Louis Slobodkin

FO'CASTLE WALTZ

Raison d'Etre

NOW, WHY SHOULD A FAT, SOFT GUY WITH GLASSES BE WAITING for (believe it or not) a Brooklyn streetcar at six o'clock on a brilliant, hot July morning? That's what I asked myself as I leaned against a cast-iron lamppost still warm from yesterday's sun. And as I idly squinted up the sun-slashed street I found my answer in the fear-widened eyes of a flapper kitten who had backed herself into the corner of a building as a protection from a lecherous old tomcat.

There were many answers why I was taking the trolley, if it ever came along, to that Bay Ridge dock to board the freighter, the S.S. Hermanita. For one, there had been some dame. I knew that wasn't the real reason for sticking my neck out. I had no feeling left for her; for these past six months I'd been stretching my emotional concern. Besides, I'd been reading a lot of Conrad and Melville lately that should have acted as an antidote for this kind of adventure — the men I'd read about were hard, competent people, hardly my type of schlemiel.

The pitiful mewing of the virgin kitten with her backside wedged into that corner of the red-brick wall reminded me why I was starting on this hunt for the S.S. Hermanita and adventure.

She was so much like the thin young cat who had walked into Old Man McQuarrie's studio the winter before. She, too, had had the wide blue eyes of innocence and virginity. The old man had ordered her fed, and for a few days she lived the luxurious life of a pampered darling — as much pampering as she could get in the busy, architectural-sculpture studio where I'd worked that winter. The old man (he was about fifty) was very concerned that all studio windows be locked fast at night. It was not that he feared ordinary marauders. What could you steal in an immense studio full of large clay models, plaster molds, and miscellaneous sculpture paraphernalia? No, it was the kitten. He'd taken it upon himself to protect her honor from those unscrupulous brigands, the alley cats, who prowled our roof on moonlit nights — or perhaps to save her from her own moon-madness.

But one night the skylight window had been left open. Our little cat did not appear at the studio until late in the morning and then — with her sleek fur ruffled and a world-weary expression on her dainty little muzzle — gone were the blue eyes of virtue; they had changed overnight into a wise, calm gray. Unquestionably, our pampered little darling had been put. She'd gone over that fence from which there is no returning. The kitten had become a cat.

Seemingly, all that has nothing to do with my looking for trouble aboard this tramp, the S.S. Hermanita. But when our cat returned, the old man looked at her sharply over his shoulder and then through his teeth told one of the studio boys to put her out.

We all felt bad about it, but no one protested. Later that morning there had been a bit of talk about the relative merits of England and France. The old man had spent some three weeks drunk in Paris and no time at all in England. He talked with authority of the superior qualities of England, and his yes-men, working on the clay panels alongside him, yes'd Mr. McQuarrie's every preposterous statement. I don't know whether it was the rankling resentment I felt about the injustice done the cat or irritation at the old man's pomposity, but I broke into the conversation with an impassioned defense of France. All I'd ever read, all I'd seen of her art and heard of her music, women, perfume, wines, food, went into my argument for her superiority to the cold-mutton, horse-faced women and blunt men of England and their culture.

The old man turned his head slowly, eyed me coldly, and asked, "Slobodkin, where have you ever been?"

I'd given some weak reply… I'd read, seen the work, and heard about… but it was true, I'd been no place. I'd been as far north as Lake George, as far east as Long Island, west to Madison, New Jersey, and south to Staten Island.

Well, there I was waiting for the streetcar that would take me to a ship bound for the Argentine, six thousand miles away — farther away than any of that dreary bunch had ever been— far enough away so that I could argue about any place when I came back and no one could cut me down with a "Where have you been, Slobodkin?" again.

It strengthened my resolution to think back, and in gratitude I shied a chunk of brick at that growling old tom and sent him scurrying. The rescued kitten scampered in the other direction with her honor intact for one more day, or until I'd boarded that trolley which lurched off down the street, looking for the S.S. Hermanita and the other end of the world.

1. Deck Boy on a Trolley

AN EMPTY TROLLEY IN THE EARLY MORNING is a good place to think and repent. There are few faces to see, and those usually belong to night workers going home to sleep or someone like yourself with a bleary-eyed, half-awake, empty pan. They stare back at you or through you, and you soon lose interest in one another.

So I thought back over the events that had brought me this far and vaguely repented my own impetuosity. It had been so much trouble to get to this point with my seaman's passport and my physical examination card, which smugly guaranteed me from venereal infection for forty-eight hours only — (Who are they to control my love life?) I'd passed that fool lifeboat test. .

I had been doing a portrait head of a Mrs. Grub, whose husband had had a stirring in him — he, top, had studied the fine arts, he had drawn in evening class — when he was very young and had grown up to be a short, overstuffed, and oversuccessful silk salesman. Whenever he spoke of those few evening classes in which he'd sketched from the nude, a faraway look came into his eyes and a sad, bitter smile creased his rather thick lips. He had a sympathy for me because he felt that he, too, had been a starving, young artist for a few weeks. He encouraged me to talk of my ambitions, my hopes, my yearnings.

Now and again I'd ventured a thought that had just begun to brew — I'd like to get a job aboard a small freight ship. I'd even made some half-hearted attempts to get one. Once or twice I'd gone down to the Shipping Board agencies and stood at the outskirts of a motley gang of men — deckhands, firemen, mess-men, sea cooks, and so on — as they scanned the bulletins of the help wanted aboard the thousands of ships down at the docks.

None of the listings seemed to want my kind of guy. Since I could draw, do sculpture, and paint water colors, I should make excellent material for a deck boy who, I understood, did nothing but get in the way of the real sailors, or I thought I might be an ordinary who does just a little more. I never aspired to be an able-bodied seaman; as a Boy Scout I was a perennial tenderfoot. I could never box the compass: I'd forget what followed East Northeast.

But the want ads for the toilers of the sea were mainly concerned with ship technicians — and so many dishwashers, waiters, and galley hands, mainly for passenger boats. I understood why years later, when I'd crossed the ocean a few times as a passenger. We ate, sat, and slept, slept, sat, and ate all over again, one monotonous day after another — there must have been an awful lot of dishes used. I hate dishdashing lukewarm water or cold, greasy stuff on my hands nauseates me so I hunted a freighter to ship out as a deckhand, which I eventually did, and instead of merely immersing niv dainty- hands in smelly dish water up to my elbows on the S.S. Hermanita, my dream ship, I had them dunked up to the shoulders and down my lily-white body in the stinking mess of a thick black, green and brown bilge soup for almost four long weeks. But to twist a cliche, I'm slopping about six thousand miles ahead of my story.

As Mrs. Grub's head neared completion, she had whimpered to her husband and he had relayed it sadly to me over a drink — she had hoped I'd do a sort of Epstein head. I was not hurt by this affront — no, I gathered my frayed artistic dignity about me as best I could and said that Epstein was Epstein and Slo-bodkin. . well. . Slobodkin, was Slobodkin, and I might have added that if they had wanted an Epstein they'd have had to pay a thousand pounds, while for the skimpy twenty they were paying me they would only get a Slobodkin — a bargain at any price and a pretty good investment, if I do say so.

But I said all that to myself, for I liked Mr. Grub and did not want to hurt him. Instead, I switched the talk back to my gnawing ambition to get a ship. Whereupon Mr. Grub revealed that he was a lot cannier than I'd given him credit for. He asked when I'd finish the Madame's head. I replied that I was waiting for the plaster cast to dry and I expected to work it for a few days… in about a week I'd patine the plaster, and it would be done.

Yes, in those days I did a beautiful patined portrait head of your favorite wife for a hundred bucks. Of course, there's been a market crash, depression, oppression, and a war since then, and I'm a good bit older and I can finagle a lot better price than that now — so. Art Lovers, don't write for similar terms.

The head would be done in a week, repeated Mr. Grub. Then he turned the trick I hadn't expected, and I felt he'd called my bluff.

He knew a man who owed him a favor. This man could get me a ship. I could only gulp weakly — yeah?

Yeah, he said, this man had helped organize the Havana Shipping Board, and he knew every Port Captain in New York and was especially friendly with the United Banana Line, the Limited Lime Line, Universal Tropical, and many other steamship outfits that supply our pushcarts with squashy tropical fruit.

Mr. Grub had waited until I finished the portrait head to spring that, and I regretted my ill-considered yaps in the past month about shipping out — but I couldn't retract.

The following week he took me up to the office of the man who organized the Havana Shipping Board. He was in silk now, a silk jobber, a tall cadaverous man who really did seem to know Port Captains. With the assurance of one who knows he's welcome, he phoned a number of shipping lines, talked to a few Port Captains, using their first names, and after a few tries he talked to Captain Flint, Port Captain of the Universal Tropical Line and, damn it. Captain Flint might have a berth for me.

So-o-o, after promising to do a small portrait statue figurine of Mr. Shipping-Board-Organizer's beautiful twelve-year-old daughter when I came back from the sea (if ever), I left his office and took my first reluctant steps on that six-thousand, five-hundred-mile trip to the Argentine.

I found the Universal Tropical Line perched high in the stalwart group of buildings that faced the bay down at Battery Park. I gave my name to a prim young man wearing suspenders, who disappeared into a welter of desks and filing cabinets while I sat with my hat covering my nervous knees and hoped Captain Flint was too busy to see me today.

After all. New York is nice in the summertime — there are the Stadium concerts for twenty-five cents, the museums for free — no luck. Captain Flint would see me.

The prim young man guided me down the sea of office paraphernalia with his bottom swinging like the aft-end of a tugboat as he rounded the comers. There were a couple of dusty ship models perched up on shelves we passed and a few working drawings of ships' guts hung on some partitions. I began to feel better about this thing. I half wished Captain Flint would really give me a berth. By the time we reached a bit of open sea in that loft of an office where Captain Flint's desk was placed, I definitely yearned for the sting of the salty spray and would feel the buckle of a ship's deck under my sea boots.

The filing cabinets had parted in two huge waves and there, with the sun streaming down from a bay of immense windows, sat Captain Flint.

A huge, handsome hulk of a man, bald as an egg, with grizzled whiskers, a veritable sea lion, he sat his desk as if he were riding the hurricane deck of a ship. I realize that now — until then the only ships I'd ever been on had been the splintery Hudson River sidewheelers and the Staten Island ferry boats. They had no hurricane decks and I'm still uncertain what a hurricane deck of a ship is.

I don't remember when I dropped pilot — when the boy with the suspenders left me — and I don't recall what Captain Flint said as he looked me up and down to make sure I had two arms and two legs, but I do remember the magnificent deep rumble of his voice.

This was the old man of the sea in the flesh. I gathered that some ship with a rolling name had docked that morning and Captain Brandt — that came out clear and sharp — was due aboard the good ship, "Office of the Universal Tropical Line" and if I waited aft (he actually said aft — shades of Lord Jim and Moby Dick) he, Port Captain Flint, would have a word with Captain Brandt, and maybe I'd ship out on the S.S. Rumble-rumble-rumble…

So I found my way back through the maze of prosaic office gear, exhilarated by my contact with a real seaman. As I'd sat waiting for Captain Brandt I realized those guys I'd seen down at the seaman's employment agency had taken die edge off my romantic imaginings about a life at sea. Why, they had looked like all men do when they're hunting for a job — like the quiet, hopeless-faced men I'd seen scanning the "Men Wanted" bulletins on Sixth Avenue — just a bunch of factory hands or kitchen workers.

This Captain Flint was a sailor, and my faith was renewed.

As I sat there practicing a chanty or two I'd learned (very sotto voce, of course), the outer door swung open. A man wedged into a wrinkled pencil-striped blue suit shuffled in. On his beak-nosed, swarthy head perched a smudged, hard, straw hat, and it seemed he had waxed his long, pointed mustache with some black grease — might have been fuel oil — that must have smeared his high starched collar, too. A stiff collar on a hot July day — he deserved to sweat.

With a bent-kneed shuffle he made the office rail, and the boy in suspenders, who had been doing some important rustling in a sheaf of papers on his desk, looked up and sprang to open the gate for him — he hadn't done that for me.

"O! Captain Brandt. . Good morning, Captain Brandt," he greeted him with a servile smile.

Good morning, Captain Brandt? — Captain Brandt — My Captain!

He looked like the greasy proprietor of an unsuccessful Syrian restaurant — a seagoing pilaf peddler!

Now they had disappeared behind the filing cabinets. The light had gone out of the sun, and my dreams of the sea turned brackish and bitter. I weighed the possibility of tiptoeing carefully out of the U.T. office and, as I slowly and carefully began to rise from my chair, the broad face of the boy with the suspenders poked around the corner of a big filing cabinet.

Captain Flint wanted me up forward.

I had weighed and waited too long!

With leaden feet I stumbled down that sad vale of cabinets again. The back of my trousers felt sort of loose and breezy.

Evidently there had been an argument going on. Captain Brandt had the wind up as he sat with his straw hat resting on one knee, twirling his foot and swinging his arms to carry his points.

The first view I got of him with his hat off fascinated me so, I didn't hear what he was saying. He was one of those bald-headed old men who allow what hair they have left over the ears to grow long, usually on the left side of their head. They carefully comb the sparse hair over the bald top of the head and slick it down, deluding no one but themselves, since as they look in the mirror the dark streak of hair on the top looks as it always has. They never get the side and back views we do. Captain Brandt's coiffure was unique. The flattened stripes of his hair were arranged around his bald pate in an equal-spaced design, and with a curve ending in a spit curl high over his right eye.

It looked exactly like some species of wild ass I'd seen in the Zoo — a black and tan zebra's buttocks of a head.

With a rasping voice he was saying, "An' I won't ship any goddam deck boys — they're all a bunch of little bastards — the last two I shipped are still down in South America. One got dosed up in Montevideo, and we dumped him in a hospital in Santos. . and the other skipped ship in Rio. No, sir, I won't have my ship fouled up. . "

Captain Flint, who had been sitting back square in his chair, flicked his eyes on me and then leaned forward, resting his big fist on the polished surface of his desk. He thrust his head forward and said, "Captain Brandt, this is the young man Mr. [that Shipping Board man's name again] spoke of." His voice rumbled through the office like a distant storm.

It was evident my sponsor's name had weight.

Captain Brandt turned and looked at me over the tops of his horn-rimmed pince-nez. He wore them low on his nose bulb, and then, as he brought his head completely around, I saw they were attached to, and trailing, a length of black cable so heavy that his pince-nez were a bit askew.

He said something that sounded like "Ugh."

"How d'ya do, Captain Brandt," I said.

His nod of recognition sent his pince-nez trembling and lifted his spit curl in the breeze. I wondered how a sharp wind would affect his long, plastered-down top hairs.

Things happened quickly after that. It seemed that Captain Brandt was impressed with my gold-rimmed glasses and my deceptive gentility.

I could come aboard the S.S. Hermanita as a tryout.

A young clerk was dispatched with me in tow, and we dashed down to the Shipping Board agency to have certain papers filled out.

The clerk, a young man with a good plain face, gently but firmly led me from office to office all over the lower tip of Manhattan on that broiling hot day — and I remember a cool pause in a brick building at South Ferry. I was to take the lifeboat test. In a darkened room I was confronted with a dainty white and tan model of a little rowboat held up by some white cords that were run through some pretty little pulleys suspended from two curved metal units (davits). It was a charming little scale model, and I told my guide and the man behind the counter that I thought so. So far that day, that fine little scale model was the only thing I recognized as something I knew anything about — everything else was a misty pink chaos. I began to discuss scale models in general, since I'm pretty well-informed on the subject.

The man behind the counter exploded, "What's this — is he gonna start working them davits and swing that boat out or ain't he?"

My young clerk reddened and gave me a little talk on what was expected of me. Then, after a little study of the model to get the hang of it, I worked the davits.

As the man scribbled on some papers, I leaned over the counter and suggested a few things that could be done to perfect this little model — perhaps a little carving on these inner surfaces and a touch of oil in those pulleys. The man rolled his eyes up at me and glared at the clerk, who grabbed my elbow with one hand as he slipped the paper from under the man's pen with the other and whirled me out of there without saying a word.

Somewhere, sometime that day I had been given a physical examination, for I found that card in my hand which said I was guaranteed free from venereal infection for forty-eight hours! I had sat in one of those rickety little photographic studios against a blue-gray canvas backdrop, decorated with baroque painted urns, a balustrade, and cloudy, shapeless trees, while a little man snapped my picture — and the heat of mercury lamps added to the heat of the day gave me a headache that gnawed down the side of my head until my whole jaw ached. The result — an interesting photograph of a very intense, determined-looking young man, I thought.

The clerk who had disappeared to get to the office for a moment while I waited for the quickie to be developed and printed, evidently had had a quickie of his own on the way back — there was a distinct beery smell to him as he piloted me with my latest picture and a handful of documents to the passport office.

Things went smoothly there until the question arose as to whether I was ever born.

"When" they accepted. But "where" left doubt in their minds. With a name like mine — though Van Goosenbeck, Vanderhofen, Rujuenthaler or something similar could readily be accepted as the name of someone born in upper New York State — a Slobodkin could come only from the steppes of Russia or worse.

My clerk (and I chimed in) argued I had to join my ship. I was a very essential cog in the wheels that made it go — a little cog, but important. The Tammany Hall politician behind that passport-office desk was adamant; I must get a copy of my birth certificate in Albany.

That was the first shoal we'd struck in our whirling cruise that day. The clerk, a bit crumpled and with his stiff collar wilted, led me off to one of those old chop houses that dot lower Manhattan. I told him I couldn't eat a thing — but I wasn't there to eat. I was led to a table where Captain Brandt, a snowy napkin tucked in his collar, was champing his store teeth over a huge grilled steak.

His attitude toward me had softened completely. We were greeted with a smile, and he asked how everything was going. Before I could answer, he turned and said proudly to the man with whom he was lunching, "Mister, this is the type of young man that is going to sea now-a-day. Mind you, a talented young artist giving up his art career to devote his life to the sea — he's starting at the bottom to work up. Yes, sir, I'm signing him as a deck boy on the old S.S. Hermanita."

He turned and beamed up at me so proudly that I didn't have the courage to disillusion him and I weakly said, "Yes, sir!"

He then turned his attention to the clerk who had been fidgeting alongside. "Are the decks all clear now. Mister?"

The clerk blurted out our difficulty — no birth certificate, no passport; no passport, no sign-on; no sign-on, no deck boy.

Captain Brandt yanked his napkin from his collar, leaned back, and took command.

"H-m-m. . Where were you born, son?"

"Up in Albany, sir."

"H-m-m. . Albany, huh?"

The Captain gave me a sidelong glance and seemed to study me for a full half minute — good God, wouldn't anyone believe me?

But evidently he did. He'd just been working a shred of meat that stuck in his uppers on the larboard side. He sucked his teeth, smacked his lips.

"Got any relatives up there?"

Did I have relatives up in Albany! In those days that place was fairly crawling with my own flesh and blood. Why, every second person on the street was either my kissin' kin, or a kissin' kin to my kissin' kin. Modestly I replied, "Yes, sir, a few."

"Well, that's simple; telegraph at once. I'll expect you aboard the S.S. Hermanita the day after tomorrow."

Having solved our problem with dispatch, he turned back to his steak. We were dismissed.

I chased after my clerk again, still worried. I couldn't ever get a relative to do anything for me. Which of them should I telegraph? Then I brightened with a thought. My mother had gone up to Albany for a bit of vacation. Now, I could depend upon my mother, though I never could understand why she would go up to Albany in the middle of summer. New York is hot, but Albany — why, it's said there that people living up on Schuyler Street hill have a late Sunday breakfast en plein air, and fry their eggs on their sizzling front walks while they wait for the coffee to perc on the curb — at least that's what they say.

Well, I telegraphed Albany and, miracle of miracles, two days later I received my birth certificate, fully made out and legal, except for the date of my birth. I'd always believed — in fact, I'd always celebrated my birthday on February twelfth along with Lincoln, Darwin, and some others; but this certificate said February nineteenth, and, worse than that, my surname — with which I'd had difficulty enough — on this certificate was SLOPOTZWKYI.

As I worried over to the passport office, a thought struck me that almost turned me back — and would have turned me if I had not already paid my nickel for the subway ride downtown.

That physical-examination card guaranteed me free from venereal infection for forty-eight hours, and here it was already fifty-two hours — fifty-two and a half before I'd reach the passport office!

I'd been very careful — but would they believe me? I did have a haggard look, all this running around and worrying…

I gently put all my papers down on the passport man's desk. As he shuffled through them I hastily explained about that birth-certificate date, name, and so on. He slapped the papers down on the desk and gave me a long, weary spiel about signed affidavits and a lot of other stuff I'd have to do to rid myself of this Slopotzwkyi with which I'd been saddled. But he hadn't lingered on the forty-eight hour purity clause, so I sighed and settled for Slopotzwkyi.

I was fingerprinted, raised my right hand, and, presto! — I had a seaman's passport.

So the following morning found me rattling along on that trolley car until the motorman turned his head and said, "Hey, Jack, here's Vesey Street. . It'll take you to your pier 45."

2. The "Hermanita"

IT WAS COOL AND DAMP ALONG THE STREETS that skirted the waterfront, and I finally sighted the big warehouse with a large, stained, white 45 painted high on the front of it.

There was no one around. No men, no ships near it — at least not on the side I'd approached. I'd been told that my ship was a little one, maybe her stacks didn't even reach the dock level, or maybe she'd sunk! I went around the warehouse to look down into the water. An old man was coiling some wet rope as I turned the comer.

I asked if the S.S. Hermanita wasn't supposed to be docked at this pier. He squinted up his eyes in the manner of those who can't hear very well.

"Which?"

I shouted, "The S.S. Hermanita. Is she supposed… or could you tell me..?"

"The Hermanita, huh?"

"Yes."

He slowly straightened up.

"There she is — out in the stream," and he pointed in the general direction of Europe.

Sure enough, there she was, looking cool and a bit rakish, with patches of red lead on her hull, riding high on the limpid waters of the East River. Panic seized me — here I hadn't even stepped aboard my ship, and already I was a deserter! True, I hadn't really signed on yet, but how was I to know that desertion now might not be considered a sort of breach of promise?

