So Then We Descended Another Mile Or Two To An Inferno, Full Of
Naked, Sooty Devils Forever Feeding Sulphurous Pitfires
In the
nethermost parlors of the damned; but they said this was the
stokehole; and I was in no condition
To argue with them, for I
had suddenly begun to realize that I was far from being a well
person. As one peering through a glass darkly, I saw one of the
attendant demons sluice his blistered bare breast with cold water,
so that the sweat and grime ran from him in streams like ink; and
peering in at a furnace door I saw a great angry sore of coals all
scabbed and crusted over. Then another demon, wielding a nine-foot
bar daintily as a surgeon wields a scalpel, reached in and stabbed
it in the center, so that the fire burst through and gushed up red
and rich, like blood from a wound newly lanced.
I had seen enough and to spare; but my guide brought me back by
way of the steerage, in order that I might know how the other half
lives. There was nothing here, either of smell or sight, to upset
the human stomach - third class is better fed and better quartered
now on those big ships than first class was in those good old early
days - but I had held in as long as I could and now I relapsed. I
relapsed in a vigorous manner - a whole-souled, boisterous manner.
People halfway up the deck heard me relapsing, and I will warrant
some of them were fooled too - they thought I was seasick.
It was due to my attack of climate fever that I missed the most
exciting thing which happened on the voyage. I refer to the
incident of the professional gamblers and the youth from Jersey
City. From the very first there was one passenger who had been
picked out by all the knowing passengers as a professional gambler;
for he was the very spit-and-image of a professional gambler as
we have learned to know him in story books. Did he not dress in
plain black, without any jewelry? He certainly did. Did he not
have those long, slender, flexible fingers? Such was, indeed, the
correct description of those fingers. Was not his eye a keen
steely-blue eye that seemed to have the power of looking right
through you? Steely-blue was the right word, all right. Well,
then, what more could you ask?
Behind his back sinister yet fascinating rumors circulated. He
was the brilliant but unscrupulous scion of a haughty house in
England. He had taken a first degree at Oxford, over there, and
the third one at police headquarters, over here. Women simply
could not resist him. Let him make up his mind to win a woman and
she was a gone gosling. His picture was to be found in rogues'
galleries and ladies' lockets. And sh-h-h! Listen! Everybody knew
he was the identical crook who, disguised in woman's clothes,
escaped in the last lifeboat that left the sinking Titanic.
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