The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 18, 1925, Page 9

~ IGHT bells tolled slowly in the engine room. lungs strained like inflated blad-,dropped his shovel again -and[zive in. And I ders to catch the hot air that|stepped away. He marched} struggled down his parched throat down the iron ladder into the} slowly. stokehold. The others marched rapidly in front of him, their light shod feet pattering, their covered left hands rushing along the hot rails with a slipping sound. His feet stumbled heavily down. His hand trembled on the rail. He was sick he should be in bed. But he had been a fireman for twelve years without missing a watch. His pride said: “Die be- fore your fires rather than let a fellow worker shed his body’s sweat for you.” When he landed in the stoke- hold the hot fumes struck him in the chest. He gasped, caught his eyes with his fists-and staggered. His stomach muscles contracted. They crowded around him in pity, urging him to go back to his bunk. He straightened himself fiercely and thrust them away with a swinging movement of his arms. “T’d die sooner than that,”- he ~ growled. HE marched to the fires. His thin outward curving calves were visible passing the bright glow from the ashpits of the fur- naces. His tall slim body’and his} bony head were hidden in the gicom. : The retiring watch went up the ladder to the deck. Their faces were black. Their eyes were white. Their sodden trousers clung to their sweating thighs. They went up the ladder groaning curses on the sea, the fires, God, and the rich men who make slaves toil in the bowels of ships. It was very dark. Ashés and coal dust floated in a thick mass thru the sluggish air. The elec- trie lights glimmered like dim candles. The bulky forms of the boilers loomed in the darkness. The engines thudded. A dull vol- canic murmur came from the /hid- den fires. FE. stripped before his fires and put his sweat rag in his belt. Then he seized the long swaying rake to clean his low fire. He op- ened the furnace door. His body flashed into the firelight. He was naked to the waist. The ribs rose in ridges on his fleshless breast. The skin lay taught along his pro- truding jaws. His eye sockets were black. His biceps were rug- ged knots interlaced with sickly blue veins. He stooped forward and thrust in the rake. A wave of heat emerged, striking him in the face. He reeled before it for a moment. Then he made a great effort and stood erect. A cold sweat poured out all over his body. That terri- fied him. Had the others seen? He looked cautiously. They were working furiously. They had not seen. Good. HE swore a blasphemous oath and muttered to himself: “I’m not going to give in.” He hauled out the red hot ashes and the jag- ged cakes of spent coal that elung like glue to the fire bars. He fin- ished one side. He changed over the live coals from the other side. He cleaned the other side. All fin- ished. He handed the shoyel to the trimmer to coal the bars. Then he walked very stifly to the ventilator. God! Not a breath of wine came down the dusty gaping tub from the sunbaked eck. — Hi. And there was a great painful inward heaving of his sides like the panting of a tired horse. HAH! him still. Bet what was-this? He could not hear. Not a sound. And everything was dim. His eyes had fallen back into his skull. Some- There was strength in His whole body murmured: body was standing in front of him JUST WAR! “Water, water, water.” fieree mind would not listen to the cry. Water meant death and surrender. He must feed the fires. SUDDENLY his head seemed to whirl round and round. Mad- ness seized him. He wrinkled up his mouth and nose. Then he laughed harshly. Rasping sounds filled the stokehold, furnace doors opening, shovels grating along the iron deck, black coal being shot in among the licking flames. It was the madness of conflict. His weakness vanished. He dashed at his shovel, seized it, spat and opened the door of his right hand fire. “Give it to her boys,” yelled the pot bellied engineer, as’ he rushed into the stokehold. “Steam is falling. Steam is falling. Give her a shake.” The great fires roared and shot out whirling shafts of yellow flame to meet each shovel full of black coal that was hurled into them. He talked wildly to the fires as he hurled in the coal, He called them foul names and put out his tongue at them. He glared at them and hurled him- self at them savagely. They had been his enemies for twelve years. He piled coal on them, more, nore, more until he smothered ‘hem under a black glistening vound. Their vast roar was sub- 1erged beneath the already red-, ening black mound. Then he But his}making a noise. He gripped his eyes and peered. He saw a mouth wide open and moving, spitting black coal dust from its blood red tongue as it spoke. That was the bloody Irishman from the star- board boiler. Telling him he looked like a corpse and should go on deck. By the slippery heels of the bald headed Chilian deck swabber! He ground his teeth and mustered all his strength. “Leave me alone” he yelled. “I’m a Glasgow fireman and I never ‘tfrom his The Fireman’s Death "=e NEVER will. Leave me alone.” His voice ended in a shriek. He groped for the slice. His hands clawed at it blindly for he could see nothing in the gloom. The long thick iron bar swung towards him as he pulled at it. It pushed against his shoulder and he staggered backwards three paces. “Steady on,” he muttered. He crouched and raised it, tremb- ling all over. Then he groped to the fires. He opened the door and thrust the wedge shaped point of the slice at the base of the mound. He ran it along the bars to the very end. Then he drew himself together. He must lift that mound and break it in the middle, in order to give air to the flames. He jumped with a loud gasp and landed, ‘crosswise, face down- wards, on the slice, his two hands clenching the slice against his hol- lowed stomach. He almost. lost consciousness. A terrific pain ran stomach to his head making all his body numb: But his brain still thot of the fire and the mound that must be broken. It was not broken. The slice had not left the bars? It had merely bent slightly downwards from the middle to the end, under the im- pact of his body. His feet reach- ed for the deck. He stood erect. He moved backwards two paces slowly, crouching low, all his sin- ews rigid, his eyeballs protruding. HEN uttering a savage yell, he jumped again on the slice. He landed once more upon it cross- wise, his two hands clenching it against his hollowed stomach. The slice Tose byethée+hedt Bae mound broke. A huge red scar appeared. The flames shot out. With a roar they covered the mound and whirled about the door, licking the air and darting out along the slice towards the hanging body of the fireman. He did not move. His body hung limply across the slice. His toes tipped the deck. His eyes were fixed. His lips were white. He was dead. Australian Iron Workers Ballot on Amalgamation MELBOURNE, Australia, July 17.— At the annual conference of the Fed- erated Ironworkers’ Assistants’ Union it was decided to take a ballot of members of the union on the question of linking up with the Agricultural Implement Makers’ Union and Stove Makers’ Union. The ballot is to be concluded by September 30 next. | The Chinese Volcano in Action | By Sol Fishman, 15 years old, Y. W. L., Coney Island, N.Y. _ Sana