I asked the old man what to do — where was she going, where could I catch her? To all my frenzied questions he answered I dunno or just shook his head and went on coiling rope. I stood there.

"Sorry, fella, can't help you. I jes' ties 'em up when they comes in and unties 'em when they go. I jes' work here."

When he walked off with the coil, he turned and said, "Phone yer Port Captain. He oughter know."

I hunted a phone booth. Now was as good a time as any to come to a final decision about this foolhardy venture to take my soft fat life in my hands and risk it aboard some seagoing, leaky old tub. That first impression I had of the S.S. Hermanita out there in the cool East River was not too persuasive. Seemed to me she had a list to her, and her empty hull smeared with large patches of red lead didn't look any too safe. Maybe I'd call the whole thing off. What could they do me? Let them sue for breach of promise. I'd skip town.

I'd already arranged to give up my studio — or rather it had been done for me. The arranger had been my landlady. Old Dogfaced Keegan they called her, and not without reason. She was a sour, bandy-legged old woman with a face as much like the scowling mug of an English bulldog as I'd ever seen. Her bloodshot eyes were set far apart and bulged. A nondescript button of a pug nose (which seemed to have been broken at the bridge) nestled between her ashy gray jowls. They hung below the dewlaps of her chin — all that with a voice to match.

There was about a block of studio buildings west of Sixth Avenue that she rented to artists, writers, and hangers-on. They were cold-water, rickety walk-ups, but you could mess them up with your work, and there was no curfew on noise. For these niggardly quarters Old Dogface charged a stiff rent — which she sometimes got. As she made her early tour of rent collecting, she was fond of repeating:

"You know what they do to artists where I come from? [England, I'd been told.] They get out their shotguns as soon as they sight them and shoot them as they come up the road."

Having placated her as well as I could with more promises of money I hoped to get, I'd crawl shivering back to bed and dream of being chased through a Constable landscape by Yorkshiremen in chin whiskers and gaiters taking potshots at me with their old blunderbusses, while I ran hugging huge portfolios and plaster casts to my bosom.

After I'd been given three or four eviction notices, been down to court as many times, with each presiding magistrate greeting her as an old friend and granting her victim another few weeks to pay up or be thrown out — some of the best artists in America had lived in her building and been ignominiously evicted in time — it didn't bother me too much when she finally got an eviction order that stuck. I'd hastily made the rounds of my friends and patrons. Patrons — those were people who commissioned one portrait for about one hundred dollars, for which you do the portrait of them or their wife, mother, or child, give them a lot of drawing for free, a few small sculpture sketches, have to eat dinner at their house for about a month (that was part of the payoff), lecture them continually on art and art values, advise on the purchase of prints, paintings, art books, appear every Sunday for tea, where you are shown off as the young genius they have discovered — and throw in dozens of tours, with lectures, of the museums, art galleries. .

Why, I know of rich art collections bought with ham sandwiches!

So, to repeat, I visited some of those leeches and offered to board out some of my sculpture and stuff they had liked — but not well enough to buy — and gave away a lot of material, clay, stands, etc., to my friends. There was nothing holding me down. I could just disappear — but by the time I came to this conclusion I found a phone booth in a barroom and automatically inserted my nickel and rang information for the Universal Tropical Line's number. There again my parsimonious nature shoved me along: for fear of wasting that nickel, I waited until I was connected with the number.

The boy with the suspenders answered, and I hopefully asked him if the S.S. Hermanita had sailed without me. "Naw," he snapped. "She's going to drydock." "Well, they won't need me in drydock, will they?" "Just a second."

I heard him rustle some papers — maybe he was tearing up all reference to me. Maybe this was an out. Then I heard again. "She's tying up at Pier 12—up the river." Then he shouted ominously, "You get aboard that ship," and slammed the receiver. Why, that tug-bottomed little…

It was almost noon when I found Pier 12. I climbed up a shaky gangplank to the littered deck of the S.S. Hermanita. A man wearing khaki trousers, a collarless striped shirt, sporting a bright collar button and a white yachting cap, stopped me. "What you want?"

I thrust my papers at him and the big Swede (he was obviously Scandinavian) looked at me from under the shiny visor of his cap, then took a quick glance at my credentials, and flung them back at me so quickly that I fumbled and had to pick them up from the greasy deck.

"Change your clothes back aft in the fo'castle, stow 'em in one of those lockers, keep the key you find in the door with you, then come back here and join this gang moving gear."

Well, I did all that, and in a pair of dungarees flecked with plaster I had used around my studio I came back and joined the gang — except for a few young fellows, as heterogeneous a group of broken-down dock rats and old port bums as you'd ever hope to see along South Street. The brawny men of the sea — huh!

With a cheery good morning, I grabbed the tangle of rope and began to tug at it, carrying it in the general direction in which they were moving. They had not responded to my polite greeting; those near me just gave me a weary look. Then a fierce-looking fat old man snarled, "Drop it."

I did. I guessed he meant that tangle of rope with which I'd been getting nowhere.

"C'mon. . c'mon," came from the only articulate member of the crew of the S.S. Hermanita. I followed them as they slowly climbed a ladder to the upper deck. They trooped in to what appeared to be a very simply furnished dining room (crew's mess). There were two long wooden tables with no cloth, a couple of large platters of bread, and a few dishes full of some cloudy yellow grease — I found out later it was melted, rancid butter. The crew slowly sat down, dirty and sweaty as they were. I was seated alongside two young guys, one about my own age, a well-built blond with pretty, girlish features and a too short upper lip. Next to him sat a taller, blubber-lipped younger boy whom the blond guy called Mush. They didn't look so tough. The streaks of dirt on their sweaty faces fooled me at first.

I tried to stir up some talk as I turned to the blond.

"That wasn't so hard."

"Huh?"

"I mean port work. I'd been told if I could stand port work, the rest wouldn't be so tough."

"How long you been aboard — who told you?"

"Captain Brandt. You see, I met him. I was introduced by. ."

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. Everybody was looking at me — from down the table there came a sound.

"Nerts."

I shut up; it was a relief when the fat man bellowed:

"Hey, Flip, bring on the slops."

And that howl was taken up by the rest of the men. A tousle-headed, bright-eyed old Filipino stuck his head in the door and shouted above the melee.

"Shoddop. Soon. Wait."

That served only to increase the volume of the howls. Under cover of the racket, the blond guy spoke to me again.

"Where you from?"

"Here."

"You mean New York?"

I said, "Yeah."

"My name's Al Bricker — this is Mush Miller," and he indicated the tall boy he'd been talking to. I told them my name, then Mush Miller leaned toward me and asked, "You living in New York or studying? I'm from Illinois Prep and Al here is at Indiana State."

"No, I'm an artist."

The blond seemed impressed. Then, out of the corner of his mouth, he tipped me off.

"Steer clear of midships if you want to get along with the crew. I know; I've shipped out before. This is Mush's first trip, but I've been around."

"Thanks. . You see, I met Captain Brandt socially and I thought. ." "Stow it," he said.

A brown, knotty arm banged a heavy plate down in front of me. 'Tor' chop."

I looked up at the grinning face of the Filipino with a huge corncob clinched in his white teeth. Then I looked down at my plate. Two pork chops, slithering around in their own grease, a large water-soaked boiled potato, and a mound of something that might be boiled turnips — not the lunch I'd pick for a hot day.

The rest of the men were already busy with their food; not many were using their forks but, grasping the chops in one grimy fist and a lump of bread in the other, they ate. There were a number of arguments going on. One at the end of the table took my attention. A guy with a face like a black and white Neanderthal — big-jawed and no forehead (his hair didn't seem to grow from his scalp but looked as if it were thatched to it — a coal-black shiny roof that eaved over his jutting frontals) — seemed to be on the defensive. I couldn't make out his opponent's argument, but the Neanderthaler's "Yeah! Yeah!" could be heard above the jangle of talk, clatter of dishes, and the noise of men eating.

The blond guy, Al, said in a low voice, "That's the black gang. The deck crew and engine-room gang don't mix."

One of the black gang (old Pat, the oiler, I found out later) was in the midst of a story; the others quieted down to listen.

He was a chubby, straight-backed, old Irishman with a bellowing beer stimme. I never got the beginning of it, but I gathered he'd applied for a berth aboard the Palestinian Line. They had only two ships.

"Then in I walks. There sits this old Jew guy with his whiskers tied up in a knot to keep them out of the inkwell. Sez I—" and that was lost in the clatter of dishes as Flip crashed into the galley with a load on his tray.

Pat went on with his story. I could tell from his gestures when the old Jew with his knotted whiskers was talking. He'd crouch over, wave his hands, palms up under his chin, and contort his face, trying to get his kilarney pug down to a Semitic beak. When Pat straightened and bellowed a forthright bellow, he was himself — the straight-backed, upstanding, noble Irishman.

"Mother of God — an' there he was with his whiskers tied up in a knot to keep 'em from dippin' in his inkpot."

And Pat banged his open palm down on the table and went off into a gale of raucous, rattling laughter that almost knocked him sideward.

Out of the side of his mouth, Al said, "He just slays him."

Again the knotty brown arm of Flip dipped over my shoulder and slammed down a dish.

"Deserk!" he said with finality.

I whispered to Al:

"What do you think it is?"

"That? That's tapioca. . tapioca pudding. Those brown spots fool you; they're chunks of apple, old apples left in the icebox since the last trip, I guess."

The argument with the black-thatched Neanderthal at the other end of the table had risen to a noisy crescendo. A scrawny-headed guy with a birdlike neck was shouting across at Black Thatch.

"Well, what d'hell did you wanna bring a stinkin' punk boy into our cabin for?"

All other talk stopped.

Black Thatch, gesturing with his spoon, said, "Da poor kid didn't have no place to sleep. Jeez, you wouldn't want a kid to sleep under the pier, would you?"

"Yeah. . yeah, you go take yer punk some place else—"

"My punk?" said Black Thatch. His eyebrows disappeared up in the eaves of his hair. "I'm telling ya I let the kid sleep wit me cause he was on the beach. And it ain't his fault he's a punk — he was born that way. He's a p'voit—"

"Yah. ."

"Yah, a p'voit. Now, listen." Black Thatch leaned his arm across the table, punctuating his talk with his spoon held delicately at end. "I've been goin' to sea fer fifteen years and in all that time I've been readin'—"

"You've been reading! Whyn't you shut up and lissen to them kids down the end of the table," and Birdneck indicated us — Mush, Al, and me — with a flick of his thumb. "They kin tell you more in a minute than you can fin' out in the rest of your life. . readin'."

It was evident that our use of knives and forks, our subdued conversation, and my gold-rimmed specs had impressed Bird-neck with our gentility. We silently picked up our spoons and dug into the tapioca.

"Readin'. . yas, readin'!" bellowed Black Thatch. "Fer fifteen years I've been goin' to sea and readin' books. Books on sex and sex'al p'voision. An' I could tell you an' dem tings you never heard of. Betcha you don't know — yas, an' dey don't know for all dere education — dere's people what eats—" His voice was lost again in a sharp hiss.

Birdneck looked across for a moment. Then he said:

"Aw-w, shut up."

Al, Mush, and I had brought our first spoonful of brown-specked tapioca almost up to our mouths. We carefully put our spoons down and quietly left the table.

3. Moving-Picture Sailor

THE THREE OF US SAT ON THE RIM of the open hatch and lit cigarettes. One by one, the rest of the crew climbed down to the deck. Now and again one of them would let out an uninhibited belch. A few of the older men sat down alongside us; others drifted over to the rail and smoked and spat over the side.

The fat, ferocious man pointed the stem of his pipe toward the ship docked alongside.

"There's a ship that feeds good."

A young guy with a strong Hell's Kitchen accent said, "Yeah, can't be any woise than this tub. This ship feeds lousy. Christ! Dere was — woims in the — oatmeal this mornin'!"

As I turned in my mind this picture of amorous worms cavorting in bowls of lumpy porridge, Al sneered, "And that guy's brother's a Phi Beta Kappa."

The tallest man aboard, a huge, shirtless Slav who wore a pair of overalls and an incongruous hard straw hat dipped forward over his eyes, joined the group leaning over the rail. He hadn't spoken all through lunch, and for the first time I heard his voice.

"If she feed like oder Limey ships, her grub's lousy, too." He paused a bit and then went on. "Them Lambert Holt ships keep their course not by compass. They watch for floating prune pit in oder Lambert Holt ship's wake."

The Fat Man scowled at him. "I'm telling you, that ship feeds good."

For a moment nothing was said. Then from the upper deck a strident voice shouted, "All right, now — all right. Turn to."

We all looked up at the man with the yachtsman's cap. Al muttered, "That's the Mate — First Mate. He's a Swede."

The Fat Man squinted up at the Mate and hollered, "T'ain't one o'clock yet."

The Mate snapped a watch from his pants pocket, studied it a moment, then shouted, "Go ahead — turn to. It is."

Slowly the men shuffled over to that twisted pile of gear and rigging they had been working on. The stuff was being stowed in the shelter deck (this terminology I found out later). I made a number of trips back and forth, loaded down with ropes and block and fall, and had returned to the pile to be loaded again when a factory whistle near the docks let out a blast. The Fat Man growled under his breath.

"The goddam liar, that's one o'clock now," and he scowled up at the Mate astride the upper deck, his hands grasping the rails. The Mate returned a cold blue eye to the sweaty fat man and me.

All through that hot afternoon we lugged, pushed, and pulled gear until my back was sore, my hands grease-black and flecked with blood from the frayed wire cable — and did I have a headache!

It was one endless, painful, red blur until the Mate reluctantly growled, "All right. Knock off."

Al showed me where I could wash up, and I wearily dragged myself to the fo'castle and started changing my clothes.

"Where you goin'?" asked Mush.

"Home," I said.

"Ain't you gonna eat aboard? It's part of your pay."

I couldn't eat that slop again that day. I'd have to start slowly. I picked my bunk, too, with Al's advice — an upper near a porthole, as he'd suggested.

Al and Mush walked me to the gangplank when I was dressed — or rather, to the section of the rail where the gangplank had been. Now it was one continuous rail. I looked over the side.

"Hey, what happened to the ocean?"

"We're in the river."

"But where's the water?"

We looked down over the side — a long way down. We were high and dry!

"We're in drydock," said Al.

"But how am I going to get home?"

"Climb down that ladder," and he pointed to a long thin connecting ladder lashed to the side that led down to the dock. It looked awfully thin and precarious. But I had brought along only a pair of dungarees and a pair of work shoes — no pajamas and no toothbrush. I couldn't sleep aboard ship. The boys had been too polite to tell me nobody slept in pajamas.

I climbed over and, clinging to that long ladder with my sore, puffy hands, I carefully inched my way down to the dock.

My father was home when I got there. It was evident he didn't approve of my plans to work my passage and ship out. He belonged (and still does, and I've joined him) to the pushbutton school of thought — that all unpleasant labor should and could be accomplished by pushing a button. Eventually we'll all sit back and get unpleasant things done by pushing buttons, and the only work worthy of men could be accomplished sitting down comfortably, thinking of solutions. He maintained a stony silence all evening.

The next morning when I got back to my ship, a crew of men were scraping her bottom — scraping and painting. I climbed aboard, this time carrying my duffle. I'd come to stay. I don't remember how I got up that long, thin ladder with my bundle. Vaguely, I recall closing my eyes and just climbing up, up, until I felt the solid, welcome rail of the Hermanita.

I went back to the fo'castle. It had the smell of a place where men had slept. The bunk under the one I'd picked for myself was the smelliest and messiest in the fo'castle. After I'd changed into my work clothes, I went out and sat on the hatch. It was pleasant there in the cool of the morning. Some of the rest of the crew began to climb down from breakfast. A few were still chewing their food, their unshaven chins shining with grease; others came down yawning or scratching themselves. What a blot they were against the clear blue sky.

When enough of us had gathered on the hatch, the Mate appeared on the upper deck and bellowed:

"All right. Turn to — go forward and tackle that f'ward winch. Hey, you [and he pointed at the fat man], did you ever work a winch?"

"I've sailed around the Horn and worked more winches than you ever sighted and—"

"All right. . hey, you young fellers, go along with him. Work the cable off the winch and grease 'em down. The rest of you, come up here."

We followed that old blowhard, the fat Sailing Man, through the shelter deck up forward. Mush, Al, and I. It was evident the Mate had meant us when he said young fellers. We tackled that winch, but it wasn't the old fatty who worked it so we could unwind the cable.

He blustered and blundered around with the levers until he somehow caught one of his beefy hands in the works and gashed it. He bellowed, sweated, and swore, and tied up his bleeding fist in a filthy handkerchief.

Al took over. He seemed to know about this stuff. We spent most of the morning at that job. The twisted wire cable was frayed and full of microscopic needles that cut through the rag with which I was swabbing my section. Soon my hands were bleeding from hundreds of tiny scratches.

The rest of the crew were soon moving rigging up forward. Al told me we were rigging the booms to start loading as soon as we got out of drydock.

I noticed a new man had joined the crew, a stocky young fellow with fine shoulders, powerful arms, and lean shanks. He moved easily and responded quickly to the Mate's orders.

"Well," I thought, "this is the first guy I've seen aboard who looks and acts like a sailor."

When the Mate ordered a line carried up the mast and run through the block up there so we could work the winch and pull the cable through, this new man tied the line to the back of his belt and went up the ladder to the masthead as quick as a monkey — with the line making a long tail after him, pointing up his simian resemblance. He ran the line through and then, instead of slowly and laboriously climbing down, to kill time as the rest of the gang had been doing, he wrapped his legs around one of the cables attached to the mast and zipped back to the deck in a flash.

The crumby crew watched with their jaws hanging. The guy with the Hell's Kitchen accent, the Phi Beta Kappa's brother, was standing at my side.

"Oh. A fancy, movin'-pi'ture sailor," he said quietly. "All right, boin your hands, buddy."

I understood what he meant when I saw the fancy sailor rub-bing his reddened hands together tenderly as he landed back on the deck.

But he kept up that hop-skip-and-jump pace through the morning, to the disgust of everybody but the Mate.

After lunch, as we leaned up against the rail smoking, he joined us. He lit up a cigarette, then rubbed his belly.

"This ship feeds pretty good. They dish out stinkin' gut-rot on that swill bucket," and he jerked his head toward the ship alongside — the one the fat Sailing Man and the big Russian had discussed the day before.

Somebody burped, and the Phi Beta Kappa's brother spat on the deck and flicked his cigarette over the side.

All that afternoon we worked shoving things around in a seemingly meaningless pattern. The men grouched — this goddam Swede Mate is a goddam, brass-polishing yacht's captain (something he never lived down during the whole trip). The fancy sailor kept up die pace he had set when he first came aboard. As the hot afternoon wore on, the sultry heat wore into him, too — he became as grimy with sweat and dust as the rest of the crew and he slowed down a bit, but he never seemed to be dragging his bottom along the deck as we did.

We knocked off, crawled out of our clothes, now so caked with a paste of grease and dust your dungarees didn't sag and flop when you threw them in a comer. They stood there, then stiffly folded over and slowly sank to the deck as if they, too, were tired. We washed and went up to eat. Supper was cheerful, though the food was a repetition of the greasy mess we'd eaten before. I noticed the sailor wasn't talking much and that the men had got over their resentment at his working so hard and were friendly.

We all gathered on the poopdeck. Some of the men had been washing clothes, and they hung them on lines stretched from the stanchions. The river looked pretty narrow, and the poops of many ships alongside with clotheslines strung on them gave you the feeling of sitting in some back yard on a late Monday afternoon.

The men talked quietly, some wrote letters — I began writing to some dame and just about the time the sun began to sink behind the chimneys on the New York side I finished.

As I looked up, I found myself surrounded by a group of four or five little brown men. I blinked (a touch of liver perhaps — maybe the food was making me bilious). Then I remembered Al had said the ship's mess was all Filipino. This evidently was it. All about the same size, all with the same broad, round, golden-brown faces that seemed to float in front of their slender necks like masks. They were so much alike there seemed more of them than there were because of the repetitious similarity.

They soberly studied me with expressionless black eyes. I tried a grin, but no dice — none of them responded.

Slowly, they sauntered away from me and surrounded another guy, reading a newspaper on a coil of rope. They gave him the same going over they had me and continued their slow tour of inspection of everyone on the poopdeck.

Talk had died down. Each man who had gone through the ordeal would turn his head and watch them give it to the next one, until they quietly circled the poop and without having spoken one word among themselves, or to any of the men, they silently climbed down and left us.

It seemed now that either the Filipinos or the sun dipping behind the horizon had cooled us off, and the mumble of talk that started up again was somber and subdued — and stayed that way for a long time until it became quite dark and someone yawned and said he was going to turn in.

That cheered me. I'd been waiting for someone to start down the fo'castle so I could try out my bunk, since this was the first night I'd sleep in a bunk aboard a ship (I didn't count those spent in the brown-varnished cabins on those Hudson River sidewheelers).

Frankly, I was anxious to get started but did not want to appear too eager.

After a few false starts, we all got down off the poop and I climbed into my bunk, lit a cigarette, and stretched out.

Well, this was it. A bunk on a freighter out on the North Atlantic! I grant there were a few flaws in that, since our ship was not floating in the ocean. We were tied up in the East River, but that is a misnomer. It's not really a river; it's a strait between Long Island Sound and the bay. The water is salt, but since our ship was propped up in drydock, there was no water under us except a few puddles. Well, there it was, anyway— my first night aboard a good seaworthy ship. .

"I wouldn't ship on this lousy tub if it were the only lousy ship in the lousy harbor."

That Phi Beta Kappa's brother was sounding off again. He lay in one of the upper bunks, flicking his cigarette ash over the side as he talked to some old guy from the black gang sitting on an unoccupied lower.

I looked around the fo'castle and was surprised to see how few there were sleeping aboard. Seems a lot of the old bums had risked their necks climbing down that long ladder to the dock to sleep ashore. Those who remained had all chosen upper bunks. Only one lower was occupied — the messy one under me by the old fat Sailing Man.

