, that cargo had been so handled,
so broken up with handling, that it looked more like smithy coal than
anything else. Then it had been wetted--more than once. It rained all
the time we were taking it back from the hulk, and now with this
long passage it got heated, and there was another case of spontaneous
combustion.

"The captain called us into the cabin. He had a chart spread on the
table, and looked unhappy. He said, 'The coast of West Australia is
near, but I mean to proceed to our destination. It is the hurricane
month too; but we will just keep her head for Bankok, and fight the
fire. No more putting back anywhere, if we all get roasted. We will try
first to stifle this 'ere damned combustion by want of air.'

"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.

"And she crawled on, do or die, in the serene weather. The sky was a
miracle of purity, a miracle of azure. The sea was po