Octopus — Book II, Chapter 9, Part 4
***** Upon descending from his train at Port Costa, S. Behrman asked to be directed at once to where the bark “Swanhilda” was taking on grain.
Though he had bought and greatly enlarged his new elevator at this port, he had never seen it.
The work had been carried on through agents, S. Behrman having far too many and more pressing occupations to demand his presence and attention.
Now, however, he was to see the concrete evidence of his success for the first time.
He picked his way across the railroad tracks to the line of warehouses that bordered the docks, numbered with enormous Roman numerals and full of grain in bags.
The sight of these bags of grain put him in mind of the fact that among all the other shippers he was practically alone in his way of handling his wheat.
They handled the grain in bags;
he, however, preferred it in the bulk.
Bags were sometimes four cents apiece, and he had decided to build his elevator and bulk his grain therein, rather than to incur this expense.
Only a small part of his wheat--that on Number Three division--had been sacked.
All the rest, practically two-thirds of the entire harvest of Los Muertos, now found itself warehoused in his enormous elevator at Port Costa.
To a certain degree it had been the desire of observing the working of his system of handling the wheat in bulk that had drawn S. Behrman to Port Costa.
But the more powerful motive had been curiosity, not to say downright sentiment.
So long had he planned for this day of triumph, so eagerly had he looked forward to it, that now, when it had come, he wished to enjoy it to its fullest extent, wished to miss no feature of the disposal of the crop.
He had watched it harvested, he had watched it hauled to the railway, and now would watch it as it poured into the hold of the ship, would even watch the ship as she cleared and got under way.
He passed through the warehouses and came out upon the dock that ran parallel with the shore of the bay.
A great quantity of shipping was in view, barques for the most part, Cape Horners, great, deep sea tramps, whose iron-shod forefeet had parted every ocean the world round from Rangoon to Rio Janeiro, and from Melbourne to Christiania.
Some were still in the stream, loaded with wheat to the Plimsoll mark, ready to depart with the next tide.
But many others laid their great flanks alongside the docks and at that moment were being filled by derrick and crane with thousands upon thousands of bags of wheat.
The scene was brisk; the cranes creaked and swung incessantly with a rattle of chains; stevedores and wharfingers toiled and perspired; boatswains and dock-masters shouted orders, drays rumbled, the water lapped at the piles; a group of sailors, painting the flanks of one of the great ships, raised an occasional chanty; the trade wind sang aeolian in the cordages, filling the air with the nimble taint of salt.
All around were the noises of ships and the feel and flavor of the sea.
S.
Behrman soon discovered his elevator.
It was the largest structure discernible, and upon its red roof, in enormous white letters, was his own name.
Thither, between piles of grain bags, halted drays, crates and boxes of merchandise, with an occasional pyramid of salmon cases, S. Behrman took his way.
Cabled to the dock, close under his elevator, lay a great ship with lofty masts and great spars.
Her stern was toward him as he approached, and upon it, in raised golden letters, he could read the words “Swanhilda--Liverpool.
” He went aboard by a very steep gangway and found the mate on the quarter deck.
S.
Behrman introduced himself.
“Well,” he added, “how are you getting on?
” “Very fairly, sir,” returned the mate, who was an Englishman.
“We'll have her all snugged down tight by this time, day after to-morrow.
It's a great saving of time shunting the stuff in her like that, and three men can do the work of seven.
” “I'll have a look 'round, I believe,” returned S. Behrman.
“Right--oh,” answered the mate with a nod.
S.
Behrman went forward to the hatch that opened down into the vast hold of the ship.
A great iron chute connected this hatch with the elevator, and through it was rushing a veritable cataract of wheat.
It came from some gigantic bin within the elevator itself, rushing down the confines of the chute to plunge into the roomy, gloomy interior of the hold with an incessant, metallic roar, persistent, steady, inevitable.
No men were in sight.
The place was deserted.
No human agency seemed to be back of the movement of the wheat.
Rather, the grain seemed impelled with a force of its own, a resistless, huge force, eager, vivid, impatient for the sea.
S.
Behrman stood watching, his ears deafened with the roar of the hard grains against the metallic lining of the chute.
He put his hand once into the rushing tide, and the contact rasped the flesh of his fingers and like an undertow drew his hand after it in its impetuous dash.
Cautiously he peered down into the hold.
A musty odour rose to his nostrils, the vigorous, pungent aroma of the raw cereal.
It was dark.
He could see nothing; but all about and over the opening of the hatch the air was full of a fine, impalpable dust that blinded the eyes and choked the throat and nostrils.
As his eyes became used to the shadows of the cavern below him, he began to distinguish the grey mass of the wheat, a great expanse, almost liquid in its texture, which, as the cataract from above plunged into it, moved and shifted in long, slow eddies.
As he stood there, this cataract on a sudden increased in volume.
He turned about, casting his eyes upward toward the elevator to discover the cause.
His foot caught in a coil of rope, and he fell headforemost into the hold.
The fall was a long one and he struck the surface of the wheat with the sodden impact of a bundle of damp clothes.
For the moment he was stunned.
All the breath was driven from his body.
He could neither move nor cry out.
But, by degrees, his wits steadied themselves and his breath returned to him.
He looked about and above him.
The daylight in the hold was dimmed and clouded by the thick, chaff-dust thrown off by the pour of grain, and even this dimness dwindled to twilight at a short distance from the opening of the hatch, while the remotest quarters were lost in impenetrable blackness.
He got upon his feet only to find that he sunk ankle deep in the loose packed mass underfoot.
“Hell,” he muttered, “here's a fix.
” Directly underneath the chute, the wheat, as it poured in, raised itself in a conical mound, but from the sides of this mound it shunted away incessantly in thick layers, flowing in all directions with the nimbleness of water.