"And foidermore, if I wasn't gettin' cured at the Seaman's Hospital, I wouldn't be here now."

"She ain't a bad ship," said the old guy from the black gang through his mustaches. "She's tight — pretty good engines— sure there ain't much to her, only some five thousand ton. . "

"Only five thousand. Yeah! An' she's booked for the Argentine, ain't she? And she won't be comin' back till September or thereabouts — in d'hurricane season. A fine chance this old can will have in a blow. Didja look over dem lifeboats she carries:

"I dunno. I've sailed on ships three times as big as this. And in a; real bit of weather dey get shoved around like the little ones. Remember that big liner, d'Urania? She split up like a cracker. We saw her pieces afloat in the Caribbean. . "

The fo'castle was silent. Then the old guy went on.

"I tell ya, if you ever get caught in one of those winds — and the ship begins to go — get out your razor," and he silently sliced his hand across his skinny old throat. "Cause if you ain't sucked down — and you get away in a boat — likely as not some goddam wave will up and break your neck."

The fat man stuck his tousled head out of his bunk.

"Yeah, an' if it weren't for the old woman, I wouldn't sign on this damn stinkin' oil burner. These goddam ol' oil burners are always awash with sea-lawyers and bilge soup."

I heard his bunk creak as he settled back. Clouds of choking smoke from his pipe rose on either side of me. Then he ducked his head out again.

"Say, anybody seen the Old Man yet?"

I was going to mix in and say I had, but I remembered Al's warning.

"The old buzzard's a Newfoundland bluenose. Yuh, I seen his papers framed up in d'wheelhouse, and he's an old sailing ship man, same as myself. I tell yer, feller," — he poked his pipe stem toward the Phi Beta Kappa's brother—"a sailing man with that experience can take—"

We never heard the end of that. A row had started out on deck, and the fancy sailor came crashing into the fo'castle pursued by a regiment of Filipinos gone savagely native.

The sailor threw himself into a corner of the fo'castle, cradled his big arms over his head. They punched and smacked at him as best they could — there were too many of them swinging at once for anyone to get in a solid blow. The sailor made no effort to stand up and fight, though it seemed to me from the build of him he could have taken the whole mess of little brown men; he crouched with his arms shielding his head and whimpered:

"Look, Flip — you got me wrong — I'm not d'guy — I ain't never been on that ship. . "

From the Filipinos' high-pitched yapping I could hear the repetitious "teef, teef" of our own messboy, who was dancing about ineffectively on the outskirts of the squirming turmoil.

"Lemme up, Flip — jeez, Flip — lemme up — lemme get my papers — I'll show ya — I ain't ever shipped on her — lemme get to my locker."

The Filipinos were really letting him have it now. They'd gotten down to a system of flailing at his shoulders and head with the rhythm of sledges driving a spike. Blood began to show on his cheek.

And what were we white folk doing while these little brown men were beating the life out of a member of our own race?

I looked around the fo'castle, and they were all doing just what I was doing — lying in their bunks, flicking their cigarettes over the swirling mass of bodies on the deck; a calm respectful audience to a bit of mayhem.

One of the Filipinos, who looked like a bantamweight pug, perhaps because he was getting a little tired, started screaming at the others something that made them all slow down. Our own messman, finding a bit of room, dashed in and got in a few licks while the others were talking things over.

Then the pug threw his arms around our messman, shouting:

"All right, stop — dat's all — get d'paypa — let him up. Where's locka? Get d'paypa."

The sailor got up, still cradling his head and crouched over, and moved sideward toward the lockers near the fo'castle door, with the Filipinos close at his heels. He began to fumble in his pockets, presumably searching for his key, and suddenly he broke and ran through the fo'castle door and down the deck with a long line of the bloodthirsty little brownies streaming after him. He cleared the clutter of debris strewn along that deck like a frenzied deer.

We all tumbled out of our bunks and were out on deck sooner than I can tell it.

The lone electric light slung on the aftermast gave an eerie yellow glow to the strange manhunt. We could see the flash of the sailor's white undershirt after he'd got beyond the circle of the light.

"Christ, he's making for the ladder."

We all looked over the side and watched him slide down that long ladder, with the Filipinos almost stepping on his head. When he got to the dock, it looked as if he were trying to make for the protection of the darkened streets beyond the waterfront, but his pursuers were too close, and he turned and ran along the next pier to the ship docked alongside us — the one he'd said he had worked that had fed him lousy. We'd seen him move fast on our ship, but nothing compared to this.

Our Chief Engineer — the only officer aboard, a big soft man with a tremendous sagging stomach — had joined us. He lifted his big belly and rested it on the rail, and then blew clouds of smoke from the cigar he held clenched in his teeth. He blared, "What the hell's going on?"

One Filipino hadn't joined the chase. It was the Captain's messboy. "Dat's a crook — he steal gold watch from Filipino boy on dat ship, den he come aboard here."

We got the whole story later that night, but right now the sailor was almost up the long ladder of the other ship with the gang after him stringing along below. Just as he made the last few feet of the ladder, the Mate aboard that ship, who had quietly watched the progress of the chase, put his leg over the top rung of the ladder, and as the sailor reached his foot, the Mate kicked at his face.

"Get off this ship, ya bastard. You don't belong on here."

By now the Filipinos had reached their quarry and were clawing at him. His shirt had been ripped from his back and they were tearing at his dungarees.

"Jesus, lemme come on, Mate. They'll kill me. . "

The Mate calmly sat there, kicking at him as he repeated, "Get down, ya bastard. Get off this ship. You don't belong here."

Our engineer, who had been growling and puffing up a cloud of cigar smoke, let out a blast.

"Let him on — ya goddam sonovabitch. You ain't no white man.

The Mate kicked away.

"He can't come on this ship. He's your man. Come and get him."

I could well imagine old One Ton, our Chief Engineer, climbing up that ladder through that tangle of wiry little Filipinos to rescue the sailor — he never would have made it, even if he had only his own big sagging gut to carry. It would have bounced him off the hull before he climbed ten feet.

Somehow the Mate relented, and it looked as if some armistice were being arranged on the ladder. The Mate swung out and down, climbing over the sailor, and preceded him down the ladder, acting as a buffer between him and the bloodthirsty Filipinos. They all disappeared into the darkness of the street at the end of the docks and before they returned to our ship the Captain's messboy told us the rest of the story.

This sailor had worked aboard that ship before he joined us. About three o'clock that morning the Filipino boy aboard that ship had been awakened. An arm had reached across him as he lay in his bunk and grabbed the gold watch he had hung there. He had tumbled out and chased the thief along the deck but the thief had got to the ladder before he could be stopped. The boy couldn't chase after him — he was dressed only in his underdrawers. He got one glimpse of the thief's face as he disappeared down the ladder. It was our fancy sailor.

At breakfast, the sailor hadn't shown up. The Mate, when the boy questioned him, said the sailor had asked for his money, collected his duffle, and quit the ship. The boy had recognized him from a distance this noon in the group along our ship's rail. After his supper dishes were washed up, he had come over and told our mess crew.

Philip, the Captain's messboy, said, "The boy says you got teef aboard dis ship. I says who. He says, come on I'll pick him out."

Then they had made the tour of the poopdeck, and the thief had been marked. Later they had caught him as he had been quietly slipping over the side.

About the time Philip had filled in the details of the story, the bloody face of the fancy sailor came up over the rail and, after him, a puffing bluecoat, then the line of Filipinos. The cop led him back to the fo'castle. When he unlocked his locker, the contents were emptied out on the hatch under the light. Pawing around his papers, the cop picked out a pawnticket for a gold watch with that day's date on it. Then he looked over his other stuff and held up a brown suit of clothes. "This yours?" he asked.

The sailor mumbled through his bruised mouth. "Yeah."

The cop held the pants of the brown suit to the sailor's waist. The legs hung straight down and then fell in a neat ripple of folds on the deck. It was evident the suit belonged to someone about a foot taller than this stocky crook. The big Russian thrust himself forward. "Hey, goddam, dat suits are mine."

"All right, you'll get 'em back," said the cop. "Come on, you, pick up that stuff and take it down to the station."

They trooped off with the Filipino boy going along to make a complaint.

We lit up some fresh cigarettes.

"Christ, can you beat that?" came from the Phi Beta Kappa's brother. "A fancy movin'-pi'ture sailor!"

For a moment there was silence, and then as Flip began to tell the story all over again we heard a roar from the Chief Engineer.

We gathered around him and the Chef (also a Filipino), who was wearing a stained white apron with an immense meat cleaver clutched in his fist, and protesting the cleaver meant absolutely nothing. He'd been working in his galley (at ten o'clock at night?) and he'd heard the commotion on the deck. He hadn't grabbed it to join the chase.

The Engineer snorted something, blew a blast of cigar smoke, and turned and waddled back to his cabin. "Goddam savages. They ain't white men."

We all went back to the fo'castle.

I lay a long time in my bunk thinking over this first night aboard the S.S. Hermanita: the talk of shipwreck. . the hunt for the crook — that Chef looked pretty mean with that cleaver in his hand; I'll bet he resented that final crack the Engineer had made. That was no way to develop harmony among mankind, equality of the races and all that. What if the Chef had a vengeful nature? The thought of amorous worms in the lumpy porridge didn't bother me so much as the question whether fine ground glass in oatmeal is as easily perceptible. At least you can see the worms.

4. Rots!

EVERYONE SIPPED HIS COFFEE GINGERLY NEXT MORNING, our messboy lifted his eyebrows quizzically as he gathered the plates of lumpy oatmeal most of us had sidestepped, and his eyes brightened as he thought of a joke.

"Wotsa matta — sea slick?"

And he went off to the galley cackling quietly over the joke he'd made.

The events of the night before hadn't scared the fat Sailing Man. With his face screwed up as if he were thinking deeply and working hard at it, he gobbled, gulped, and crammed down all the food set in front of him and everything else within reach of either arm.

We went back to work, and for the next few days it was a monotonous repetition of all the work we'd already done. Some new men had joined the crew — more of the same type we already had. Then after a few days the work developed another pattern.

Al told me he'd heard the Mate and Engineer talking: that afternoon we were going to Bayonne and start loading.

"And damn glad of it," he said. "I'm getting sick of working alongside these old stumble-bums."

"You're gonna work a lot longer with this bunch," it seemed to me.

"With this bunch? Naw. This gang of dock rats, they won't ship out. They just do port work when they're hungry and to get a couple of bucks to buy the smoke, that raw alcohol they swill. They couldn't take a ship down to Coney Island and nobody'd sign them. You'll be seeing the sailors that'll sign on after we're all loaded and ready to ship out. They never do port work — especially in the home port. It's slobs like these and like you and me that do it, but the sailors sign on. They know how to take a ship where it's going."

Late that afternoon the East River was let into our drydock. A tug pulled us out in the stream and sent us on our way. At about sunset we tied up alongside a big warehouse in Bayonne.

I say we set sail and we tied up. Not that I made any contribution — seems I never caught a line thrown at me, never knew what to do with it if anyone handed it to me, and in general was a useless lump of cargo — to the disgust of the howling Swede Mate and most of the crew. But I was willing.

The big Russian came along the deck, loaded down with large circular sheets of galvanized iron.

"Come on, kid, give a hand."

I jumped, delighted that I'd been picked to help with this special job, whatever it was, and I chased after him quick.

"What you got there?" I asked.

"R-r-ot gu-ard."

"Huh?"

"Yah, r-rot gu-ard. They keep rot off ship."

I couldn't figure out how these huge circular sheets of metal could possibly save the ship from decay or rot, so I shut up. It might be just another seamen's superstition — like not shipping women aboard whalers or something.

The big Russian tied them on like collars around the big hawsers that held our ship to the niggerheads on the pier. When he had tied the last of these (my help consisted of reaching him pieces of rope yarn as he leaned over the rail and tied them in place), he straightened up and surveyed his handicraft with a grin.

"Now watch dock rot drop off. All dock rot — them, too," and he nodded his head toward the frowzy bunch of old port workers.

"R-rot" had been his Russianized version of "rat," and he was as sure as Al had been that the old dock rats would quit the ship before we sailed.

We worked late that night. The Phi Beta Kappa's brother and the Fat Man protested under their breath with every step they took.

"Wait'll the Union hears about this. . What d'hell they think we are — slaves or sometin'?"

"We put in our eight-hour day. . "

"What if the longshoremen starts a half-hour later tomorrow. .?"

They grumbled, but they worked, and we all turned in without any talk.

As we slowly pulled on our clothes the next morning, a little man wearing a ship's officer's cap appeared at the fo'castle door and in a thin high-pitched voice said:

"All right, men, turn to — come on, turn to."

Then he wheeled and walked out on deck as if he expected us to follow him like a herd of sheep after a Judas goat.

We sat there looking after him — some of us with our pants half up, others staring through the necks of the grimy shirts they were pulling on over their sleep-numbed heads.

The Fat Man bellowed; he was hurt and indignant.

"What d'hell is dis? We ain't had no br'kfust yet."

The little man in the cap turned and piped, "All right, get it — and then come back aft."

"Who's the little guy?" I asked Al as we climbed up to the messdeck.

"Must be the Bos'n's Mate. Heard he's coming on this morning. Looks tough."

"That little fella tough?"

"I've seen 'em like that before — watch 'im. He's tough."

I guessed all the men recognized that quality in the Bos'n. We ate quickly, and nobody stalled after breakfast. As we came back to where we'd left the little Bos'n, we found him flipping hatch covers by himself with the agility of a cat, neatly turning them one on the other and then sliding them down the deck— no mean feat that.

Watching him as we came along, we realized this little man, with his high, sharp cheekbones, his three-cornered eyes set a little aslant in his head, his precise feline movement, was no ordinary sonovabitch — and no one ever called him that. He might have been mothered by a cat — maybe a puma or one of the other slender sinewy members of the family Felidae. He looked like a pale, tawny cat, moved like one, and, as I remember his voice — his high-pitched, yowling voice — he sounded like one. He seldom smiled; when he did, his skin tightened away from sharp, white teeth in a three-cornered grin!

And did he drive us! As I think of it even now, my back creaks — but the crew took it. He didn't stand back and bark his orders but he'd grab hold, and with his face an expressionless blank, say, "Let's turn this, fellers."

As hard as we worked, he was always ahead of us and working harder. The crew had resented the Mate standing with his hands on his hips or astride the upper deck barking orders and driving us on. But nobody felt like stalling when the little guy grabbed something twice as big as himself and weighing three times as much and said quietly; "Now let's turn this."

Those hatch covers he'd been working on alone as we came down from breakfast were a two-man job. Every morning since I came aboard that old tub our first task had been uncovering the hatches. The hatch was covered in sections by heavy, unmanageable planks about eight feet long, two feet wide, and darn near six inches thick, and they weighed a ton, or so it seemed to me. They were laid out in two rows across the hatch, a center beam catching them over the hatch proper.

Somehow or other I'd always be stuck with the end at the crossbeam. The man on the deck end of the hatch cover had something to cling to to give him purchase, but on the hatch itself there was no succor. I'd grab my end and lift and uncover my own ruin every morning — the deep black pit of the hold. If my partner at the other end of the cover were to yank it just a little, I'd be pulled off balance and be bounced ignominiously into that hell hole. I was always polite at my end as I'd sing out with a cheerful lilt to my voice:

"O.K., feller — now easy goes it. Heave—" The hatches were uncovered every morning to air the empty hold, and covered each night to keep the rain out, I imagine. Every evening as we'd cover them I always enjoyed helping pull the big tarpaulin like an immense canvas tablecloth over the hatch. There was something nice about it — it was like handling a big sail. I know the fat Sailing Man enjoyed it, too, for he'd mumble something like "Le's reef her, boys" and under his breath begin a chanty—"As I was a-rollin" or "Whiskey made me go to sea…

The Phi Beta Kappa's brother would discourage him with an unsympathetic bird.

"Save yer breath. Fatso, and pull. . "

For the next few days longshoremen loaded case oil and a miscellaneous assortment of machinery in our holds.

The Captain came aboard and watched us work from the bridge. I'd passed him a number of times while working with the crew. He never gave me any sign of recognition. Al and Mush looked askance at me, since I'd told them what pals he and I used to be.

Al and the Russian were right about the sailors coming on. New men were joining every day. New men, young guys — unquestionably these were sailors. They came aboard usually with a large canvas roll of duffle slung over one shoulder, balancing this weight with a battered, bulging suitcase. There was a professionalism to them — the way their eye took in the ship and you.

There was a cheerful momentum to the work. Rumor had it we'd be loaded in a day or two; then we'd be signed on and ship out. I worked harder, particularly when I felt the Mate's eye on me. I wanted to sign on — the sailors had said that out at sea the work was easier.

The work on deck seemed clear and clean-cut in spite of the confusion of the unloading. A couple of older men came aboard, too — one, a hard old guy with a face that had been smashed up. He looked like that Mike McTeague, the prizefighter. The other was a wiry, rangy old man with a wild and glittering eye.

One of those last evenings I was dressing to go ashore and pay my folks a last visit. Al was getting into a fancy pair of white pants to call on some people he knew in Long Island. As we dressed, the old man with the glittering eye came into the fo'castle and opened his locker. He swung the door open and turned to us.

"Ya want to see somethin'?"

I looked up from tying my shoelace.

"See that?" and he held up an old heavy tweed vest. "Ya know how many pockets she got? Twenty of them." Then he probed about indicating twenty small pockets in the vest — in the lining and along the seams. He picked up a pair of shoes from the bottom of his locker.

"Look at this—" and with a shrewd grin he unscrewed the heel of one of the shoes revealing a little empty boxlike hollow.

"And this—" and it seemed that all his clothes, shoes, hats, contained secret empty pockets and carefully hidden compartments. He took two large watches from his pockets and undid the faces of them. They were empty, too — no works.

''When I git down to the Argentine, Til bring back a fortune." And he locked up his stuff, gave us a wink, and strutted out of the fo'castle whistling.

The big Russian who had come in during the display of the old guy's thousand-pocket trousseau grunted.

"Damn fool — dopes. He tinks he's wise guy — just a dopes."

"Seems like he knows something."

"Knows nyoting. Just a dopes smoogler."

My last visit over, I got back to the ship some time after one. The fo'castle was dark, lit only by a small bulb in the passageway. It was difficult to get to sleep. Some of those men snored with a sound like water rushing into a long pipeline. It must have been about two when Al came into the fo'castle, quietly undressed, folded his precious white pants away, and climbed into his bunk on the opposite side. He hadn't been there very long when someone else lurched into the fo'castle door. In the dim light I recognized the old guy with the battered face. Drunk and mumbling to himself, he stumbled about the fo'castle a bit, then wove his way to Al's bunk. There he steadied himself by grasping the iron rail that ran along the bunk with one hand and with the other he gently smoothed and patted Al's fine young arm with his gnarled old hand. He mumbled endearments.

I guess Al pretended he was already asleep.

The old guy began to work his arm around Al's shoulders and back. Suddenly Al, as if he were tossing in his sleep, whirled around, pinning the old drunk's upper arm between his strong shoulder and the iron railing with a bone-smashing crash.

The old guy let out a pain-racked yelp and shoved himself free. Then, rubbing his bruised arm, which seemed to hang limply, he got out on deck fast. I could see Al's head pop out of his bunk as he watched him go.

"Goddam old wolf," he muttered, and quietly turned over and went to sleep.

That old guy never showed up again. Al kidded about it the next morning, and somebody cracked to me:

"Guess he was looking for you, fat boy — couldn't find you in the dark."

5. Sailors Without Watches

FINALLY, AFTER TWO IMMENSE BOILERS HAD BEEN DERRICKED up on deck and lashed down, we were loaded down and ready to sail.

There was an air of tense expectancy as the men stood around on the afterdeck. The engine crew had already been called up to the officers' mess to sign articles. I heard some murmurs of admiration for the Captain's judgment. He had weeded out the sluggards, drunks, dopes, and queers from the black gang— and they looked almost clean as they sat out on the hatch, happy and relieved the ordeal was over for them. They were contracted to be fed and housed for four months of their lives at least, and they'd be paid for that… all right, they'd work a little.

The deckhands were nervous. Most of the men who had just come aboard felt sure of themselves, but they, too, twitched and smoked their cigarettes quickly. The Captain's sharp eye might pick their flaws and refuse to sign them on as he had the black-thatched fireman and a couple of others — he'd slipped up only on Pat, the oiler. That old guy dyed his hair to look younger and he tanked up in every port we struck and stayed that way until we shipped out again.

The Captain weeded out the deck crew. The dope smuggler (to his complete amazement) and all the old port workers went. The Phi Beta Kappa's brother, using his favorite adjective, told the Bos'n what he thought of the ship, its Captain, and personnel, packed his duffle, gave us the bird, and disappeared down the gangplank.

Mush and I were the last ones called.

Captain Brandt gave me the first sign of recognition since he'd come aboard. He was sitting behind a table with the Swede Mate, and as Mush and I came in he gave us a wide, fatherly smile.

"These look like fine young men. Eh, Mister?"

"Yes, sir," the two-faced Swede nodded his agreement.

"Work good?"

My heart was in my mouth as that damn Swede rubbed his chin, eyed me, then slowly said, "We-ll, I'll say yes."

"Very well — sign here, son." The Old Man's smile was broader. He'd been making jokes, but then he went on, seriously:

"An' I don't want you mixing with that scum back aft in the fo'castle. Mister Mate, haven't we a cabin up for'ard where we can bunk these boys? They look like good, clean young fellers. What about that small one alongside the paint locker? What's in that?"

"We-ll — we've got some tarpaulin stored there. I thought we might use it for a brig."

"We'll need no brig aboard this ship. Mister Mate," snapped the Old Man. "See that the boys bunk in that cabin."

We climbed down — well, that sounded pretty good. A cabin of our own — I could draw, do some painting maybe. Mush wasn't so cheerful.

"Wonder what the gang back aft are gonna say."

