SCENE--The firemen's forecastle of a transatlantic liner an hour
after sailing from New York for the voyage across. Tiers of
narrow, steel bunks, three deep, on all sides. An entrance in
rear. Benches on the floor before the bunks. The room is crowded
with men, shouting, cursing, laughing, singing--a confused,
inchoate uproar swelling into a sort of unity, a meaning--the
bewildered, furious, baffled defiance of a beast in a cage. Nearly
all the men are drunk. Many bottles are passed from hand to hand.
All are dressed in dungaree pants, heavy ugly shoes. Some wear
singlets, but the majority are stripped to the waist.

The treatment of this scene, or of any other scene in the play,
should by no means be naturalistic. The effect sought after is a
cramped space in the bowels of a ship, imprisoned by white steel.
The lines of bunks, the uprights supporting them, cross each other
like the steel framework of a cage. The ceiling crushes down upon
the men's heads. They cannot stand upright. This accentuates the
natural stooping posture which shovelling coal and the resultant
over-development of back and shoulder muscles have given them. The
men themselves should resemble those pictures in which the
appearance of Neanderthal Man is guessed at. All are hairy-
chested, with long arms of tremendous power, and low, receding
brows above their small, fierce, resentful eyes. All the civilized
white races are represented, but except for the slight
differentiation in color of hair, skin, eyes, all these men are
alike.

The curtain rises on a tumult of sound. YANK is seated in the