"Ach Gott!" the latter returned jovially. "The heat will sweat 'em into shape. I know the kind." No doubt he did, but I recall some men, nevertheless, that the heat failed to sweat into shape, or into anything else worth while. They were born laggards and sneaks, throwing all the work they could shirk on others who were honestly trying to do their best. It is trite enough to say that such human beings are found everywhere, but they certainly ought to be barred from the fire-room of an ocean liner. My "watches," four hours long, began at eight in the morning and at four in the afternoon; the rest of the time was my own, excepting when it was my turn to carry water and help clean up the mess-room. The first descent into the fire-room is unforgettable. Although hell as a domicile had long since been given up by me as a mere theological contrivance, useful to keep people guessing, but otherwise an imposition on a sane person's intelligence and not worth considering in the general scheme of things, going down that series of ladders into the bowels of the old _Elbe_, the heat seemingly jumping ten degrees a ladder, gave my cock-sure disposal of hell a severe jolt. I thought of General Sherman's oft-quoted remark about war, and wondered whether he had ever tested his faith in the same by later investigations in a liner's stoke-room. Indeed, I thought of everything, it seemed, that spelled hellish things. At last the final ladder was reached, and we were at the bottom--the bottom of everything was the thought in more minds than one that afternoon. The head fireman of our watch immediately called my attention to a poker, easily an inch and a half thick and twenty to thirty feet long. "Yours!" he screamed. "Yours!" and he threw open one of the ash doors of a furnace pantomiming what I was to do with the poker. I dove for it madly, just barely raised it from the floor, and got it started into the ashes--and then dropped none too neatly on top of it. "Hurry up, you sow-pig," the fireman yelled, and I struggled again with the terrible poker, finally managing to rake out the ashes. Then came "ash heave," the _Elbe_ having the old bucket system for the job. Great metal pails were let down to us from above through a ventilator. The pails filled, they were hauled up again, dumped and then sent down for another filling. On one occasion a pail broke loose from the chain, and came crashing down the ventilator under which I was having an airing. For some reason I did not hear the pail, and the fireman had barely time to shove me out of danger when the bucket fell to the floor with a sickening thud. If we had ever met--but what's the use of "if-ing" any more than "perhapsing"? It was simply a clear case of deferred "cashing-in."