They didn't say much. The Bos'n had them spinning the hatch covers down so fast that nobody said anything. We were sailing that evening, and no kidding, Al told us.

In the middle of the afternoon we hoisted anchor and steamed out.

The Bos'n called us together on the afterdeck to set the watch. It was like choosing up sides in a sandlot baseball game and, since when we were kids they never picked me, I wasn't expecting anything now.

We lined up, some smirking self-consciously while the Swede First Mate, the red-headed Second, and the young Third looked us over carefully.

The Swede had first choice. There were only ten men to choose from. The big Russian had maneuvered himself into a soft spot: he'd been appointed ship's carpenter, and on a shaggy, tramp steamer which was 99.5 per cent metal, that was a cushy job — so he was taken care of. After carefully studying the men — he didn't even look at me — the Swede picked a new man whom I'd seen for the first time just before we signed on. A big fellow as big as the Russian and broader in the shoulders — a guy named Joe. He was a handsome hulk with a curious gurgling voice — a nice guy, always grinning. He took a hitch in his belt, rolled out of the line, and with a swagger went down the deck toward the fo'castle.

Then the Swede asked a few abrupt questions from a long slim boy who gave a satisfactory response in a deep, Southern drawl, and the Mate O.K.'d him, too, for his watch. That was Slim, the Georgia Boy, I found out later. He stepped out, his face split in a big, pleasant smile, and with the slightest suggestion of a shuffling dance followed the big fellow down the deck. As I looked after them Al said in a low voice:

"Lucky stiffs — that's an easy watch. Four to eight in the morning, four to eight in the evening. Damn little chippiii' decks for them, damn little Soogie Moogie—"

"What's Soogie Moogie?"

"Shut up. Here comes the Second." And Al straightened up and tried to look good.

The red-headed Second Mate was looking Al up and down as if he were a horse he contemplated buying; then his eye hopped over me. He spoke a word or two to the fat Sailing Man, who growled his reply as if he didn't care if he were picked or not. The Second passed him up and crooked his finger at a cockeyed guy, another newcomer, further down the line. This guy went down the deck looking back over his shoulder with a hilarious black-toothed but silent laugh, and waited for the other man the Second Mate picked for his watch. He was a husky young blond Polack from Baltimore. With a shy, happy smirk he stepped out and strode after Cockeyes. He had a peculiar pigeon-toed walk, as if he gripped the deck with every step and pushed himself forward.

The line was thinned out now, and the young Third Mate seemed a bit embarrassed as he looked us over. The fat Sailing Man spat on the deck, almost hitting the young Mate's shoe. Seems he hadn't much respect for the Third, who I'd been told had just passed his examination; this was his first trip as a Ship's Officer. The Third looked up at the Fat Man from under the brim of his cap and passed him; then he spoke quietly to a stocky, white-haired, pink-eyed old man. He picked him and a pale ripply muscled fellow with a close-cropped platinum bullet-head.

Now, the three watches were set.

The little Bos'n's Mate faced the fat Sailing Man, Al, Mush, and me and said, quietly:

"Well, that's that. You guys are day men. Let's go."

And he led us off through the shelterdeck to tackle some stuff up forward.

"What gives?" I asked Al.

He said, "Hell, this isn't gonna be fun. This is the first ship that I been on that I haven't been put on a watch."

"Well, it looks all right to me."

"What do you mean all right? This little Bos'n will work the ass off you. There won't be any turns at the wheel — no leaning up in the prow and watching the seagulls and porpoises and flying fish. Don't you kid yourself, feller—"

"But what we gonna do?" I asked. "These guys on watch steer the ship, while the others stand look-out up in the front— I mean the prow. The black gang works the engines; the mess feeds us — looks pretty good. What we gonna do—?"

I had a rosy vision of stretching out on the hatch in the hot sun, somewhat in the fashion of those documentary water colors of Winslow Homer's I'd seen around. The hatch was mighty inviting.

Al looked at me blank. "What are we going to do—?"

The Fat Man, who was ambling along in back of us, stumbled on my heels in the dark shelter deck. He growled.

"Pick 'em up — goddam know nothin's — ain't a sailing man among them. I'll be goddamned if I wanna serve on any of their goddam watches!"

I guess he was hurt — he hadn't been picked.

The Bos'n called to us to hurry up. The ship was strangely quiet. Mush worried, "What's the matter? Something wrong? The engine's stopped."

The Fat Man snorted in disgust, the Bos'n smiled, and Al said in a low voice:

"Y' dummy, we're dropping pilot. There's Sandy Hook and the last time you see land for four weeks. Take a good look."

Mush and I looked at each other nervously — I swallowed. There wasn't much chance to linger on this farewell to my native land stuff. We were busy pulling up the ladder the pilot had used to let him down to the little tug that now was taking him back to the security of My America.

We pulled up the ladder — the Bos'n and Al did; the Fat Man, Mush, and I weren't doing much. We seemed to get in each other's way. With the ladder finally lashed down, Mush and I looked back at the rim of land outlined in the setting sun.

"Looks pretty, don't it?" Mush said with a bit of a tremble in his voice.

"Pretty! It's beautiful. Bet it's the most beautiful land in the world." My voice sounded shrill and strange to my ears.

"Look, you guys," Al broke in from the messdeck. (How'd he get up there? The Bos'n and the Fat Man were gone. I guess Mush and I had been leaning on that rail longer than we figured.) "Aren't you gonna wash up before you eat? Come on."

After a silent supper we went back to the fo'castle and sat around a while. The sun had gone down and there was a bit of chill in the air and the calm sea looked lonesome. Some of the men had gone to sleep. They pulled the little canvas curtains suspended along their bunks to shield them from the dim electric light.

We talked quietly as we sat on the edge of a long bench. Al told us that pilots made a lot of money steering ships in and out of the harbor — twenty-five dollars a day or some fantastic sum like that.

A voice from behind one of the curtains mumbled, "Why d'hell don't you guys shut up and let me sleep."

It was that bullet-headed A.B. on the twelve-to-four watch, the Third Mate's watch.

We were reluctant to leave the fo'castle for the isolated splendor of our own cabin up forward. It seemed that much farther away from home, but Al said he was turning in, too, so Mush and I carefully picked our way to the dreary, lonesome cabin. We tossed a penny — I got the upper berth, undressed, doused the light, and lay there, talking. Suddenly there was a shattering crash.

"Gosh! What's that?" said Mush.

"Dunno. We might have brushed a bit of debris, or maybe some flotsam. It couldn't have been jetsam — that's soft stuff."

Again we heard a deafening clatter, soon another, and then another. I was scared. Visions of shipwreck filtered through my mind. How do you get into a life jacket? I should have asked somebody.

Then a roaring smash that almost threw us out of our bunks. That decided it. We tumbled out and, trembling, got into our dungarees and out on deck quick.

The night was still and calm. There was a dim light up in the wheelhouse. We saw the Second Mate silhouetted against the star-sprinkled sky out on the open bridgedeck.

"We must have hit something that ripped the bottom out of us," I ventured.

A voice from the prow said, "What you kids talking about?"

It was the cockeyed guy standing look-out up there.

"Something happened — we must have hit something. Bet we got a hole in her as big as a barn door," Mush whispered cautiously. We didn't want to start a panic.

"What?" Cockeye climbed down quickly and stumbled into the passage that led to our cabin. We all stood still in the darkness for a moment. Then that ripping crash was heard again.

"There it is — I bet we're awash." (I wasn't sure what that meant, but I thought it would do.)

Cockeye snarled his disgust.

"Listen, you kids, you go to sleep. That noise is water slapping up against the hull. And that other noise is some loose paint buckets stored up here."

"Well, we just wanted to do what we could in case—"

"Watsa matter with you guys? What y'noivous about? Didn'cha ever loin to swim?"

"Sure. ."

"So what you worried about? We're only three miles away from land."

"Three miles away. .?"

"Yeh, just three miles." Then he pointed. "Straight down."

He haw-haw'd and hustled back to the prow to look out for real danger. We went back to our cabin and undressed in the darkness.

In spite of the crashing of the cans, the cockeyed guy's assurance had dissipated Mush's fears, and soon he snored. It wasn't so easy for me to get to sleep.

Out on deck the S.S. Hermanita had seemed like a pretty flimsy bit of dry security. Her deck felt thin and frail under my feet, as if those rusty plates floated and buckled directly on the immensity of the black ocean, as if there were no hold underneath. The tremendous vaulting heavens did nothing to help; their scale suggested the futility of individual prayer.

Vaguely, I recall, I consoled myself with the thought — we had a Minion. According to Hebraic law, a formal petition of prayer to the Lord must be made by at least ten men met together for that purpose. That is called a Minion. He will listen to no less on important issues.

Our deck crew, this vigilant cockeyed guy up on the prow, the blond Polack from Baltimore, the old man with the pink eyelids, the ripply-muscled bullet-headed fellow, the slim Georgia Boy, the big guy named Joe, the fat Sailing Man, Al, Mush, and I — we already made up a Minion. The little Bos'n and that big Russian could act as alternates. I'd explain the Hebraic law to them quickly if we were shipwrecked and the Captain said, "All is lost — let us pray. . "

Then I, too, must have fallen asleep.

6. Soogie Moogie

WAKING UP IN A SHIP AT SEA IS LIKE AWAKENING in a cabin in a mountain forest. There's the fresh, clear air, and the flickering of the reflection from the water on the overhead recalls the play of light through the leaves of a tree. It seems the steady-throb of the engines doesn't stir the peaceful quiet any more than the rustling of the leaves or the wood noises you hear in the mountains.

It had been pleasant to hear the man on watch bang away at the ship's bell on the deck overhead through the night.

I took a deep breath, stretched, and looked out the porthole— a nice clean bright day. Then I looked down to Mush's bunk.

"Morning, Mush. How'd you sleep?"

His head appeared slowly. He was a faint, yellowish-green color, and his bulgy eyes rolled up at me like two cold blue hard-boiled eggs. The blubbery mouth (for which he was named Mushmouth) sagged loose and wet. He looked up a moment and then groaned.

Mush was seasick!

And looking down at him, I felt strangely squeamish in the pit of my stomach. I quickly averted my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to forget those boiled-egg eyes. When my stomach settled, I carefully climbed down, pulled on my dungarees (keeping my eyes from him), and got out on deck.

I went around the bulkhead and shouted in at him through the porthole that faced the deck.

"Hey, Mush, you better get dressed and come get breakfast."

He just groaned — something like I'm gonna die or something. Anyway, there was death in it. Mush stayed in his bunk.

I didn't have time to shave. From the looks of things we were late again. In the mess the Bos'n said, "The man on watch will have to wake you guys. We turn to at eight — we day men."

I mumbled I was very sorry, explained about Mush, and sat down to breakfast.

Flip slapped a plate down in front of me. "Ste'k," he said.

It sure was — a leathery dark strip of something glittering with a varnish of grease. Now I've always had a cosmopolitan tolerance for breakfast menus. In fact, I've experimented — in the Automat, Coffeepots, one-armed cafeterias, and such restaurants as I patronize in New York — with any new arrangements I've heard or read of concerning the varied food rites practiced in breaking the long night fast in preparation for the new day.

I've tried the New England idea — cold apple pie and leftover pork and beans; the French croissant dunked in a lukewarm bowl of cafe au lait; the Southern Negro stunt of a couple of dewy ripe tomatoes fresh from the field; the English grilled kippers or a bloater that is not so far removed from my Galician aunt's bit of lox or a fragment of gefuelte; the Italian cup of bitter black coffee with a shot of grappa; the Dutch cold cuts and cheese on rye with your morning cocoa; the Russian nibble of herring and a slug of vodka or is it a dab of kashe; and our own all-American griddle cakes, waffles, sausages, cold sawdust cereals (with all the variations advertised on the package), and the grilled or fried slices of pig — but until then never had I eaten steak for breakfast or had it offered me.

I weakly asked, "Flip, can't I have something else?"

Flip's eyes widened. "What's matta? Dat's good ste'k."

"It's good — but I feel a little funny."

"Maybe. I look in galley. Maybe ketch. . " Then his face lit up in a hopeful grin. "You want maybe two nice, col' har'-boil eggs?"

I thought of Mush's eyes, gulped down some hot coffee, mumbled no thanks, and went to work.

The Bos'n, Al, and the Fat Man were doing something with the forward winch. As I climbed over the hatch to join them, the Bos'n turned and asked:

"Kid, how you with a shovel?"

"Shovel? Pretty good, I guess. Used to have a lot of snow up state — got a lot of practice. Once worked as a fireman in an apartment house."

I didn't think to add I was fired after I'd shoveled coal for half a day with the handle of the thing twisting in my hand so I threw more coal into the ashpit below the furnace than I got on the grate.

"Good enough. Take this shovel and shovel that stuff piled up back aft overside." He grinned as he handed it to me.

That "stuff" was a mountain of garbage piled high on the afterdeck. I guess big ships pay to have their garbage picked up by the garbage scows, but little tubs like this S.S. Hermanita can't afford that luxury, and since you're not permitted to dump your garbage in the New York harbor, the stuff was piled up high on deck and shoveled off when the ships got out at sea. I'd noticed our pile getting higher and higher until it reached the messdeck, and made its presence felt even up on the bridge. I had some vague thought they might be drying it out to sell as fertilizer.

I shouldered my shovel and went back and got to work. All morning I shoveled. But the elements were against me. The wind kept blowing the stuff back at me and back on deck. A few A.B.'s and some of the black gang sat on the hatch and watched my Herculean struggle and cracked wise.

"Use your teeth, kid."

"Push it over."

And one cackling bon mot from old Pat, the oiler who had joined my audience, sent them rolling.

"That's sure shoveling it 'ginst the tide. Hey, boy?"

About noon I finished and went forward to our cabin to pick up some cigarettes and console Mush. He was still abed, his face to the bulkhead.

"How you doin', Mush?" I greeted him cheerily.

"Feel a little better, I guess. Guess I'll get out."

Then he turned his pale face to me.

"Phew! Jeezes, you stink. 0-o-o-h! I feel sick." His eyes rolled a hurt, accusing glance at me as he retched horribly and turned back to the bulkhead with a groan.

It wasn't my fault. I was just trying to cheer him up.

For the next three or four days Mush, Al, the Fat Man, and I worked stowing gear, picking up odds and ends all over the ship. Al was right about the Bos'n. He worked us ragged. The A.B. on watch would join us for a short spell, but the A.B.'s were always favored. They mustn't get too dirty with the greasy cables or any of that stuff since they'd have to take their turn at the wheel — and the wheelhouse and bridge were kept shining bright and clean and must not be messed up with deck filth.

So every morning we four would climb to the Captain's deck with long-handled brooms, the kind the street cleaners use, and a couple of buckets of sand. We'd leave our shoes on the deck below, not that the old Turk, Captain Brandt, was a Mohammedan. That was so we'd not drag any filth up on his wooden deck. We were there to wash it down, not dirty it up. The Bos'n would join us, wearing huge rubber hip boots and dragging a long black water hose attached somewhere to a hydrant on the deck below.

Our job was a simple one and pleasant. We'd roll our dungarees above our knees. Did you know that's why sailors' dungarees and trousers are bell-bottomed — to facilitate rolling? A sophisticated young lady had argued a theory (in my studio some time ago) why sailors' trousers were so snug around the middle — which you may or mayn't dispute. She contended that, since sailors spend so short a time in each port to facilitate amorous conquests and since they have little time to dilly-dally with a prolonged courtship, in the interests of science — to propagate the race of the courageous men of the sea— their trousers were designed snugly for the same reason gentlemen wore padded, embroidered codpieces in the good old days. And since I wear dungarees as I work in my studio and she wore rather thick-lensed glasses and was a complete stranger, I switched the conversation to a more spiritual level — I did not dispute her argument.

Then to return to our morning's schedule. We'd roll our dungarees. The Bos'n would straddle the big black hose, looking more like a cat than ever — a veritable Puss-in-Boots with the hose tailing out behind him. He'd turn the nozzle and shoot a stream of water down the deck. We would throw a few hand-fuls of sand, and then we'd scrub away. I recall, too, that sometimes we'd use a brick-shaped rock attached to a long-handled stick — holystoning the deck — but we couldn't have used it much since I don't remember much about it.

Just about the time we'd finished the Captain's deck — and it looked nice and damp and clean — the Old Man himself would climb up, shuffle across our nice clean job in his old slippers, open the shuttered door of his cabin, and slam it shut without saying a word. No "Good morning, gentlemen" — nothing!

We always met him coming up and only once saw him going down, but that once cleared up a minor mystery which had concerned me for many days.

Captain Brandt's costume on clear sunny days (and there were many of them brittle and clear) never varied. He wore those old leather slippers on his brown bare feet, a clean, white, freshly starched Ship's Officer's suit that might have fit a long time ago. His jacket was always flapping open, showing his white undershirt, his scrawny neck, and his top trouser button opened over his potbelly. Pushed back on his head was a white linen yachting cap, the top of it worn through, exposing his sunburned old pate.

The morning we met the Captain coming down we started the day Soogie-Moogie-ing the outer bulkheads of his cabin— and I learned the meaning of that cabalistic phrase.

Soogie Moogie means simply washing down the white paint work with huge sponges dipped in buckets of water afloat with strong washing soda. Here's how it's done. For some strange and unexplained reason the yacht-polishing Swede Mate would meet in secret conference with our little Bos'n's Mate and brief him on what section of the ship he wanted us to tackle with our sponges, buckets, and hose. That decided, we'd march up to the prow where Chips (the big Russian who gold-bricked the ship's carpenter's job) kept the stores — with two buckets to each man. With the air of a high priest Chips would scoop a measure of powerful washing-soda powder out of a big barrel and drop it into one of our buckets. Then we'd troop back to the bathroom, a cement-paved large cabin that was a combination shower, lavatory, urinal, and laundry back aft next to the deck crew's fo'castle, where we'd fill both our buckets from the fresh-water faucet. There was a thin loose pipe hanging in the bathroom from which live steam was on tap; we'd heat our buckets with it and then we'd be all set to work.

Each of us would swing our sponge, laden with the soapy soda water (Soogie), over a section of white paint work. That powerful stuff would eat the black grease off fast — and take the skin of your hand, too. And if it splashed in your eye, get fitted for a black patch. Then quickly you followed up with your fresh-water sponge — I guess that was Moogie. Then somebody hosed that section, and the deck around, too, so the soda wouldn't eat its way down to the engine room.

There you have it. Soogie Moogie.

I still don't know why we did it, since the paint work would never stay clean more than a day. That old oil burner dropped soot on everything, and a black film would soon settle over our work.

Then the last hour of every morning would be devoted to washing down the fo'castle and the passageways back aft. That was a pleasant diversion and the only time we day men could vent our spleen on the A.B.'s.

We came into the fo'castle clattering and banging our buckets and brooms as loud as we could. The A.B.'s on the First Mate's watch, big Joe and Slim the Georgia Boy, would usually be sleeping with their curtains drawn. So would the bullet-head on the Third Mate's watch. When we'd wake him he'd growl senselessly. He had to get up soon anyway, for he had to turn to at noon. No use writing eight bells — that bell time system confuses me as much as it would you. I was always a little sorry when we wakened the stocky white-haired sailor with the pink eyelids who was on the Third Mate's watch, too. He was a gentle, soft-spoken old fellow.

Everybody up, we'd spray lye on everything — benches, deck, and bulkhead — hose it down, and then work away with those long-handled street-cleaner's brooms with such gusto that as we left the fo'castle scrubbed down and dripping wet but clean-smelling, I always felt if any germs had survived the assault, they rated a long life.

That was usually the morning's work, and we ate a well-deserved lunch. Hard work seemed to make the food taste better, or else my sense of taste had become corrupt by daily exposure to that fare.

Afternoons, we'd chip decks.

Now, there's a lousy job. Soogie Moogie has its pleasant aspects, a cooling pastime in the heat of the day and on this side of the equator — though splashing around in the wet when it got cold below Brazil was bitter and nasty. Chipping decks was a nasty business, hot or cold.

The Bos'n would send me forward to Chip's store to get the instruments of torture: chipping hammers — a vicious, narrow little hammer with ends like a small pickax — and the wire scrubbing brushes.

I'd always find big Chips stretched out taking a siesta on a couple of rolled tarpaulin, with his hard straw hat over his face to keep out the light. The first time I was sent up there I woke him:

"Hey, Chips, don't you ever work?"

He shoved his hat back, opened one eye, and grunted, "Huh? Verk? What t'hell ya tank I go to sea for? Verk? Naw, vacation."

Since the big fellow was an accredited A.B. with his Union dues paid up and good discharge papers, he could always get a ship. Obviously his life was one to be envied — one continuous vacation.

He slowly unfolded his long arm from behind his head, reached across the cabin to gather up the hammers and brushes, loaded me up, and said, "Good-by." Then, shoving his hat down over his face, he went back to sleep.

I never woke him again. I just gathered the hammers and brushes quietly and let him sleep.

We'd get down on our hands and knees armed with one of those hammers and attack the rust blisters that coated the old metal deck and chip away the rust on its pock-marked plates. Then with the stiff wire scrubbing brushes we'd scrub the area we'd chipped until we'd rid it of all the rust that had gathered in its pocked surface. After we swept it down we'd get a large bucket of rancid fish oil and each of us would dunk a hand swab into the fish-oil bucket and paint the deck with this odoriferous goo.

Crawling around all afternoon on a hot metal deck was hard on the knees — if I remember correctly, in one of the more excruciating Oriental tortures the victim kneels on a lumpy hot metal plate, with drops of water hitting him one by one between the eyes while a wingless fly crawls on a bit of exposed anatomy and while some other part of him is smeared with some sweet liquid and a herd of vicious red ants… That seems a little confusing and I might have mixed up a few recipes, but it does feel like chipping decks.

