beside the black, mountainous
heap of coal, and his shovel hung idly in his hand.

"To-day--to-day! France, and the end of strife!"