Even as S. Behrman spoke, a wave of grain poured around his legs and rose rapidly to the level of his knees.
He stepped quickly back.
To stay near the chute would soon bury him to the waist.
No doubt, there was some other exit from the hold, some companion ladder that led up to the deck.
He scuffled and waded across the wheat, groping in the dark with outstretched hands.
With every inhalation he choked, filling his mouth and nostrils more with dust than with air.
At times he could not breathe at all, but gagged and gasped, his lips distended.
But search as he would he could find no outlet to the hold, no stairway, no companion ladder.
Again and again, staggering along in the black darkness, he bruised his knuckles and forehead against the iron sides of the ship.
He gave up the attempt to find any interior means of escape and returned laboriously to the space under the open hatchway.
Already he could see that the level of the wheat was raised.
“God,” he said, “this isn't going to do at all.
” He uttered a great shout.
“Hello, on deck there, somebody.
For God's sake.
” The steady, metallic roar of the pouring wheat drowned out his voice.
He could scarcely hear it himself above the rush of the cataract.
Besides this, he found it impossible to stay under the hatch.
The flying grains of wheat, spattering as they fell, stung his face like wind-driven particles of ice.
It was a veritable torture; his hands smarted with it.
Once he was all but blinded.
Furthermore, the succeeding waves of wheat, rolling from the mound under the chute, beat him back, swirling and dashing against his legs and knees, mounting swiftly higher, carrying him off his feet.
Once more he retreated, drawing back from beneath the hatch.
He stood still for a moment and shouted again.
It was in vain.
His voice returned upon him, unable to penetrate the thunder of the chute, and horrified, he discovered that so soon as he stood motionless upon the wheat, he sank into it.
Before he knew it, he was knee-deep again, and a long swirl of grain sweeping outward from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming pyramid below the chute, poured around his thighs, immobolising him.
A frenzy of terror suddenly leaped to life within him.
The horror of death, the Fear of The Trap, shook him like a dry reed.
Shouting, he tore himself free of the wheat and once more scrambled and struggled towards the hatchway.
He stumbled as he reached it and fell directly beneath the pour.
Like a storm of small shot, mercilessly, pitilessly, the unnumbered multitude of hurtling grains flagellated and beat and tore his flesh.
Blood streamed from his forehead and, thickening with the powder-like chaff-dust, blinded his eyes.
He struggled to his feet once more.
An avalanche from the cone of wheat buried him to his thighs.
He was forced back and back and back, beating the air, falling, rising, howling for aid.
He could no longer see; his eyes, crammed with dust, smarted as if transfixed with needles whenever he opened them.
His mouth was full of the dust, his lips were dry with it; thirst tortured him, while his outcries choked and gagged in his rasped throat.
And all the while without stop, incessantly, inexorably, the wheat, as if moving with a force all its own, shot downward in a prolonged roar, persistent, steady, inevitable.
He retreated to a far corner of the hold and sat down with his back against the iron hull of the ship and tried to collect his thoughts, to calm himself.
Surely there must be some way of escape; surely he was not to die like this, die in this dreadful substance that was neither solid nor fluid.
What was he to do?
How make himself heard?
But even as he thought about this, the cone under the chute broke again and sent a great layer of grain rippling and tumbling toward him.
It reached him where he sat and buried his hand and one foot.
He sprang up trembling and made for another corner.
“By God,” he cried, “by God, I must think of something pretty quick!
” Once more the level of the wheat rose and the grains began piling deeper about him.
Once more he retreated.
Once more he crawled staggering to the foot of the cataract, screaming till his ears sang and his eyeballs strained in their sockets, and once more the relentless tide drove him back.
Then began that terrible dance of death; the man dodging, doubling, squirming, hunted from one corner to another, the wheat slowly, inexorably flowing, rising, spreading to every angle, to every nook and cranny.
It reached his middle.
Furious and with bleeding hands and broken nails, he dug his way out to fall backward, all but exhausted, gasping for breath in the dust-thickened air.
Roused again by the slow advance of the tide, he leaped up and stumbled away, blinded with the agony in his eyes, only to crash against the metal hull of the vessel.
He turned about, the blood streaming from his face, and paused to collect his senses, and with a rush, another wave swirled about his ankles and knees.
Exhaustion grew upon him.
To stand still meant to sink; to lie or sit meant to be buried the quicker; and all this in the dark, all this in an air that could scarcely be breathed, all this while he fought an enemy that could not be gripped, toiling in a sea that could not be stayed.
Guided by the sound of the falling wheat, S. Behrman crawled on hands and knees toward the hatchway.
Once more he raised his voice in a shout for help.
His bleeding throat and raw, parched lips refused to utter but a wheezing moan.
Once more he tried to look toward the one patch of faint light above him.
His eye-lids, clogged with chaff, could no longer open.
The Wheat poured about his waist as he raised himself upon his knees.
Reason fled.
Deafened with the roar of the grain, blinded and made dumb with its chaff, he threw himself forward with clutching fingers, rolling upon his back, and lay there, moving feebly, the head rolling from side to side.
The Wheat, leaping continuously from the chute, poured around him.
It filled the pockets of the coat, it crept up the sleeves and trouser legs, it covered the great, protuberant stomach, it ran at last in rivulets into the distended, gasping mouth.
It covered the face.
Upon the surface of the Wheat, under the chute, nothing moved but the Wheat itself.
There was no sign of life.
Then, for an instant, the surface stirred.
A hand, fat, with short fingers and swollen veins, reached up, clutching, then fell limp and prone.
In another instant it was covered.
In the hold of the “Swanhilda” there was no movement but the widening ripples that spread flowing from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming cone; no sound, but the rushing of the Wheat that continued to plunge incessantly from the iron chute in a prolonged roar, persistent, steady, inevitable.