Though chipping has one quality — if you'd call it that. It awakens and stirs thoughts, and you find yourself reviewing all you ever learned about anatomical structure. You try straight simple kneeling, as if in prayer. In a little while you become conscious of your patella squirming about between the knobs of your femur and tibia, trying to get comfortable and adjusted to the unrelenting knobs on the deck. The tendons that hold it in place snap about and when that becomes unbearable you shift to the left hip with a little support of the left gluteus maximus and, supporting yourself with your left arm, you chip away. The muscles along the inner right leg, the tailor muscles, begin to react first. You try to readjust by sitting up higher. The triceps in the shoulder begin to go, you feel it in the under forearm, finally the wrist and palm tendons, and then in the left thigh structure; the left cheek of the gluteus maximus is worn through. .

So you shift, readjust, and try it all out on the right side; but since you're not ambidextrous, after a few ineffectual twiddling chips with the hammer in your left hand — the right is required to support the arrangement and maybe some one bellyaches that you're stalling — you attempt another arrangement, then another, until every one of your two hundred and six bones is a raw, mangled, disconnected unit, and each of your protesting muscles a bloody, loud-mouthed, screaming agitator, and all your nerves knotted together in one tremendous headache.

Cracking up the crust of rust sent a dirty, biting cloud of dust up your nostrils, into your eyes, and into the sweaty creases of your skin — that was unpleasant. Scrubbing down a deck with that damned wire brush, ripping your finger tips on its loose strands and on the deck itself, was an unhappy experience. But swabbing that fish oil by hand as the heat of the sun beat down on the base of your neck and your back — with the fish oil almost sizzling as it'd hit the broiling deck and throwing the heat and stench up into your face — that was tops. And just as bad, hot or cold.

Now, then, stowing gear, Soogie Moogie, washing down, chipping decks, and later in our trip scraping and painting and red-leading and painting overside (which is an item in itself) and cleaning bilges is what deckhands who work as day men do aboard a freighter. So, if you thought as I did, that a ship is shoved out to sea and the deckhands heave a deep sigh and settle down to a long pleasant browse until the ship sights port again, accept my assurance — it isn't so.

Not for us a turn at the beautiful little brass wheel in the crystal clean wheelhouse, not for us the poetic leaning up in the prow like an ingrown ship's figurehead as a look-out. Lookout for what, I asked A.B.'s as they came back off watch to the fo'castle. Well, they'd say, maybe a bit of wreckage, or an iceberg. Ever see one in these waters? No, but you might, they'd say hopefully.

But each day (which really wasn't so awful; I've just been bearing down on the heavy pedal) brought the consolation of evening. And evenings aboard the dirty little Hermanita were beautifully long and full. Music, singing, talk, arguments.

7. Sailors' Music

THE SUN WAS STILL HIGH WHEN WE'D KNOCK OFF and carry our hammers and things up fo'ard to Chips. He'd be readying himself for supper and impatient to lock up his storeroom.

Mush and I would grab our dungarees and shirts (the ones we'd washed — our dinner clothes), towels, soap, and bucket, and go back aft to the bathroom. Al and the Fat Man would be there ahead of us, since they lived right next door in the fo'castle. We'd strip, fill our buckets from the fresh-water tap, warm it up with a dash of steam from the pipe, then — here's the recipe for a bucket bath: dunk your arms, splash some water on your body, then work up a mass of lather. The Fat Man looked like a melting snowman when he did a real job on himself, but he usually skimped — might have been too tired on some evenings.

Properly and completely lathered, you lift your bucket, stand upright and dump its contents over your head. If you've done it right, you've washed all the soap away; if not, that's too bad. For there was an unwritten law in the fo'castle that everyone adhered to: two buckets of fresh water a day for each man — one for washing your clothes and one for bathing.

After a few days of bathing with the Fat Man, Al, Mush, and I maneuvered so that we bathed just a moment or two before or after he did. Not that we minded him so much, but he was too big around to scrub his own back and each one of us had been roped in by his pitiful, "Listen, feller, will you gimme a rub?"

Scrubbing his broad, beefy red back with curly bristles sprouting on it was too much after a day of chipping decks. It was too much like washing an immense, gritty old sow.

Bucket bathing is one of the most satisfactory methods of bathing I know (provided you bathe without fat men). I've attempted it now and again later on, but it seems the drainage in our bathrooms has never been adjusted for that final splash, and we get complaints from the people downstairs. I understand the Balinese bathrooms provide for bucket bathing, but I've never been to Bali.

Then, refreshed, with our hair slicked down and dressed in our clean dungarees, we'd light up our cigarettes and sit out in the sun on the after hatch. I'd given up shaving — I mention that perhaps too casually. Perhaps I should admit it now and get it done with: I decided to raise a beard.

It was the first of three I've raised more or less unsuccessfully in my lifetime. In those days scraping a razor over my face was a senseless business. In fact, every fourth day required a very careful scrutiny through my glasses to find hairs long enough to demand a razor. My nearsighted eyes were always weak, and I believe the added strain I imposed on them with that every-fourth-day shave didn't help any. For ten days I hadn't shaved, and since I was pretty well tanned up by this time and my beard sprouted blond, no one paid any attention to it. But since that beard did bear some relation to events that follow — my first encounter with a hardened fille de joie in a place called The Philadelphia Bar in Rio Santiago; again on the occasion when I was mistaken for a North American Indian in Bahia Blanca; and in the mutiny later on — I thought I'd call your attention to it now in preparation. And too, though I sadly shaved it off on my return to New York, I never shaved the mustache that was raised with it to this very day.

Sitting on the hatch, with the sun coppering up the color of everyone with a fine warm glow, those half-hours between our bucket baths and supper were as golden a series of half-hours as I ever remember. I never had one complete 22-carat hour, but I've had a lot of 14-carat half-hours on the old Hermanita.

Scotty the wiper would join us. He climbed out the door that led to the black gang's quarters. Scotty, Pat the oiler, and the bird-necked guy were the only members of the black gang the deck crew would mix with. The rest of them would stay over on their side of the ship. Scotty was a cheerful, gay guy, in spite of his job: day man for the black gang — clean-up guy, handy man, scullion — our own equivalent down below in the engine room. Nothing could be lower.

Scotty was a curly-headed Brooklynite who had been raised by an uncle in Scotland. He came back with a burr as thick and tangled as heather. It was pleasant to listen to him talk and sing, and he danced a fine Highland fling. We looked forward to his hopping out of the black gang's passageway in the evening. He'd pop out with some funny Scotch song, do a few dance steps, and then sit down on the hatch. I remember the "Gud or Duke of York" and "I Love my Wife, I Love her Dear-r-ly" and some hymns, but they should be sung, not written. Seems that though he bathed himself daily, as did all the black gang, his eyes, like theirs, were always rimmed with black fuel oil, and the hollows of his head, neck, and arms always had hints of dark smudge, like the effect you try to get in patining a piece of sculpture.

The cockeyed A.B. would usually join us next. No one called him cockeyed. He was a Portuguese guy called Perry or Portuguese Perry. His cross eyes seemed to set the motive for all his movement — when he'd sit down, he'd cross his legs, cross his arms, one over the other at the elbow, and then, in addition to his cross eyes, the heavy flat cloth cap he wore was set on his head with the broken peak of it always askew. I never saw him standing with his legs straight. They were always crossed at the ankles or the knees. His shoulders and hips were never parallel but always at contrasting angles to one another — an exaggerated living example of Michelangelo's counteracting planes theory, not so much like the master's interpretation, more like an imitator: Sansovino or perhaps Giovanni da Bologna or one of the lesser lights of the Baroque period. As Perry walked, his feet seemed to cross the path of each other. A completely cockeyed guy.

Chips would come along with his straw hat on straight and sit down quietly. He always had a quiet Slavic dignity. Washed up and wearing a clean undershirt always made him feel dressed up. He'd smile at Scotty's wisecracks, though I'm sure he couldn't understand them — we all had some difficulty getting the sense of the King's English through the thicket of Scotty's burr.

The young Polack would climb out of the fo'castle door blinking like a sheep dog through the two long strands of blond hair that always seemed to fall forward from his pompadour. He'd usually sleep for an hour or so before supper and he'd look bleary. He was a shy young guy with a clumsy sense of humor. If Scotty hit something the Polack thought was funny, he'd smack his big open palm down on Scotty's back as lie held his shoulder and sock him again and again. And a laugh he could not hold back would come up from deep inside, as if it hurt him on its way out — a hard, har-har sound.

Other guys would come along soon. The black gang sat on the other side of the hatch near their own fo'castle door; they'd grin over our way but they kept their place.

Having eaten an early supper, sometimes the Georgia Boy would appear on the messdeck taking the long way around to relieve Joe at the wheel. He'd pull a small harmonica from his back pocket and, softly playing some Southern song, shuffle-dance across to the other side of the ship to the applause of the appreciative audience on the hatches until he disappeared around the other side. The Swede Mate up on the bridge, looking down on us, never could see him and never understood our applause.

If Joe had his dinner first, he'd sometimes come around that way and to a high-pitched gurgling Tahitian song he'd wiggle a hula across the same stretch of deck. He danced beautifully. His big arms — almost as big and round as his long torso— palms turned out, wrists resting on his hip pockets, and his head thrown back on his heavy neck — Joe was a handsome guy.

But it wasn't only all these nice guys in the sun's glow that made that half-hour between bucket bath and supper such a golden half-hour. The sea seemed richer and deeper in color, the sky more delicate and transparent, and there was a fine mood over everything. Even the Fat Man coming out on deck with his hair matted and sticky-looking — though he was bathed, still messy and dirty-looking like an old wet mattress — he and his noisy nasal voice couldn't spoil the fine feeling there was about everything.

It would break up when Flip would appear on the messdeck and holler:

"Come an' get it — soppa."

Although we'd take our time getting up to the mess, we'd hurry through our supper. The sun had baked the place uncomfortably warm and the heat and smell from the galley did not enhance the food Flip slapped down in front of us.

When we'd rush him, Flip's stock retort was "Watsa matta, you hurry? Where ya goin'? Is woman waiting for you? Gonna take walk?"

"Yeh," Mush would reply. "Gonna take walk. I'm gonna walk back to that poop and have me a lay. I'm gonna lay down flat — like a millionaire."

He expressed the sentiment of our whole gang. We had clicked together, Al, Mush, Scotty, Portuguese Perry, big Joe, the slim Georgia Boy, and I. The Polack and the bird-necked guy from the black gang stuck around on the outer fringe. So did the Filipino, Philip, the Captain's messboy. The mess gang had a clique of their own — drawn together, I imagine, by their work and language.

The black gang also had their own loosely formed group. The officers were all a lot of isolated and lonely guys, though their work tied them together a bit. Sparks, the radio man, chatted over his instruments all day long with other radio men on distant and passing ships and now and then would join the outer fringe of our gang of an evening.

The little Bos'n's Mate was the lonesomest man aboard ship. He ate with us and worked with us, but he couldn't mix. He had a cabin of his own in the officers' quarters. In the evening he'd linger in the mess smoking cigarettes, taking no part in the dull talk of the black gang and the older guys, until Flip was ready to lock up. Then he'd disappear into his cabin, close the door, even on the hottest nights, and we wouldn't see him again till we turned to the next morning.

Supper done with, we'd get back to the poop and pick a choice spot on which to stretch out. Since that poopdeck wasn't very large and good spots few, we'd move back quietly but quickly lest the firemen or some of the old guys got there before we did. There were a couple of wooden gratings back there on which we'd coiled the big hawsers to dry them out before we stowed them away. They were good to lie on. Then there were a couple of large canvas-covered boxes where life jackets and sounding instruments were kept.

Sounding instruments were explained to me, and I'm not passing it on. I'm not looking for any argument from any sneering old salt who might read this book and throw it back in my face with my explanation of "sounding." And that goes for any other sloppy nautical interpretation I may give. In any case, the contents of the box were not important to me — only the smooth canvas cover of it — and I just wanted to lie down.

So we'd stretch out and talk or sing.

The first few nights out all talk centered on women. The deck crew talked gleefully among themselves and over to some of the black gang about the waterfront floozies of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

They mentioned streets down around the docks I'd never heard of — sections of New York I'd never been in, though I thought I knew the city pretty well.

One evening Birdneck, sitting with us, said quietly, "Ya, they're talkin'. It's always the same on a long trip like this. The first half of the hitch out they talk about the dames they had in the port they left. And the last half they talk about the dames they're gonna get in the port they're headin' for. A lot of talk. Dames in New York is expensive — two dollar to five dollar for a short time. Christ, none of them had money enough to have all the women they says they had."

"Where's Cherry Street?" I asked. "The place that fireman mentioned."

"Jeez, don't you know Cherry Street? Tought you said you wuz from New York."

Al and Mush turned and looked at me.

"Yeh, I lived there for the past five or six years, but I don't know Cherry Street."

"You don't know Cherry Street! Well, where do you hang out?"

Scotty had whipped his harmonica out of his back pocket and with a grandiose gesture brought it up and around to his mouth and began playing something gay and Scotch. Everything Scotty played sounded Scottish, no matter what the song was. So I didn't have to account for my hangouts in New York.

One of those evenings, the third or fourth night out, Chips came up on the poop, in one hand balancing one of the long benches from the fo'castle and in the other carrying a large handsome leather case. He put the bench down, sat on it, then gently placed the large leather case in front of him. He snapped the lock and lifted out a squarish object carefully wrapped in green flannel. Tenderly, he removed the green flannel and revealed the largest, most gorgeous accordion I ever saw. It was filigreed in silver with pearl inlays, with assorted doodads and buttons and stops along one side — the other side held a regular piano keyboard.

When the last fold of the green flannel had fallen away. Chips held the instrument up in front of him, resting it on his knee. The rays of the setting sun caught the glitter of it and flecked the whirligigs on its silver trappings. It was beautiful.

"Gosh," burst from Mush, who went Hoosier under stress. "Chips, where'd you get that?"

"Dot's mine," said Chips, in his deep voice — deep and reverent.

"Gosh. That's beautiful."

"Costs four hundred dolla'," Chips added solemnly.

The rest of the crew mumbled their admiration. Four hundred dollars seemed not a cent too much for anything so handsome. It was a bargain at that — though no one seemed to wonder, as I did, how he'd paid for it out of the sixty-five dollars a month he earned.

"Kin ya play it, Chips?"

"Sure."

Chips had been waiting for someone to ask that. He carefully adjusted a strap around his shoulders to hold the accordion to his chest. If he'd been a smaller man, he would have had to stand up to play. And as he swung the strap over his head, I noticed he wasn't wearing his perennial hard straw hat. His hair was carefully parted and plastered down — this was an occasion, and he'd come prepared for it!

He carefully fingered the keyboard, tried a few stops and doodads on the other side, then unlatched a couple of silver hooks that held the thing together. Finally, having thrust his big foot forward, given one tap, nodded his head, and unfolded the big bellows, big organ sounds with just a sprinkle of squeaks filled the poopdeck.

The pleats of the bellows were a fine salmon pink, and, watching big Chips and his beautiful accordion for the moment, I hadn't been listening.

He seemed to play competently, and after a while there was a pattern to the music. The guys began to nod their heads at each other — a couple of old fellows from the black gang thought they recognized the tune. But they didn't; nobody did except Chips. It was one of those long continuous marches written for the accordion — one of those things that always seem about to end, and as you get ready to applaud, it starts all over again with very little variation from the motif that proceeded.

Chips played it well. If he stumbled he looked down on his keyboard and stopped, corrected the placing of his fingers, and started that bit of stuff again. Then when it got going right, he'd look up again, head erect, eyes straight ahead above the folding and unfolding of the handsome pink bellows, and roll right along, just tapping his big foot now and again. I figured that's when he turned a sheet of music in his memory.

It was a long piece, and when it was done everybody approved and told Chips he was great. But he said nothing — just silently pokes a stop here and there and fingered his keyboard.

"Say, that was swell, Chips, what was it?"

"March."

"Ain't that great. Boy, this is gonna be some trip," enthused Mush, "music an'. ."

"Hey," one of the old black gang called out, "kin ya play Rosy O'Grady?

"Naw."

Joe and Slim, the Georgia Boy, had come off watch. They, too, were delighted with Chip's big accordion.

"Man, look at that," said Slim. "Kin he play it?"

"Sure he kin play. Go on. Chips, play some more."

Chips adjusted his fingers, tapped his foot, head up, eyes front, and played it again — again the same march, with the same stumbles. And we all were as enthusiastic. Joe laughed and tried a few hula steps, the Georgia Boy swung into a couple of his lazy shuffles, and that reminded Scotty — who'd been sitting on his heels in front of Chips — that he, too, had talent. He jumped up and whirled into a fling. None of them kept it up very long — their dancing didn't go with that music. Soon they all sat down. This time it seemed the march was longer. I think Chips threw in a few extra choruses, but there was no way of telling.

He finished and carefully hooked his beautiful accordion together, unstrapped it from his shoulders, wrapped it up in the green flannel, packed it into the big leather case, and stood up. It was getting dark and maybe he didn't want to get it damp. As he started down for the fo'castle, case in hand, I asked him, "Chips, where'd you learn to play?"

He said, "I take lesson."

I don't know if that was singular or plural, but that's the only piece I ever heard him play on his four-hundred-dollar accordion all the way down to the Argentine and all the way back.

8. Portraits on the Hatch

FROM THE DAY BIG JOE CAME ABOARD THAT SHIP, he and I got along pretty good. I'm not sure about the big heel's intentions at the beginning, because he told me a number of weeks after we'd been hanging out together:

"Ya know wan I come aboard and I see you leetle fat guy give a big hallo — I sez to m'self, dere's nice punk."

"Why, you big Canuck, what d'hell d'you mean calling me a punk?"

"I'm not callin'. All ship she got punks, so I tought you're punk. Dat's all. Don' be mad."

Now there's not much sense in attempting to write Joe's dialect, and I ought to quit trying. He was a phenomenal guy. According to his story, he was born of a French Tahitian mother and his father was a Yorkshireman, the Captain of a four-masted schooner that sailed into Papeete, Tahiti, one day. He settled there, married Joe's mother, raised a family, and plied the trade around the Marquesas Islands.

The language Joe spoke was not English. He twisted its meaning and pronunciation to suit himself. Perry the Portuguese was quite a linguist— he spoke English with little accent, later led us around the Argentine with his fluent Spanish, and I've heard him ripple away in French at a couple of girls from Marseilles down in Bahia Blanca. Perry said the big fellow spoke French as he did English. And the Captain's messboy Philip, who was a bright boy, too, said he couldn't speak the Island language any better.

Joe did some drawing, very naive stuff. When he found out I drew, too, he hung around. He was a good guy to be with. He sang well, danced, and told the most fantastic stories I ever heard. They mightn't seem so good as I write them, but I haven't the advantage of Joe's gurgling voice nor his amazing and curious phraseology.

Chronologically, here's what I know of Joe as he told it to me. He was born in Papeete, Tahiti, and he's the biggest guy in his family. It seems he had a lot of women in his family— sisters, aunts, and grandmothers. One grandmother owns three quarters of an island, and I've a standing invitation to visit and stay forever.

There was only one gendarme on Joe's Island. What they need cops for? Everybody behaves themself. But this gendarme visited Joe's papa and told him if he didn't get that boy aboard some ship and get him off the island he'd lock him up in the calaboose and he, the gendarme, would throw the key away.

Pourquoi?

Mais alors! There was one man on the island who had a bicycle repair shop — the only one on the island. The only people who owned bicycles were the Chinese businessmen, and they took such good care of their bicycles the repair man never had any work to do. When Joe was fourteen he was a big boy. He and the repair man developed a business arrangement. Joe was to ambush Chinese cyclists — run out from some side road as they passed and spill them over. Thus messing up bike, thus making business for the repair man. Joe worked on a commission — a percentage of the size of the repair bill— until the gendarme wised up to their racket and visited Joe's papa.

So his pop got him a berth on a sailing ship carrying a cargo of lumber for San Francisco. They lay becalmed for about six weeks in mid-Pacific. A lot of things had happened: the United States had declared war (the First World War) while Joe's ship waited for a bit of wind.

When they finally reached San Francisco, Joe said, "I came down gangplank. 0-o-o-h, dere were lots of piple. Prettee girls. Two beautiful girl grebs me. Tells me something. I sez sure. 0-o-o-h, they give me kisses, hugs. Oh, boy! Girls on de Island is all right, but oh, boy! not like dis. Dey takes each by hand hugging arms against their nice boosoms. Dey sez more things — I sez sure, why not? Dey brings me to a place, ask me raise my han'. Hokay. Den the girls go way. Somebody give me clothes — show me how to put on. Tings wrap around my legs— I'm in de Army! Soldier show me where I sleep. I fraid to take off clothes. Sleep all dress up spread eagle. Don't know how to put on tings around de legs."

"You mean the puttees?"

"Yes, puttees. I write my modder a lettaire — I'm now soldier. She made a big holler. She write d'govemment of France, write United Steaks Conscience."

"United States Conscience?"

"Yes, United Steaks Conscience, Washington, Disease."

"Good God, Joe, you can't mean United States Congress, Washington, D. C?"

But that's what he meant.

"Sure. She tell I'm only leetle boy, fo'teen year ol'."

Joe got out of the Army that he'd been hugged and kissed into, and he'd been plying the sea since.

He'd been to a lot of places and mixed into a lot of things. There were a couple of knife scars along one side of his face, and his thin hooked nose looked as if it had been broken.

For the past six trips Joe had shipped for Australia on just such a tramp as the S.S. Hermanita. There was a nice girl in Sydney who wanted to marry him. Whenever his ship would come in, Joe'd live ashore with the girl, and she chased the ship up the coast in her car (she had some money, Joe said) when he moved to another port and lived with him there. That would go on till the ship would hoist anchor and sail back to America. Sure, he was going to marry her. Do you know how long it takes to get to Australia on a tramp? Six to eight weeks and then back and then a couple more months along that coast. It's a five- or six-month hitch.

Sure, he was going to marry her sometime. What did you think he'd been "communicationing wit Australia for pas' tree year fer fon?"

"Well, why don't you marry the girl?"

"She's nice — prettee. Good sport."

"So why?" I insisted.

