"So I descended. It was ordained. Liosha followed. And once down we were carried away out of ourselves by a nightmare of toil and peril. Andrews and second were there yelling orders. We obeyed in some subconscious way. How we heard I don't know. For peace and quiet give me a battlefield. Twenty men in semi-darkness, scarce able to stand, fighting blind, mad forces of half a ton each. The huge crates of deal seemed so innocent and harmless on the quay-side, but charging about that swaying, rocking lower deck, they looked malignant, like grimy blocks of Hell's anger. I don't know what I did. All I can say is that I never before felt my muscles about to snap--queer feeling that--and I think I'm about as tough as they make 'em. "Liosha worked as well as any man in the bunch. I only caught sight of her now and then . . . you see what we had to do, don't you? . . . We had to secure all these infernal things that were running amuck and ease up the rest of the cargo that had got jammed on the port side. There were accidents. Three or four were knocked out. Petersen, the Swede, had his leg crushed. I don't know what was wrong at the time. He was working next me, and a roll of the ship brought an ugly crate over him. He couldn't get up. He looked ghastly. So I took him on my back and clawed my way up the iron ladder and reached the deck somehow, and staggered along, barging into everything--it was blowing half a gale--and once I fell and he screamed like a pig, poor devil. But I picked him up and got him into the fo'c'sle and stuck him in a bunk. The Portugee cook, sick of fever--I think he's a blighted malingerer--was the only creature there. I routed him out, in the dim mephitic place reeking of sour bedding, and put Petersen in his charge. Then I went back through the drenching seas to the hatch. There was just enough room for a man's body to squeeze through down the ladder. I went down into the same hell-broth of sweat and confusion. The ground you stood upon might have been the back of a super-Titanic butterfly. Stability was a nonexistent term. It was a helpless scuttering surge of men and vast wooden cubes. Most of the men had torn off their upper garments and fought half naked, the sweat glistening on their skins in the feeble light. Soon the heat became unbearable and I too tore off jersey and shirt. Liosha joined me and we worked together without speaking. Her long thick hair had come down and she had hastily tied it in a knot, just as you might tie a knot in a towel, and she had thrown off things like everybody else and only a flimsy cotton, sleeveless bodice, or whatever it's called, drenched through and sticking to her, made a pretence of covering her from her waist.