She was a crazy basket. We were cut down
to fifteen ton of coal a day, and we thought ourselves lucky when we kicked
seven knots an hour out of her. Then we used to stop and let the bearings cool
down, and wonder whether the crack in the shaft was spreading."
"Were you a steward or a stoker in those days?"
"I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I should have
been a steward, I think," said Dick, with perfect gravity, returning to the
procession of angry wives. "I was the only other passenger from Lima, and the
ship was half empty, and full of rats and cockroaches and scorpions."
"But what has this to do with the picture?"
"Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower decks
had bunks for two thousand pigtails. Those were all taken down, and she was
empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the port holes--most annoying
lights to work in till you got used to them. I hadn't anything to do for weeks.
The ship's charts were in pieces and our skipper daren't run south for fear of
catching a storm. So he did his best to knock all the Society Islands out of
the water one by one, and I went into the lower deck, and did my picture on the
port side as far forward in her as I could go.
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