Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/47

Rh let out a yell of pain that surprised even themselves. With this enmity between them, they worked in complete silence, like men who have forgotten how to speak. They had no surplus energy to expend on the luxury of talking.

Next the boss started to give “prizes” to the winning side. The smouldering fire was once more fanned into flame.

“They soon fall for it,” he said as he sat drinking beer with the captain in the latter’s cabin. The captain had dimpled hands like a plump woman. Tapping a gold-tipped cigarette on the table, he answered with an amiable uncomprehending smile. He was in a continuous state of frustrated annoyance because the boss was always intruding on his rights. He wondered whether the men might not suddenly seize an opportunity to beat-up the fellow and dump him into the Sea of Kamchatka!

The boss made a practice of branding the man who did least work each day. He did this with a red-hot rod applied to the man’s body. The men worked on—all the time in dread of that brand, which would cling to them for ever like their own shadow. An upward curve was again noticeable in the work.

What are the limits of physical endurance? At any rate the boss knew them better than the men. When the day’s work was over they rolled like logs into their bunks, unable to repress their groans.

One student remembered how, as a small boy, he had seen pictures of hell on the gloomy walls of a temple where he had been taken by his grandmother, and how he had wondered whether there