"I dunno," he shrugged his big shoulders. "Seems lak every time I make port I meet her, we 'ave li'l wine — an' we don't get marry. Las' trip we say this time absolooly we'll get marry. She got license, I dress up, tak' fran' wit me. . bes' man…"

The big fellow rolled on the hatch at the thought of that. That got him. Then he sobered up and went on, "Not weree best. . he's good man. . second cook on ship. We walk to church gonna meet girl and her girl fran'. No drinkin', no foolin' aroun'. Fellow 'n me walks dere all dressed up on hot day. We stop for just one drink in bar. . Well, make short story short. We meet girl an' 'er fran' in church. Day both dressed up — wid flowers."

And Joe indicated a gigantic corsage on his left hip.

"Priest already, everytin' fine. . she kneel down… I kneel down in front of priest. Everytin' quiet. Priest begin talkin'." He rumbled down his throat in respectful imitation of a priest performing the holy rites of matrimony. "Den de priest say something to me… I look up. . den I fall over flat on my moosh. Two beeg full whiskey bottle roll out of my pocket. Well, we don' get marry again. . Some day I'll marry dis girl — she's nice girl…"

"But, Joe, how come you're on this ship? How come you're not going to Australia again?"

"Dunno. De girl she got mad. . Well, I wanna go see Paris anyhow. After all, I'm Frenchmen, no?"

"Yes."

"An' m'modder tells me how beautiful is Paris. Her gran'-modder tol' her. I come 'long to get ship for France. Shipping Board man says what d'hell you wanna take short run like dat for. Here's fine ship going to Argentine. Swell grub… So I says hokay. I'll go to Argentine. . "

We sat around in silence for a little while. I tried to get him talking again.

"Did you ever get back to the Island again?"

"No — sometime I'll ship dere. Dose Island is beautiful. Always nice, nevaire 'ot, like 'ere, dan col'—always nice." And Joe smiled. "Always same tampeture. Can swim all de time. Swim ever' day, ever' night. I used to swim wit de girls by night — dat's nice. No clo's—"

"What about sharks? Ain't there sharks, especially at night?"

"Sharks — roun' my Island? Naw, sir." Joe shook his head with indignation. "No sharks."

And then as he thought of something else he quietly added, "And no snakes, either."

"No snakes! Hell, Joe, wasn't there any foliage on that Island of yours? There's always snakes if you got foliage— trees, bushes, and things like that."

"Sure — dere's trees, wanderful big trees and prettee bushes, big red and gold flowers — but no snakes. No, sir, dere's no snakes, no sharks, nevaire 'ot, nevaire col', and you know dere's no storms. . An' it's fonny dere's no poison ivory or any-ting like dat. You don't have to work on de Island — just pick fruit off de tree. . Same when you're hungry for girl. . She's laugh and go wit you — no charge. An' all de girls is beautiful on de Island — and all de girls is vierge — all de time."

"Aw, Joe — that's impossible. That's biologically impossible. They can't be I'z'erg'e all the time. . Even after?"

The big dope nodded his head solemnly.

"Yep, vierge… all de time. . even after. ,"

And big Joe lay back on the hatch, closed his eyes, and smiled a gentle reminiscing smile as he thought of his perfect Island where the girls were vierge — all the time.

Well, it looked as if he wasn't going to get up again, and I quit drawing. For the past few nights we'd been headed into the wind. The poopdeck was no place to sit with the soot from the funnel sprinkling down on you. Some of the crew had bellyached that we should ought to have had an awning, like they have on good ships.

The evening before I got Al to sit for a drawing. Then Mush volunteered to sit for me. They liked the drawings I'd made and told everybody about them. We'd sat on this forward hatch, and this evening when Joe had come off watch he asked me to make a picture of him, too. As I drew, he talked and I egged him on. I remember when I was at the art school. One of the old academic sculptors who was instructor there then (forgot his name. . some kind of a fishy name. . but it doesn't matter — if everyone hasn't already forgotten him they soon will) — this stodgy old academician once took the class aside and said:

"Fellas" — he was the he-man type of artist and always kept a damp, dead cigar clutched in his teeth—"Fellas, I'm gonna tell you something important, something that relates to your profession as sculptors. Of course, you know sculpture isn't all just working from the model and drawing and doing composition in school — heh, heh."

And he looked at us over the rims of his glasses, circling his eyes at us all. We "heh-hehed" politely.

"Sculptors eat off their sculpture. They get commissioned to do sculpture, they get paid for doing it and they eat."

He paused to let that sink in.

"Y'see, the people that commission you and pay you are called clients. Now, that's what I'm gonna talk about."

Well — all the students gasped and looked at each other. What's happening here? Could old Fishname really be going to tell this bunch who spent their days or nights in factories, elevator shafts, dishwashing, or having their blocks knocked off as sparring partners to ham and beaners so that they could afford the luxury of doing a few hours sculpture a day or night — was he really going to let down the bars and let us know how a sculptor earns his living at sculpture? That was unheard of. Sculpture was a closed corporation. None of the young artists who could do much finer work than that old Fishname had any idea how they could ever break in.

"Yes, I'm gonna tell you how to eat off of your sculpture. Say, now — a portrait commission. When you get a client, you got to greet them politely when they come to your studio— when they're posing for you, get them to talk about themselves—"

But he didn't tell us how to get a client or how to get enough money off sculpture to buy a ha'penny bagel, to say nothing of paying rent for that fine studio in which we were supposed to greet our clients.

Well, I'd been using old Fishname's technique on big Joe, as I drew his head, sitting on the number one hatch of the Hermanita. I'd got him to talk about himself. That wasn't hard — and I got a better story out of him than the drawing I'd made. Joe was dissatisfied with it too, and would not sit up again. He complained I'd drawn his nose crooked — and when I told him his nose was crooked, he answered that I could have straightened it out in my drawing. When he drew a ship — that was his forte — and he didn't like the lines of her, he'd change them and fix it.

Anyway, he quit and called to Slim, the Georgia Boy, who was coming along the deck, "Hey, Slim, sit down 'ere. Let d'keed take your pi'ture," and he added graciously, "he draws weree fine."

"Yes, suh. Sho will," and Slim took a long step and flopped himself down on the hatch in front of me. "Make it good. I'll send it home to m'mammy. She ain't seen none of me for a long time now."

He sat there grinning at me with his big ears sticking out on either side of his thin head like a pair of transparent pink bat wings. The setting sun was behind him and the light shone through his ears.

I got him to sit around more and began to draw — there wasn't going to be much light soon.

"Make it good." Slim looked at me out of the comers of his eyes. He could not help grinning; now and again he snickered.

"Sober up, Slim, I can't see your face if you keep that big mouth open."

Slim thought that was good, and it sent him giggling and chortling even more… All right, Mr. Fishname — what would you do with a client who squirms around and giggles so you can hardly see him?

"How come, Slim, you ain't seen your mother for a long time?"

He was young, not any older than I. That sobered him up.

"Well — I kain't go home until I get some foldin' money."

"How come?"

"Well — the ol' man won't lemme come a-visitin' las' I pay m'board t' home."

"Even if you just want to sleep over and spend a day?"

"Yeah. He won't lemme near the house."

"Well, it oughtn't cost much. You could get one of the coast ships down to Savannah."

"Naw. It don't cost much. Jes' happens I never seem to get it. Before I shipped out on this baby, I took me a ship to India — I figured I'd get enough to go down to Gawgia and visit a bit. That's a long trip — India's a long way off — we stopped in a few ports before we got there. When we dropped anchor in Calcutta, I got took sick and laid in the hospital for five months. The Consul got me a ship back to the States. When I landed — damned if I wasn't broke again — so I ships out again. It's another long trip. By the time we get back to N'Yawk, bet I'll have enough to pay for my board down home for a couple o' weeks, and I'm gonna pay m'mammy a visit… How's that picture comin' on?"

9. Hymns and Chicken

IF YOU'VE NEVER SPENT A SUNDAY ABOARD A FREIGHTER, you can't know what the Sabbath means. That was the day we had eggs for breakfast — the only day of the week. Two of them, fried, with the whites a little rubbery and some jagged lumps of fried pork.

We day men and Scotty were so happy with our day off that first Sunday at sea that we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We were full of unadulterated ecstasy at the mere thought of twenty-four hours of wallowing in a sunny, taskless Valhalla.

We lingered and stretched and smoked around the mess after breakfast, savoring the beginning of a day with no "turn to" and no dirty work. For that day we could sport around out in the sun in our clean, washed-out dungarees and nice clean undershirts all day long like a lot of blooming first-class passengers. Slowly we drifted back aft and sat on the iron ladder leading to the poop. Scotty dragged his harmonica out of his back pocket, sounded a few magnificent deep chords, then, with chin drawn back, his eyelids fluttering, he let out with "Holy, Holy" — and we joined in. On the third "Holy" we were all in it and got a fine, resonant, choir effect.

"Ai, lads — now then, that sounds pr-r-utty gud. All to-gether-r now again."

And Scotty, keeping time with his harmonica, led us through the hymn — and we were not irreverent. We meant it. We sang some others. We were all well-brought-up boys from good God-fearing homes and, although I didn't know all the words to the hymns (an unpleasant Austrian who had favored the Anschluss and eventually became a rabid Nazi had once told me that I had no proper kinderstube), I knew the music and provided a pretty good tenor, baritone, or bass, according to the needs of the moment.

We had just about worked our way through the Rock of Ages when some of those who had been sleeping hollered we ought to shut up. So we did, and sat out in the sun talking quietly.

Yes… on the seventh day we rested. .

What particularly whetted our appetites for complete repose aboard that ship was the tantalizing aperitif that was served up to us all week in the picture of that tremendous lump of inactivity — our Chief Engineer, old One-Ton, stretched out on a straining deck chair with a wall of old frayed pulp magazines banked around him, Wild West Adventure Stories, some old Argosys and stacks of True Life Terrible Detective Stories.

All through the week as we Soogie-Moogied on the officer's deck on the sunny side, or sweated away at chipping decks, we'd come to a point along the deck when the Bos'n would hold up his hand like a traffic cop and in a low voice carefully guide us around the chief's chair. He'd be there in the sun, his mountainous belly rising in a grand swell, a counterbalance to the lower curve with which he filled the canvas deck chair. His head was thrust forward as far as he could get it along that mountain of fat, and as he peered through his sun glasses at the pulp magazine resting on the summit of his belly, his heavy-mouth always hung open with his lower lip so big it looked like another chin jutting out of his well-endowed collection. With all that, he plopped there (you couldn't call it sitting — the spine functions in sitting and there was no spine in that lump of blubber), sweating like the best of us in the hot sun.

I never remember that he looked up as we chipped around him or as we Soogie-Moogied the bulkhead on either side of him. Later in the day when the sun moved around the other side of the ship, he appeared — I never saw him move his chair and stuff — arranged the same way in the sun on that side. Then one of us would be sent back to where he'd been, to take care of the deck or bulkhead he'd occupied earlier in the day.

He lived those weeks of Sundays all the way down to the Argentine. And we envied him so, we all wanted to be Chief Engineers. That's the reason we did not play deck tennis on Sunday — just sang hymns and tried to do a lot of nothing long and fast.

There was another individual whose weekly behavior made us (Al and Mush, not me) wish for Sunday. That was the knobby little pug in the mess crew. I don't know what his job was exactly. I believe he helped the chef clean up the galley and was a second waiter in the officers' mess.

The reason Al and Mush waited for Sundays on his account was because every afternoon after the Pug would get through washing dishes he'd come out on deck dressed as a prizefighter! Jersey shirt, trunks, laced soft shoes, gloves and all — looking very professional. He'd hang up a punching bag near the outer galley door, and then go to it, punching and ducking and shadow boxing with a lot of fancy footwork.

As we passed by, all grimy and crumby with rust and grease, the Pug would do something specially fancy with his bag — rat-ta-tat with his gloves and pick it up on his elbows, or a particularly clever one-two punch at his flickering shadow.

"How's 'bout it, boy? Wanna put on d'gloves? Hey, you blond fella, how 'bout?"

We'd give him a "nerts" as we slumped by.

It bothered Al. "Who does that damn little bum think he is?"

"Yeah," Mush would sympathize. "If you ever got him in the gym back in old I.S.U., you'd knock his block off."

The little Pug didn't know Al was on the I.S.U. boxing team — and had his letter for football too — but he did know we couldn't take any time off during the week. So on Sunday Al and Mush stalked the deck around the galley door in hopes that the little Pug would practice and invite Al to put on the gloves. But he never did — not on Sunday. He was busy all day and he moved quick if he had to empty his buckets overside while Al and Mush were near his galley door. But I found out later he was not scared — he had work to do. Sunday was a big day in the galley. The midday meal was dinner on Sunday, and though the menu varied very little from Sunday to Sunday, it was more elaborate than our weekly lunch.

The established fare for Sunday dinner was always stewed chicken — well, not exactly chicken. Those tough giant drumsticks and those teeth-resisting lumps of stuff that looked more like splintery knots of yellow pine than they did like something that belongs on a dinner plate propped up by a watery mound of mashed potatoes, a pile of dark green-centered carrots with the worst spots whittled out and flanked by some sea biscuits. That was not chicken. The resinous gamy taste of it was not chicken. Those old birds lived a long life long ago and had been dead a long time.

No matter how far away the piece of meat you got was from the tail of the bird, it all was flavored from that end — right up to the neck. But to my amazement none of the crew squawked, though no one ate the chicken. They filled up on the vegetables and sea biscuits. That first Sunday I tried gnawing at the drumstick that was my lot. Pat the oiler, when Flip's back was turned, reached across the table, touched my elbow and said in a low voice:

"Leave it, kid."

"Huh?"

He gave me a wink and said nothing. I looked along the table. Nobody even touched their chicken. Something was up!

Flip came back to the table, looked at the untouched main course, and his eyebrows lifted at their inner comers. Then he began picking up the plates.

"Plum-dove or opricock pie," he announced.

Mush turned on the charm, "Both, Flip."

"No! One. Plum-dove — opricock pie."

Almost everybody wanted the pie. I took plum duff, and it was swell. A big hunk of it — it tasted good though it didn't digest so well.

We left the mess after guzzling down our coffee. Nothing had developed over that chicken stew and I was disappointed. Since no one mentioned it, I let it drop.

Word had got around we were going to have a fire and boat drill at six bells on the third watch (three o'clock). The Fat Guy from whom we had heard nothing for a while now — he slept through the morning, and he'd been the only one of the crew who ate the chicken — burst out, "What d'hell on my day off. Why d'hell's he gotta have a boat drill on Sunday — the Lord's Day."

Others took it up as we sat on the after hatch. Perry, who was a specialist on the rights of seamen according to the Maritime Union constitution and by-laws, held forth at length on boat drills, etc.

The stocky white-haired guy with the pink-lidded eyes was sitting alongside me on the hatch. He was sitting around until it was his turn to relieve the bullet-headed guy at the wheel. No deck work for the men on watch on Sunday, either.

He laughed softly and in his low husky voice said to me, "There's a regular sea lawyer — a Philadelphia sea lawyer."

"Ain't Perry right though?"

"Yes, and no. If the Mate orders a boat drill on Sunday, he can. He can whenever he wants to. But it ain't nice to do it on a day when all the men are resting a little—"

Perry directed everyone's attention to Mush and me with a wild sweep of his arm. "An' look. What about dese kids here? They're signed on as deck boys. Are dey gettin' any trainin' as seamen—? No! Are ye, kids?" I said, "Huh?"

"Did the or Man ever call you up to d'wheelhouse and give ya any instruction at d'wheel?"

"Well, no — do we have to do that?" "I dunno — but he does. It says in Article—" And Perry rattled off some long constitutional sounding stuff that seemed to mean that old Captain Brandt hadn't been doing his duty by Mush and me. We should have been getting educated. I looked over at Mush. It seemed as if he was convinced — we were being gypped. I didn't mind. I remembered my unfortunate experience as a Boy Scout — boxing the compass and all that stuff — and hoped Captain Brandt would continue on his nefarious course of crooking us out of our just dues. I didn't want to be educated.

But Perry, who never sailed along on one line of argument very long, was off on another tack completely.

"And what provision—" that three-syllable word interwoven into ordinary deck conversation got everybody's attention, and Perry, sensing the effect of it, repeated—"An' what provision is being made for d'crossing d'Equator ceremonies—?"

I was amazed at the response to that. Some guys haw-hawed, others slapped their neighbors on the back — evidently that was funny and serious both to everybody but Mush and me. We looked at each other stupidly. Then I noticed a pale, rangy guy from the black gang who seemed to get paler.

The third oiler (Pat and Birdneck were the other two) spoke up. He was the one everybody called the Maverick.

"Who's d'wictims? Hey, you guy wit d'glasses. You ever been across d'line?"

"What line?"

"D'Equator."

I said, "No. I never—"

"All right. We'll take care of you," and he laughed in that nasty way he had and slapped the pale, rangy guy on the back in glee. "Hey — wait a minute — you ain't eider, have you? You was saying you had dat reg'lar run t'Norway—"

The pale guy gulped and said, "No — I ain't never been South—"

"O-o-h boy! anudder wictim. . And you, blubber-mouth." He was talking to Mush. "You too—"

I asked the white-haired guy:

"What's this Equator stuff?"

"Oh — it's nothin' if they ain't rough…"

The Maverick heard that.

"Surewewon't be rough — haw-haw. Wait'll Ol' Fadder Neptune gives him a shave and wait'll Fadder Neptune's redheaded daughter gives him a kiss—"

The Bos'n had come down to the deck. The hilarity quieted down a little, though nothing could hold that Maverick guy now that he had some nasty business planned. He was noisy and swaggered around.

The Bos'n gathered the day men around him and told us about the boat drill we were going to have — which we already knew about — and gave us all our stations. Just about the time he'd made it clear the ship's bell began to clang. The Bos'n snapped out his watch, glanced at it, looked up at the bridge, and said quietly, "That's it."

Then he climbed up the iron ladder two steps at a time. Incidentally, that little man was so sure-footed I remember he was one of the only ones aboard that ship who came down those steep ladders face front and fast — he'd hardly touch the steps, even when the ship had a pretty good roll to her. Everybody else except a few of the A.B.'s would climb down the ladders backward holding on to both rails.

The Bos'n dashing off that way didn't hurry the crew any. They grumbled, scowled up at the bridge where the Captain and the Swede Mate stood looking down at us, and slowly crawled off the hatch. Laboriously, and deliberately, they slowly climbed up the ladders to the upper deck. If there had been a real emergency that ship would have burned to her keel or sunk halfway down the ocean before they sullenly climbed to their stations at the hose outlets along the upper decks.

The white-haired guy, Birdneck, and I were assigned to the same station. As we stood there, I took up this Equator initiation ceremony again. Frankly, I was worried. It sounded like the sort of thing I'd read about and expected before I came aboard, but I didn't want any of it now. I liked the quiet uneventful days and pleasant nights as they were.

I nervously asked the white-haired guy, "What do they do— what's this stuff the Maverick was talking about?"

The old fellow said quietly, "Oh, it's nuthin. Just a little fun; don't worry about it. On the big passenger liners they make a whole business of it and everybody has a good time. But on a little ship like this— Some of these fellers sometimes get rough. Yes, I've seen it happen. Sometimes some of the wild fellers do something and somebody gets hurt. I've seen nice boys hurt pretty bad—"

His voice was soothing, and he shook his head slowly.

"Yeah," came from Birdneck, who stood there with his hand on the brass handle of the hydrant to which we'd attached a dry canvas hose. Birdneck was to turn the water on, we to play the hose come the day when the ship bums up.

"Yeah, that damn Maverick— It's guys like him that makes trouble. An' you know there's a couple of more guys aboard this ship'd join up with 'im if he started…"

"Yeah, but what do they do?"

"Oh, different things. You know that Maverick guy," he was talking and gesturing at the old man. "He's always stirring up trouble — back there in our cabin—"

Oilers rated separate quarters — they were a step above firemen and wipers. Pat, the Maverick, and Birdneck bunked together.

"Sometimes old Pat — you know he's a good old guy — he's old that's all. This goddam Maverick is always trying—"

I broke in, "Look, can't ya tell a fella what happens? What's this Father Neptune—?"

"Oh, that's nothing. That's just — well what's hard is if some feller like that gets the idea to try some keelhaulin'—like they used to do in the old days—"

"Well, what's keelhaulin'? Why doesn't somebody explain some of this?" I was getting panicky about that damn Equator.

"Well, keelhaulin', that's when they tie a line around you."

The ship's bell sounded again and interrupted his explanation.

"That's the other signal. Gotta git up to d'boat deck. You got number two lifeboat too, kid — come on. Where d'hell is number two lifeboat—?"

And he was already halfway up the ladder to the boat deck, the old guy trailing him. I didn't know what to do with my section of the canvas hose, so I dropped it and ran after them, muttering, "Gawd, nobody tells me nothing."

Boat decks of all ships are usually nice places — the S.S. Hermanita boat deck was no exception. It's airy and free feeling up there and the wooden deck under your feet was a welcome change from the iron decks below.

Some of the men were gathered around the lifeboats in little groups at each end of them. They seemed to be fumbling with the ropes that held them up. Perry had pried up a section of canvas that covered his lifeboat and he had his head in it and was talking to his group. The little Bos'n tapped him on the shoulder and Perry ducked out again with a grin and joined the others who were tugging ineffectively at the lanyards trying to work the davits.

Birdneck, the old guy and I had found our number two lifeboat. And who do you guess was among the gang assigned to our lifeboat number two? Yep — that goddam Maverick.

Birdneck said under his breath, "Jeez, jes' imagine being shipwrecked with that louse."

And our other potential company in peril was the fat Sailing Man, a beak-nosed old fireman. Mush, and a few other non-consequential guys, and then the blubbery Chief Engineer who had finally waddled up to join us and took complete charge.

Now what ten would you choose to be shipwrecked with on a desert island? I don't mean books — I mean buddies. I had no choice. Mine were picked for me and there they stood, all lined up.

"Here, you men. Why d'hell don't you swing that boat out? What d'hell you waiting for?"

Mush who had joined us at our end softly said, "You, sweetheart." But the Chief didn't hear him.

