Frederick Brereton - A Boy of the Dominion - A Tale of Canadian Immigration

Out swung the rope, and Joe with it. For a while he was dangled well above the open hatchway, with a sheer fall of forty feet beneath him, and a glowing furnace somewhere in the hold for'ard. Whisps of smoke curled up about him, while the heat was almost stifling, but not so severe as it had been when he and his helpers had attacked the flames at closer quarters.

"Lower away," he shouted, and then nodded to Sam to turn his hose on him. "Keep the water going, and start my hose," he called to those at the edge of the hatchway. "Now, slowly does it."

Very gently the engineman slacked out the rope running over the top of the derrick, causing Joe to slowly disappear within the open mouth of the hatchway. Meanwhile those in charge of the hoses paid the one out which Joe carried, and Sam, as if he were bent on doing his young friend an injury, sent a stream of water squirting against our hero till the latter was drenched, and till the force of the impact of the stream caused him to sway and twist at the end of the sling.

"Steady!" he shouted. "Less water; you'll drown me!" and, obedient to the order, Sam shouted to the men and saw that the stream was reduced. He sent a cascade downward now, for Joe had descended still lower, causing the water to fall on his shoulders and then go tumbling and hissing to the floor beneath. And, thanks to this deluge, and to the water spouting from the hose he carried, Joe was able to prepare the way before him. He could hear the fluid actually hissing, and see it rising in thick clouds of steam as it fell on iron and woodwork. It bubbled as it tumbled in a heavy cascade on huge masses of tightly-packed machinery directly beneath him, and then it began to settle into quiet pools.

"Steady!" he shouted again. "Hold on till things get a little cooler."

But ten minutes later he called to them to lower away, and in a little while had stepped from the sling and was actually advancing into the hold. A sailor joined him, and then Sam, both filled with enthusiasm. There were five hoses going within the hour, while another was all the while directing a powerful stream through the gap forward. Smoke gave way in time to steam, while the clouds of the latter, which had risen from every heated surface, and particularly from the vessel's plates, became far less in quantity. When three hours had passed, the atmosphere in the hold was almost pleasant, and certainly not too hot for safe working, while the fire appeared to have been conquered entirely. Then the ship's head was turned towards the west, and once again her turbines sent the decks throbbing. They came to Sam and Joe in the bunks which they occupied and told them of it; for the intense heat which they had faced, the stifling smoke, and the strenuous fight they had made had had their natural effect. Both had been hoisted from the hold in an insensible condition.

"Eh?" asked Sam. "She's right? Fire under? Then call me late in the morning. I've never yet travelled first class aboard a ship, and this bunk's just lovely. Hallo! That Joe? Eh? He's unconscious? Well, I am sorry; guess there's many a one will say he helped a heap to save this vessel."

They slept profoundly side by side, and the sun was high in the heavens before either opened his eyes. When Joe looked round, it was with a groan of recognition and remembrance. His hands were blistered all over and in bandages. His face was smeared with some greasy preparation, while there no longer trace of eyelashes, eyebrows, or hair. He was bald – a terrible object – with lips and tongue hugely swollen.

"My word," exclaimed Sam, staring at him, "what a sight!"

Joe giggled. After all, however tired, however sore with a struggle, he could look on the queer side of things. "My eye!" he gurgled, for speech was almost impossible. "Just you take a look at yourself; it'll make you feel downright faint, I do assure you." Then he went off into a laugh, which ended in a cry of pain and tribulation, for cracked and swollen lips make laughing painful. As for Sam, he rose in his bunk, leaned outwards, and stared into the mirror. It was with a groan of resignation that he threw himself backward, for, like Joe, he was wonderfully disfigured.

"The wife wouldn't know me," he said. "What a sight! No wonder you giggled."

But time does wonders for sore hearts and sore heads. Five days later, when the ship put into Quebec, both were moderately presentable, though Joe still had his hands in bandages. But think of the reward! A thousand and more disembarked passengers from the steamship Kansas City awaited their arrival and cheered them to the very echo as they landed. It was Joe's welcome to Canada, the land wherein he trusted to make his fortune.

"Now we get right in to business," said Sam, two days after the ship had brought them to Quebec, and he and Joe had gradually recovered their usual appearance. For, till then, they were hardly presentable, both having had every hair singed from their heads, while Sam, who wore a moustache, as a rule, merely retained a few straggling ends of that appendage. As for Joe, his hands were so blistered, that even now he was able to do little for himself.

"But you've got something inside there in your pocket that'll make amends," grinned Sam, as they sat in the parlour of the little hotel to which Sam had taken his wife, and whither Joe, Jim, and Claude had accompanied them. "You've got notes in that 'ere pocket that'll make you ready and eager to get burned again. There! Ain't I speaking the truth? I'm fair jubilant."

A cockney from his birth upward, Sam had not, even now, lost touch with the Old Country and its manner of speech, though into his conversation there was now habitually pressed many a Canadian slang expression, many an Americanism which to people of the Old World is so peculiarly fascinating. He pulled a huge leather wallet from his own hip pocket, a capacious affair that accommodated quite a mass of material, and was fellow to one on the far side harbouring a revolver. Not that Sam was of a pugnacious frame of mind; on the contrary, he was just one of the numerous citizens of Canada whose daily thoughts were centred in "making good". Indeed, as is the case with all in the Dominion, with few exceptions, Sam was out, as he frankly admitted, to make a pile, to build up a fortune.

"And I'll tell you for why," he had once said to our hero. "It ain't only because dollars look nice and can buy nice things. It ain't only because I'd like to be rich, to put by a heap and feel and know that me and the missus needn't want when the rainy day comes along, and we're took by illness or old age. Don't you go and believe it. There's people will tell you that Canadians think and dream of nothing but dollars, and jest only for the sake of the dollars. Don't you go and believe it. They're jest like me; they've been, many a one of 'em, down on their beam ends in the Old Country – couldn't get work, for one cause or another. Then they've emigrated, fought their way through, nearly gone to the wall maybe, and then made good. It's making good that fascinates us, young feller. Making good! Jest that and mostly only that. I'd be a proud man if I could put by a pile; for, don't yer see, it shows as I've succeeded. That's what I and many another are after. We've been failures, perhaps. We want to show the world that we're good for something. Dollars spells success – that's why we're after them all the time."

But Sam was not pugnacious, as we have observed. He dragged his huge leather case from one hip pocket and his revolver from the other, laying both on the table.

"I always carry a shooter," he said to Joe, "and so'll you after a bit. The usual run of fellow you come across is a decent, hard-working man. But this here country's full of 'bad men', as we call 'em. Ne'er-do-weels, remittance men, as some are known, loafers, and thieves. A chap as shows he's got sommat to defend himself with has a good chance of sendin' 'em off; so I carry a shooter. But we was talking of the stuff you'd got in your pocket, same as me. That makes up for burned hands."