The Captain and the Swede were both shouting orders from both ends of the bridge. All along the deck the men were straining at the lanyards and shoving at their lifeboats to swing them out. Not one of those boats had budged an inch!

The pulleys and apparatus were so coated with successive layers of paint, it would have taken dynamite to blast them loose. After we'd strained and pushed a while longer, the ship's bell sounded again. The drill was over.

"Next time we'll swing 'em out and goddam well get them over side," growled the Chief, and he started down the ladder to the lower deck. He climbed so slowly those of us who had automatically followed him were piled up waiting for him to make the lower deck.

"Ch-r-ist," hissed Birdneck, "didja see dem lifeboats. Ch-r-ist, if anything happens aboard this ship — good night."

"They looked bad, all right," said the white-haired guy.

Perry came along looking as he always did when he was full of some special inside stuff. He leaned all over us as he tried to keep his voice down.

"Jeez, those boats ain't got any equipment at all. They ain't been caulked, they're as dry as a bone. The seams on 'em are opened up like that," and he spread his thumb and forefinger while he cocked his eye to measure.

"The way the davits are crusted up you'll never swing those boats out anyway," the white-haired guy mournfully added.

"If we hit something," put in Birdneck, "I'm swimmin'. I'll be a sonovabitch if I'd go in a lifeboat with that Maverick bastard."

I didn't say anything — what was there to say?

Back down on our own deck Perry had quickly spread his inside dope — what he had seen when he had ducked his head inside the lifeboat. Everybody grumbled. Every blemish on the old S.S. Hermanita was held up to ridicule and enlarged, every officer down to the inoffensive Filipino purser berated and dubbed a bastard. And that Swede Mate — that brass-polishing, yacht-swabbing, scurvy-bitten scum — they exhausted their vocabulary on him.

What would happen when we shipped back to the States in September, the hurricane season? What chance would an old oilcan like this have in a real blow? No chance at all. Then what have you got? The lifeboats — those rotted, dry old crates were worse than nothing.

Perry, having really stirred the pot, now took over. Nobody wanted to stay a moment longer on that ship. As soon as she docked in Rio Santiago we'd desert to a man.

That was not the way Perry wanted it. He knew the Argentine — in fact he was the only man aboard who'd ever shipped to little Rio Santiago.

"Naw, naw," he objected gathering the loudest-mouthed squawkers around him. "Go on d'beach in dat lousy port? Nah."

Then he bent his head confidentially into the center of the group and in a hoarse whisper which you couldn't hear beyond twenty yards he continued:

"Lissen, dere's no sense in skipping ship in any port down in d'Argentine. D'ting to do is wait till we come up again, see what I mean—?"

"And go on d'beach in Montevideo, huh?" one eager voice interrupted. "Jeez, dey says dere's more cat houses dere den any place in de woild. Boy—"

"Naw. Naw — lissen." Perry screwed up his face and impatiently wagged his gnarled forefinger. "Naw, that's no good either—"

Then he dug his head down further into the middle of the group and went on with his loud hoarse whisper. "Rio — now dat's where. If you go on de beach dere — boy, oh boy," and with a wave of his hand thrust out in front of him, he gestured that the world is yours, you beachcombers, in Rio de Janeiro.

Everybody listened respectfully and some grinned and nodded their heads. So did I. Beachcombing, that's something; and I'd rather keep everybody's mind on this planned mass desertion than on those other ideas that had come from Perry's big mouth this afternoon — education schemes for Mush and me up in the wheelhouse or provisions for crossing the Equator.

We all went to supper with Perry still talking with his head bent in the middle of us as he gleefully contemplated insurrection, and repeated his hoarse admonition that everybody keep his mouth shut. He entered the mess with his big flat cloth cap off, his head erect, looking from side to side with a look in his eye which said I deny all accusations.

Sunday-night supper was the best-tasting food we ever had aboard that ship. That Filipino Chef really did something. There were large bowls of rice along the table, and when we were seated along came Flip with a couple of immense platters of steaming curried chicken. And though it was served up simply without the usual shredded cocoanut, spiked ginger and all the other exotic sweet and bitter condiments that go with the dish, it was the best curried chicken I'd ever eaten until then and since — and I've eaten good curry!

By the shape and line of the lumps of bird under the yellow brown gravy piled in the platters I recognized our leftover chicken dinner. Old Pat the oiler, as he watched me stow away the stuff and I made no secret of my enthusiasm for it, gave me a big knowing wink. Evidently, the old guy knew the potentialities of the Chef and that the best curry in the world was made from old long-dead icebox roosters left over from dinner.

And that's what we ate for supper aboard that ship every Sunday night.

10. Father Neptune's Torture Brigade

THAT MAVERICK WASN'T INCLUDED IN OUR PLANS for deserting ship. It seems the whole working crew — the deckhands and the black gang — were in it, but they left the Maverick out. As far as we were concerned he could bloody well sink with the Old Man, the Swede Mate, and old One-Ton, the Chief Engineer. So the Maverick still had only one thing to talk about— that mysterious torture he contemplated for the pale, rangy guy. Mush, and me.

My reputation for drawing was spreading. I'd had some more sitters and I'd been thumbtacking my drawings up in our cabin. The Filipinos who used to bring us our change of sheets and the Mate who inspected our cabin had spread my fame up on the officers' deck. Mush and Al were my press agents in the crew.

Birdneck approached me early one evening. "Would you do my portray? I see the ones you did of the blond kid. No kiddin' —if I could draw like dat I'd quit d'sea."

I was flattered and happy to make a drawing of his head. There was still plenty of daylight. I'd draw out on deck. We were only two days away from the Equator, and that damn Maverick hadn't shut up for a week about "Hey you — wait'll Fadder Neptune comes aboard down on d'line. Wait'll dat redheaded gal, dat daughter o' his, gets ya. She's a hot baby. Haw—"

The fat Sailing Man with great relish had explained to Mush and me finally what real keelhauling was. "Well, the way they used to do it in d'old days, they'd tie a line — a long line— around your middle, see. Then they'd tie anudder on the other side of ya. Then a couple of men would throw ya over side, holding onto the line o'course and them what's holding the other line would drag it around and under the stern and they'd haul you down under the keel of the ship and then haul you up. That's all."

"That's all? Hell, didn't that drown the guys?" "No, not always. They had a line tied to 'em, I tol' you." "Didn't it hurt — didn't they get caught in the propellers—?" The Fat Guy took his pipe out of his mouth and spat on the deck.

"Those ships didn't have no propellers. Oh, they might have got scraped a bit 'ginst d'barnacles, but they'd pull 'em up gasping like and half-drowned — if they had any life left in 'em."

Mush and I shuddered and walked off. "Did you think he meant that? Wonder if that old bastard is kidding us," Mush asked me.

I went forward to get my pencils and drawing paper. I looked over the heads I'd thumbtacked up along the bulkhead opposite our bunks and wondered who of this bunch I could depend upon in a fight. After all, I had immortalized them in my drawings (to a degree). They owed me something. I was not going to take this being mauled about lying down. I'd fight or I'd run.

Mush's head brooded glumly on the wall — I'd posed him with his eyes looking down because staring at his popeyes too long would always recall that seasick morning. A few drawings of Al — him with his short upper lip. Someone had told me a short-upper-lipped person can't be relied on. That might be as untrue as the saying — Chinese, I think. Tang period—"Beware of the man with the sparse beard." Now I had a sparse beard, none could be sparser, but I am a reliable individual — never broke my word or failed to fulfill a contract yet. A clasp of the hand with fingers crossed for the whereases, the party of the first part, is all I need to carry on my business. Maybe that short upper lip stuff was just silly, but Al had been avoiding Mush and me for the past few days and he'd gathered with that bunch of apes who talked of ceremonies.

I passed over some of the older guys' heads staring back at me to big Joe. That big Canuck was an enigma. For the sake of raising hell he'd do anything. That's how he'd collected most of the scars along his cheek and neck and that broken beak. He'd giggled and snapped his fingers and walked off when I tried to sound him out.

Then the fat old Sailing Man — well, he had just indicated the way he felt about it. To him, dragging our mauled, broken, bleeding bodies up out of those shark-infested waters — we'd seen a shark three days ago — would have just been a nostalgic echo of the good oF sailing days when keelhauling was really keelhauling.

I was just about to dismiss the whole line of drawings and water colors I had done of the Filipino mess. I'd skied them— that's an academic term meaning a picture hung above the line of vision, up above the other drawings because they looked good that way. The Filipinos were all my friends but too little in an emergency such as this — except perhaps our own messman, old Flip.

I had a pretty good brush drawing of him hanging there with his big corncob pipe clinched in his teeth. He was a gentle-looking old fellow, but I'd seen him flare up the day before…

The heat had been getting us all that past week. Everyone was touchy and irritable — maybe that's why there were so many of the crew looking forward to really letting themselves out, why the "Fadder Neptune" torture brigade had so many recruits. The crew had made Flip's life miserable with their squawks about the grub. He'd taken it good-naturedly as he served us with his shiny face always smiling, his corncob tucked in a corner of his mouth and his sweat dripping into our food as he slapped the heavy plates down in front of us. But he boiled over the day before as he served lunch and a little grease from a plate of pork chops slopped over on the Maverick's arm. That worthy hopped up, grabbed the dish, and smashed it on the table, sending the chops slithering every which way.

"Yo' goddam nigga," he yelped. "Why d'hell doncha watch what you're doin'?"

Flip's black eyes flashed like smoldering coals suddenly afire. He silently whirled, disappeared into the galley, and was out again before the door swung close, with the longest, sharpest, brightest bread knife I ever saw. It was not one of those ordinary dull saw-toothed blades. This was one of those knives that had been resharpened until it had worn thin and developed a fine curve.

He faced the Maverick with his knife clutched low and blade up. In discussing it later, those of the crew who knew about knife fighting said his stance was perfect as he stood legs apart, toes out, knees slightly bent, and the knife waving back and forth, low in a cobra-like sway, its blade up and the point directed at the Maverick's gut.

He eyed the Maverick and in a thin, shrieking voice, shrilled as he advanced:

"Goddam — man — bra'k deeshes — damn bra'k deeshes—"

There was a swift breeze in the mess and I knew the Maverick was gone. We could hear him clattering down to the safety of the propeller shaft below.

Of course, that incident spoiled our lunch — if anything can spoil a lunch of greasy, fried pork chops and soggy bread, served up in a mess which smelled of kitchen garbage, as the temperature read 120 in whatever shade you could find.

Some of the crew gulped some water to unpaste their mouths, and they murmured, "You oughtn't to do that, Flip."

But Flip looked around, turning his head like a bewildered child and insisted:

"Goddam man — bra'k deeshes."

And it was evident the only retribution worthy of such a crime was to carve out the culprit's innards.

Back on the poop, during the general discussion about the incident in which the Maverick did not join — he had some sewing to do — the general consensus of opinion was that Flip's stance was perfect but he carried his knife just a mite too low. I remember a Bulgarian highlander (he claimed to be that— I knew him as an art student) telling me once that his countrymen had used their knives as Flip had on that day. And the Bulgar had demonstrated — he stood with his knees widespread, his blade held about the level Flip had held it as he waved a vicious plaster knife in my studio and showed me how Bulgar highlanders carve out their differences of opinion. He contended that that's the least harm you could do a man with a knife, since his countrymen were accustomed — on being bested in a dispute of that sort — to gathering up their intestines (which naturally spilled out on the ground), stuffing them back in their abdominal cavity, and wrapping themselves up with a long sash they usually carried for that purpose. Then they'd walk off and get sewed up again until the next time.

I didn't add this to the poopdeck's blood and thunder. They were doing all right without it.

Some of the guys had drifted into a discussion on knife-throwing. They generally disapproved of the commercial form displayed by the sideshow experts — those charlatans who, to a roll of drums, stand a skinny, frizzy-haired dame up against a board and, holding their knives at the point, toss them overhand from the shoulder and silhouette their girl friend (for whom they evidently feel a complete indifference) with a barricade of quivering stilettos. That method is slow, showy, and completely ineffectual in a fight.

Big Joe, who should know, whipped out a seven-inch-blade clasp knife and showed how a knife should be thrown. He first showed his knife off. It had a fine handle with a tricky button in it. He pressed this button and the big blade snapped open instantly, all the way, ready for blood. Then Joe snapped it shut again and put it in his back pocket, stepped forward, and with one gesture snapped out his knife and threw it at the canvas-covered box on which I was sitting. There had been no pause to open the knife — it all had been done in one quick movement. The blade had rested on his open palm, point forward, as he threw it underhand and it landed in the side of that box just a few inches from my dangling, naked foot.

Then when Perry, the cockeyed Portuguese, persuaded Big Joe to let him try his knife, I hopped off that box quick and stood behind Perry to watch him pitch it. After all, that's the best way to watch. Umpires stand in back of the hurler's box instead of up at the catcher's end. That's not for fear that they might be beaned by an erratic pitcher. It's a more scientific approach, observing at the source, rather than the receiving end, a missile in flight, be it rawhide or cold steel.

After that a little more talk on cutting — the old-fashioned razor method with the blade folded back over the closed fist for slashing across, glass beer mugs smashed on the table so that the handle remains clasped in the hand while the jagged edges can be used for gouging (a similar technique was crashing the bottle and using the neck as a handle while you ripped with the splintered other end). I recall no mention of schlaege, the refined German university sport which is not just straightforward cutting so much as a form of mutual masochism.

Philip, the Captain's messboy, talked quietly and apologetically about Flip to Mush and me. It seems Flip was an Igoroti, one of the Philippine mountain people. Philip told us old Flip's grandfather had cut up and eaten his enemies. It was said the mountain people were cannibalistic in the old days. What disturbed Philip most was the fact that Flip had put in three long hitches in the U.S. Marines and had shipped a number of years on ships with English-speaking crews, and stiU his English vocabulary consisted of about only thirty or forty words.

The triumphant announcements that he made when he slapped our food down in front of us, his "Por' chops, opricock pie, etc.," usually took hours of drilling every morning before they could be considered even good Igoroti English. For that Philip apologized.

Well, I thought Flip was one I could count on. The least he could do was to cut those lines they tied us with and I'd have a running chance. I could hop about until the ship was safely over the Equator and then shout "Out of bounds" or something else as appropriate when we were safely over into latitude S. 01. According to the laws of the sea they shouldn't be able to do anything then.

Maybe I could depend upon Flip. I picked up the papers and pencils I'd come for and went back to the shelter deck where Birdneck was to have waited for me — to draw his portrait. I found him stretched out and snoring in the sultry shade of the deck. I let him sleep, and sat down there and worried— till I fell asleep too.

In mid-afternoon we crossed the Equator.

Mush, the pale guy from the black gang, and I had arranged to meet before breakfast that day and talk over some sort of all-for-one-one-for-all protective pact. Nothing came of it. We couldn't agree.

All afternoon that day we chipped deck up on the prow— that was tops in misery.

"We should be hitting the old belt right about now."

I looked up into the sun's glare at the Bos'n.

"What'd you say—?"

He was standing with shimmering waves of heat from the sizzling deck coming up around him, squinting up at the burning sun with his head cocked. His watch was opened in his hand.

"The way I figured it, we should be crossing the Equator right about now."

We were listlessly, miserably chipping that prow deck— I'd given up trying to get comfortable. I've seen some hopeless old plugs standing in the city streets, standing foursquare with their bloated old bodies suspended from each of their rickety legs. If anyone had shoved one of those woodeny old supports out of line, they'd have fallen over with a dusty crunch. I felt like that. Day had run into night and night into day. There was glaring light or a lack of it, but the heat had tied those past seventy-two hours into one continuous misery.

All the others looked up at the Bos'n. Nobody asked how he knew. We all had heard from Philip who serviced his cabin, too, that the little man spent those long evenings in his room, charting the course of our ship by guess — by information he extracted from the men on watch and by shooting the sun crudely with his fingers — a trick I'd heard of, that improvised sextant stunt, but never seen done until I saw him do it one noon.

He had no more right up in the chart room than any of the day men, and he never talked with the Second Mate who was the ship's navigating officer, but he asked the A.B.'s after they'd put in their turn at the wheel how many knots we'd made and what course we set and he made notes on a little pad. Everybody knew and everybody co-operated except that bullet-headed guy on the Third Mate's watch. That lug always forgot, he said.

We don't know why the little guy did it. Maybe just to kill time. Others thought he must have been a Mate aboard some ship, and had lost his berth, but no one knew for sure. He didn't talk about himself.

The men all kneeling bluntly like a herd of beasts on a sun-hardened, rusty, plain slowly turned their heads and squinted up at him as he looked back toward the bridge and our eyes followed his back. We all looked over our shoulders, all except the Fat Man. He'd given up trying to kneel as he chipped a long time ago. He rolled over and looked, uncovering a dark, damp spot on the deck. He'd sweated a pool around himself as he sat there frying in his own grease.

The Swede Mate was up on the bridge with the Third Mate, though it wasn't his watch. The Old Man must have been having his usual afternoon snooze in his cabin. Crossing the Equator was no novelty to him.

The forward deck was empty. For some reason it made me think of the flat stretch of a hot baseball field; I couldn't understand that — it hadn't the shape or color — maybe it was just the tension.

Mush and I anxiously watched those two doors that led into the purple darkness of the shelter deck. If the Maverick and his bloody Father Neptune brigade came at us, it would be from those doors. Sweat poured down on my glasses and I let it run — I hadn't any clean handkerchiefs. Finally, when the effort of twisting around and watching those ominous holes in the bulkhead got too much for me, I went back to chipping with a bitter indifference.

The hell with them. If they came, they came. Being hauled through that water couldn't be any worse than chipping rust blisters on that burning deck — it would be cool at least — and I decided if that bunch did show up with their keelhauling lynch ropes, homemade splintered wood razors, rusty wire shaving brushes, and buckets of flesh-eating lather (made the week before, the Maverick had told us, from a bucket of Soogie fermented in a mixture of fishoil and crude oil — equal parts), I'd ask the Bos'n to please keep my glasses for me. He was the only one on the prow deck who wore a shirt, and he could tuck them away in his breast pocket. Then I'd be ready for my shave by King Neptune's daughter — or was he to do the shaving and we marry the daughter, before or after we were keelhauled? I didn't know the procedure, and I never found out.

The Neptune brigade didn't show up.

In the hot mess at supper the Maverick and a few others bellyached: What did them lousers up on midships think — the crew was going to carry on the ceremonies on their own time? Nuts! If midships didn't have the decency to co-operate, and cut down the engines and give the crew time off when we hit the Equator — t'hell with them. There'd be no ceremonies. And there wasn't.

11. The Truth About Columbus

SOMEHOW I FELT NOW THAT WE WERE SAFELY OVER the bump of the Equator we'd go slithering down the underside of the globe lickety-split and tie up at our destined port in no time at all. Unfortunately I'd never paid much attention to geography after my third year in grammar school, where we learned that the world was round. What did it — and spelling, too, for that matter, which I never could manage — have to do with drawing pictures (rear view) of our moon-faced teacher, Miss Conway, who wore a gigantic black taffeta bow around the knees of her hobble skirt as she explained all this stuff from charts she scribbled on the blackboard? I learned how to draw to the detriment of my geography lessons.

Naturally I'd heard about this gravity thing, which clamps the lower Atlantic to the globe as securely as it fastens on our northern waters, but I figured vaguely it still was on the down-grade and there might be a little drip to it, so we'd slide a little faster down under.

Sitting on the hatch, occasionally I wondered how Columbus got away with it — how could he have persuaded the Queen of Spain to sink all her jewels in the gamble that the world is round with the material he had. Since it's well known — history is oft recorded in old folk songs — I gave particular attention to a version Joe sang of the Christopher Colombo chanty. It differed from the accepted conventional — in fourteen hundred ninety-two was the time Columbus started. The Queen of Spain shed a bucket of tears but Columbus — etc., etc. That suggested of course that it was an affaire de coeur and he had used her love for him to swindle her out of jewels, thus financing his wild schemes. Joe's version indicates Columbus used cold logic. As I remember it — in fourteen hundred ninety-two a Dago from Italio was walking up and down the street selling hot tamalio. One day he walked up to the Queen, demanded ship and cargo; and I'm a lousy sonabitch if I don't bring back Chicago — for I know the world is roundo and sailors can be browndo — etc., etc., and it went on to such depths of degradation I would not attempt to write it, although the essence of it suggested a scientific disclosure.

Assuming then that Columbus persuaded the Queen by sterling-pure logic — and granting the success of the standing-egg-on-end demonstration — and that it had taken place (though I wondered when I first heard of it as I do now — was it a hard, soft, medium or raw bit of hen fruit) — but if you will recall, his strongest argument was that on sighting a ship out at sea the observer first sees the tip of her mast, then sails, finally hull coming up from the horizon, thus proving the surface of the seas are bent, and that happens everywhere, he contended. Therefore, if the surfaces bend all around Eureka, the earth is shaped like a ball. Q.E.D.

I rise from my hatch in protest, for sitting as I did — whenever I could — and studying the horizon and its relation to ships, Fd never seen a time when it appeared as if our ship was tettering on a hump of water. It seemed to me we rested at the bottom of an immense, blue-green bowl — the horizon rose all around us as its rim. It was a handsome bowl and sometimes, when schools of grinning porpoises flashed up in the sun rolling over each other in that breathless game of tag they were always playing, and the flying fish took off from one fine wave to scoot for what they might have thought was a finer one, it looked very much like some of the decorative bowls I've eaten out of in our better sea-food restaurants in the city. And often, in relation to its vast circumference, I felt like one of those unexplainable black lumps of something uneatable that always seems to be on the bottom of an oyster stew even in the best restaurants. Of course, this bowl I was sitting in was finer in color quality than any I'd ever eaten out of.

Now if Columbus paddled the Queen out in a gondola or bumboat to demonstrate his theory, she might have been blinded by his charm, for surely, as I sat on the hatch, ships appeared as full-fledged little spots on the rim of the horizon— no mast-first, stacks-next shenanigans about it — but there they were, full fledged and steaming away, including as much of their hulls as I ever saw while they were in sight. They'd come along keeping their distance, grow to the size of one of those you can buy for about ten cents in any five and dime store, and then pass on to shrink to the tiny spot they had been to the nothing they started from. No sinking over the horizon stuff about it.

It might be things look different up on the mast (I never climbed the mast; I was strictly a deck sailor), and Columbus proved his theory from there; but if he persuaded the Queen to climb the shrouds of one of those dinky Mediterranean feluccas — what with those voluminous skirts affected by the ladies of the time — I question the man's intentions. Damn it (and I hate to say this) he was no gentleman.

I didn't mind the slow uneventful days between the Equator and the Argentine. It's only that I was anxious to get down there. My water colors and drawings were going pretty well and I had visions of doing some work down there. I was told the coast towns were all dull, but Perry said the interior was pretty, and I hoped to get out onto the Argentine plains and do some of their Gauchos swinging their curious lassos.

One day rolled over the next not unlike that school of porpoises I'd mentioned, until one morning when Joe shouted, "Hey, you keeds, always bellyaching you wan' see land— Dere she is — dere's land—"

But Mush had been caught with that a number of times since Perry first sprung it on us. It seemed to be a good staple joke, always good for a "haw" from somebody. Mush didn't even turn his head as he sneered:

"Yeh, yeh, I know — three miles straight down."

"I'm no kiddin'—I tell you dere she is, Brazil — over dis side—"

None of the sailors on that ship ever said larboard or starboard, except the fat old Sailing Man, but no one paid him any mind. The officers might have used that terminology — I never talked to them much, rather they didn't to me.

Mush dashed for the rail, and after I unscrambled myself from some buckets I was carrying through the shelter deck, I was after him to see the coast of Brazil with its waving palmettos, maybe a few sloe-eyed senoritas. .

"What land—? Where is land?"

"Dere, look. What's d'mattaire, you blind?"

We squinted — well, I was nearsighted and depended upon Mush to confirm Joe's sight of land — but he evidently couldn't see any more than I.

"Are you kidding?"

"Naw, dere she is on d'horizon."

"You mean that thin gray strip like a long skinny wave?"

"Yeh, dis is Brazil."

"It don't look like much to me." Frankly, Mush was disappointed. So was I.

"Much? She's biggaire than your United Steaks."

"Well, she don't look it."

And since I couldn't see any difference between that gray strip and the rest of the gray water, the coast of Brazil had no effect on me, though it was nice to know that it was there.

Then, those porpoise-like days became wetter. We'd get some rainy days and we Soogie-Moogied without the hose — let the rain wash away the Soogie. The guys began to look different as they put on more clothes. I invested in a fine suit of yellow oilskins and a sou'wester from the slop chest, which were all ripped up a few days after I bought them. I was told I didn't know how to hang them up right — they should have been oiled or something. All I knew, they'd stick together in a messy lump and, as I pulled the sleeve of the jacket out from the rest of it and tried to struggle into the thing, something ripped — and in a few days, it was so slashed through that the whole suit was useless.

But I have the consoling memory of the first day or two that I wore it and looked like the man in the yellow oilskins on the bottles of Scott's Emulsion my sister used to take when she was little. I looked very much like that man. Of course he carried an immense codfish on his back and I wore glasses, but aside from that we were very similar, beard and all. My beard was definitely beginning to show, and when dust gathered in my whiskers, some recognized its existence. Most of the crew thought I should wash my face more often. Colder weather was no excuse for curtailing the daily bucket bath.

We lived a more interior social life now, sitting around the fo'castle of an evening. There the discussions covered a wide field — economics, politics, religion, philosophy, art, life and death. Talk on the women of the Argentine that Birdneck had foretold hadn't started yet.

The fat Sailing Man's bunk was in the center of the fo'castle and there was no way of keeping him out of any argument or discussion. Each of the crew had fixed up his bunk and the bulkhead around it into a snug personal expression. Naturally, there were the pin-ups — nothing salacious, usually a corny chromo, some magazine print of a saccharine sweet dame with flowers. Small, clean linen bags containing sewing equipment hung along there, too; watches, pipe-racks, framed photographs. All their bunks looked clean and homey. All except the fat Sailing Man's. That was as messy and tangled as a pigsty.

He'd waddle back into the fo'castle every evening after his bath with his dirty towel draped around his shoulders. He was never completely dry or completely clean. Rivulets of dirty water and soapsuds would still be dribbling down his back and legs as he slopped down, kerplunk, in the middle of his bunk on top of whatever was lying there — old shoes, greasy dungarees, lumpy blankets, et al. Then he'd root around that mess and drag out his pipe and from some other damp pile dig out a crumpled paper of tobacco. He'd fill up, dripping grains of tobacco all over himself and his bunk. The matches he dug out from God-knows-where would always be damp — he'd borrow a light. He'd suck his pipe with a noise like a heavy head cold, and when he got going good, he'd look up and smile brightly.

That loose tobacco and his dampness seemed to have stained his whole bunk and its contents a nicotine tan. His bunk stood out in a color and quality all its own. It was a blight on the neatness of the fo'castle and I'd heard some mumbling that they were going to make him clean up that mess, but nothing ever happened. No one spoke to him about it the whole length of the trip.

Every evening about eight, we'd hear the regular tramp of the bullet-headed guy up on the poopdeck overhead. That guy, with his fine ripply muscles, was taking his regular exercise up there, regular as the postman, rain or storm — fancy stepping about with dumbbells and stuff like that. But this bullet-headed guy, who exercised so carefully every night from eight to nine, never did any work. True, he'd go through all the motions, but he never wasted any of his precious muscle on pulling or lifting gear or anything else. He'd appear to be, and whenever we'd be tugging in a line, I could see light come through where his hands grasped the line and his arms would move back and forth in rhythm with ours but he wasn't tugging — one of Bernarr MacFadden's Develop-Your-Manly-Beauty-Without-Work types — mustn't unbalance your development with work stuff.

He'd come down from his calisthenics about nine, switch the lights off near his bunk, climb into it, close his curtains, and we could hear him grumbling and grinding his teeth until all talk, music and stirring around in the fo'castle had completely died down.

We'd go forward to our own cabin and Al would go with us. Some evenings Philip would join us there, bringing along some treat — a jar of jam and some crackers he'd swiped from the officers' mess — and big Joe'd come along and we'd talk late. That cabin became quite a hangout as the nights got colder and longer and I piled up a lot of drawings.

It looked as if, with all the work I'd done and all the water colors and drawings I planned to do in the Argentine, I'd be able to give a show when I got back to the city.

On one of those nights when it was too drizzly and tough to stumble back to the fo'castle after supper, we were sitting around talking in our cabin. Philip had come up and so had Birdneck. Joe, who had been standing look-out up on the prow, came down to our place dripping wet and splashed himself down in Mush's clean, dry bunk — wet as he was. Mush howled, but nothing could be done about it. Joe was a big guy and hard to move. He sang what he said was a Tahitian song appropriate for the occasion — a chant to drive away the weather demons.

When he was in the middle of it someone knocked at the door. I shouted: "Come in, lug. Open 'er up."

He did. Joe shut up. So did everybody else.

It was the Old Man, old Captain Brandt himself, standing there wearing a heavy rubber raincoat, his mustache dripping, and a benign smile on his mug. Philip and Birdneck slipped out behind the Old Man's back; Joe stayed on. He didn't give a damn for any of the officers, including the Old Man.

"H-m-m. I hear you're doing pictures of the members of the crew. H-m-m. I came for'ard to — h-m-m. Let's take a look at some."

Since he was already in our crowded cabin and he was Captain of the vessel — could I say no?

"Yes, sir. Here they are, sir, hanging up here. Here's Philip and then there's Kennedy." Those sailors had last names but I couldn't remember many.

"Yes, m-m, I can recognize 'em — recognize 'em all." He had adjusted his pince-nez attached to its dripping cable, set it on the end of his nose, and inspected my drawings with the manner of a dilettante, a patron des beaux arts.

His attitude and affectations were excellent — I've seen a lot worse in the red-carpeted galleries along Fifty-seventh Street. He studied all the drawings carefully. Then he tapped his pince-nez on his chin, readjusted it again on the end of his nose, and peered at all my work with his head thrown back. He slowly opened his mouth to comment. I was prepared for something that smacked of the connoisseur — an appreciation for the sensitivity of my line or an awareness of my masterly use of chiaroscuro. What he said was:

"Yep, I recognizes 'em all, but it don't look like 'em. This of Philip here — it's too old looking. Then that A.B. you got there — his hair ain't right—" And so on, right down the line.

Why, that old Newfoundland, bluenosed, salted-down chowder-head!

As Captain of his ship, he was judge, king, and second to God — I granted. He had the rights of life and death over us. But this stuff was extracurricular! Pd be damned if he could elect himself judge, juror and art critic of my work, my own drawings, my water colors. I sneered him off, but it's evident it didn't take, so I switched the conversation and said I hoped to get more drawing and painting done down in the Argentine and. .

"You hope to get more painting done? Where?"

He turned and looked at me with his brows lifted in a nasty arch.

"Why, yes. I expected that—"

"What do you think you're going to do when we tie up in the Argentine?"

"Well, as I was saying, I hope to pack up some portfolios and take along my paints and brushes and get out into the interior. I understand there's some interesting paintable stuff there—" After all, he talked as if he understood the jargon of the studios, so I was giving it.

"Young feller, when we get down to Argentine, you're gonna work this ship."

"But, Captain Brandt, I understood — I thought you understood — after all, I— Well, won't I get a few days off, maybe, while we're in port?"

"No, sir. Young feller, when you signed your articles, it was for every day until we drop anchor in New York Harbor."

"Then, I won't get any chance at all to do any painting down there?"

"Sure."

He clicked his teeth back in place. They had been dislodged by that sure. "Sure, you'll do some paintin' down there — and I guess lots of it. Paintin' over the side…"

12. The Magnificent Mustachios

AN AESTHETIC AWARENESS SHOULD NOT BE MEASURED with the element of time. That is to say — whereas some individuals instantly realize they are in the presence of sensitivity, beauty and all the other qualities that make up a true plastic expression, others achieve that consciousness at a more leisurely pace. Therefore, I'm not maligning Captain Brandt or his sense of values when I say he reacted very slowly. He needed a period of gestation. During the long still hours of the night, it must have dawned on him and he realized that his visit to our cabin had been, for him, an important aesthetic experience; for the very next morning we were ordered. Mush and I, to come up to the bridge and get our instruction at the wheel — come evening.

It couldn't have been that Perry's legalistic ranting on our just dues had reached him. I had a feeling those orders were a pretext. He would have liked to have me ask him to sit for a portrait. But I wasn't asking. Perhaps I overrate the importance of his visit and the effects of my work on him. Perhaps it was our just dues getting instruction in the wheelhouse, and he wanted to be sure there was something recorded in the Ship's Log that indicated he had tried to make sailors of us — but simply couldn't.

The Captain would try to explain the workings of the little brass wheel, the compass needle, etc., on those evenings, and it seemed to me he preened and posed around in a variety of costumes hoping perhaps one of them might catch my fancy so I'd be inspired to do something elegant that could be hung in the officers' mess. At least so it seemed to me. Since I didn't rise to the bait, he soon lost interest in our nautical education and never brought it up again.

Anyway, instructing us on our own time wasn't right, according to Perry.

We struck some nasty weather, cold and wet, and every evening as Mush and I went forward and climbed through the narrow passage between the ship's rail and the big boilers we had lashed down to the deck back in Bayonne, we were scared. Those damn lashing chains had loosened a bit and those big black boilers would lean over at us just as we were midway through that passage. We didn't dare climb over the hatches— the wind was terrific and would have blown us off — and now and again we'd ship a wave that would wash across the whole forward deck.

Guide lines were strung along the deck and we crawled about our business — until one day when the Bos'n said we were approaching the Argentine coast.

The water was calm and yellow and the Bos'n told me we'd been in the La Platte River for the last couple of hours. Late that afternoon, as I was still straining my eyes trying to get a sight of land, or anything of the banks, of that screwy river, I saw a ship straight ahead of us that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. I was standing at the rail alone at the time— the La Platte River at its mouth is over sixty miles wide and you can't see its banks when you're sailing through its channel. Mush and the others had given up trying to see anything, but I'd liked to have been the first to hail Land Ho — I never tried that out loud and wanted to see how it sounded — so I stuck by the rail squinting into the sun. This ship, which must have been seen by the men on the bridge, was something!

A dirty, black-hulled, two-master, with black and blood-red striped sails dripping from her yardarms — and I saw it first on that coppery sea against the setting sun.

That bloody, black ship was anchored right in our path and we were already close enough to see her crew. Three of them stood her deck — two of them murderous-looking fellows with tremendous black mustachios, the third a giant of a man with mustachios of iron gray. The fading sun lit up the ends of his whiskers so that they flamed away from his face.

The three put out in a dingy they let over the side and the blackguards rowed toward us. Our engines had stopped and we were slowly and helplessly drifting toward this hell-ship.

"Hey, kid. Grab hold. What you stalling for—?" The Bos'n had come out of the shelter deck with an armful of gear. The big fellow climbed aboard — the one with the immense gray mustaches — on the rope ladder the Bos'n and I had dropped over the side. He climbed up over our rail and brought his hand stiffly up to the brim of his big high-crowned black sombrero, as he gave the Bos'n a buenos dias and the Bos'n mumbled something and indicated the bridge. Our big boarder spread his fingers wide on either side of his potbelly, snorted, and twisted his head up to look at the wheelhouse and then strode off with a "Now I'll take command" air.

As we watched him in his tightly buttoned, dark suit climb up to the bridge, since our engines had started up again and we were leaving that ship behind, I said sotto voce to the little Bos'n, "Now what?"

"Now what?"

He looked at me. "What?"

"What are we gonna do about him—?"

"About him? You mean the pilot?"

"Oh, that was the pilot?"

"Sure, he's the pilot. What'd you think we'd do — pick up passengers in mid-Atlantic?"

"Then that red and black ship back there was the pira—, I mean, the pilot boat?"

"Yeh."

"Oh," I said and went off to supper.

Next morning Mush and I tumbled out early and dressed quickly in all the clothes we had. It was cold and damp in our cabin. When we got out on deck we found we were enveloped in a clinging, chilly fog. The water was an oily gray, and we moved slowly. Somewhere during the night or about dawn a couple of tugs had picked us up. They were guiding us through the channel between the buoys which were scattered irregularly up ahead of us, and we drifted along in their wake.

We rushed through breakfast so we could get back to the deck for our first view of Argentina. The crew was scattered along the rail. Through the mist we could see the shore line stretched out ahead — swampy-looking trees with no foliage. It was the tail end of winter down here. I remember telling that to Old Man McQuarrie when I worked for him again some time later — that the Argentine had its winter when we have our summer, summer when we were making snowballs — and the old dodo scowled at me suspiciously. He thought I was ribbing him — he didn't know that. Guess he thought we in the Western Hemisphere — what with our Good Neighbor policies, share-and-share-alike since we're all republics — ought to get equal breaks in the weather. The science columns of the newspapers he read hadn't prepared him for the difference in seasons between America del Norte and America del Sur.

I peered ahead trying to get my first glimpse of Argentinian civilization — some buildings or people. We were being towed up one of the small rivers that emptied into La Platte now.

Perry, the Portuguese, leaning way over side, suddenly yipped:

"There she is, kid. Rio Santiago, d'Argentine."

I followed the direction of his finger and dimly I could make out some large four-story factory buildings ahead of us up river. There was a big black-and-white painted sign on the first of these.

"What's that sign say, Mush?" I asked.

Mush, in spite of the glandular pop of his watery blue eyes, could see well.

"There's some little lettering on the second line I can't make out, but the upper sez — she sez — A—R—"

"Argentine? Looks like an Argentine-Welcomes-You sign."

What I can't see, I usually guess at.

"Naw, it can't be Argentine. It's A-R-M-0-U-R. That's it. Armour Packing Company, it must be — the ham what am. That Spanish written below it must mean that."

"It's beef they slaughters down here. They don't have pigs down here," said the Fat Guy further down the rail.

"They have now," mumbled Mush.

"Didya ever have sow belly and turnip greens?" Slim the Georgia Boy asked me, moodily.

"Have 'em — you mean to eat?"

"Yeah. M'mammy cooks 'em good."

"Dey got big packing houses down here. Dat's Armour's and look dere — dat's Swift's." Perry shouted in his effort to help me see better, but he didn't have to — it was clear even to my eyes. "And furder up you see d'Bethlehem steel sign, huh? They get these big boilers we're carrying."

That was a little disappointing, my first view of a distant land should be of big signs, signs I could read as if I hadn't gone anywhere.

"I could have seen as much in Astoria."

"What's Astoria?" asked Mush.

I hadn't realized I'd thought out loud, so I said, "Just a place."

That big pilot who had come aboard was out on the bridge bellowing orders at the two little tugs that were shoving us about on the river. Our ship was eased up alongside the bank. As we moved slowly into place we found ourselves staring down at about a couple of hundred Argentine longshoremen who stood there in grim silence staring back up at us.

If I thought those three on the pilot boat were tough — huh— those were violets compared with this gang who glowered back at us. A description of one will suffice for them all, since outside of a few minor details every one of those hundreds of black-mustachioed cutthroats looked like the bogy that mamas scare their children with. The one I pick is a vicious-looking, triangle-faced guy with the national big coal-black whiskers standing out straight from his face — those mustachios. He is capped by a beret pulled forward on his head. He wears a big-sleeved, cocoa-colored heavy shirt tight at the cuffs. His throat is wrapped in a black scarf. Around his belly is wound some heavy folds of cloth. His trousers are loose and he's shod in those trick, rope-soled, canvas slippers that the French, too, think is a bargain in footwear — and one of the reasons middle-aged Argentinians and Frenchmen take to holding themselves up with walking sticks so early in life.

The horrible few hundred — all of them, every last man— had an immense cargo hook slung around his neck with the round handles of them resting on their chests like huge lavalieres, but the vile points of those hooks were no ornaments…

Their ominous silence as they stood glowering back at us was, to say the least, just a mite inhospitable. They might have given us a wave of the hand, a smile or even a good-natured wink to indicate they were glad to see us. After all, we were bringing them business — unloading our ship — since they were longshoremen and that was their business. Or were they dissatisfied and all yearned to express themselves and be a lot of wild Apache dancers which they looked like? Anyway, they were not cheerful and I was a little apprehensive as I stretched out and looked along the rail at our own good-natured crew smiling down at this gang. We seemed too little and too few compared with that bunch.

Our ship was almost in place before I realized there was nothing to worry about — nothing would or could happen. For right in front of this murderous-looking mob of a couple of hundred cutthroats with their rapier-tipped cargo hooks stood the Port Police of Rio Santiago, Argentine, to maintain order.

He was a ruddy-faced stocky little man (with the traditional black mustachios). His uniform, a dark-blue worsted sailor suit with white piping, was complete with a fine white braided cord that draped into his breast pocket attached to — yes, you guessed — a silver whistle: the same kind of sailor suit (with a whistle) they used to dress us up in when we were young and we wore it proudly because we didn't know how silly we looked. And the arm of the law grasped firmly a ten-inch length of white policeman's club. Thus he was prepared for any emergency. We threw a short rope ladder over side. Then the Bos'n tapped me.

"All right, kid, over the side. We'll toss you a line."

I wasn't too sure I could be trusted with so important a mission, but I didn't hesitate, not any longer than to ask, "Me — you mean me?"

"Yeah, sure — over you go. We'll toss y'a line from the prow."

So over I went. After all, we did represent the Estados Unidos. We were in a sense sort of ambassadors of good will, and it would never do to show we didn't trust a few hundred citizens of Argentina with knife-edged cargo hooks as big as scythes at our back as we tried frantically to catch the Bos'n's line which he intended to throw at us from the prow — now, could we?

It felt good to step on dry hard earth again, and when I got on the river bank I stamped my feet on the ground a few times after I'd landed. I grinned hopefully around with a grin which plainly said (I hoped): Look, I'm happy. I'm delighted to be here on your fine, solid lump of earth — your Argentine. Look, I come as a friend… But there was no answering grin from that mob. Only the Port Police of Rio Santiago grinned back at me. And I suspect that grin of his was perpetual and perhaps a defense mechanism.

I quickly walked (not ran) along the side of the ship toward the prow and miraculously caught the line the Bos'n threw at me — or rather picked it up out of the dust where it had become entangled with my feet — and I pulled in the hawser attached to it, the noose of which had splashed down into the river, and I tugged it out sopping wet and cold from the dirty water and nervously twisted and bent it on over the niggerhead — and I was up and back on our ship, which guaranteed me the protection of all the resources of the U.S.A., before you could recite the first three chapters of Robinson Crusoe — phew!

After I was established behind the safety and comfort of the rail of the S.S. Hermanita, I looked over the side and saw that other members of our crew were ashore pulling in hawsers too. Big Joe was amongst them. That big Canuck jutted up above those Argentinians like a Gargantua. So did skinny Mush to a lesser degree. I looked closer at the longshoremen who stood so glum and still right in front of me on the banks of the river. Why, they weren't so big. For the most part, they were little men. It was their big shirts, violent mustachios and big hooks that had impressed me. And as I watched I noticed there was a rolypoly man with a watch chain swung across his bulgy, tightly buttoned vest circling among them with a pad and pencil, talking to one, then to another. Evidently, he was a labor boss or contractor.

Then it struck me that these were just a few hundred men hoping that they'd be picked for this job to unload our ship, since our small freighter couldn't employ them all. Why, they were just a bunch of hungry guys, and there were some pale-looking women dressed in shabby, black dresses with black shawls around their shoulders standing among them — hoping with their men, I suppose. They didn't look so tough any more.

As soon as we were tied up, a gangplank was rolled up to the ship's side and we hoisted up its end and lashed it to our afterdeck. The Port Police promptly stationed himself at the foot of the gangplank, and our thirsty crew was kept on the ship (remember, this trip happened during that dark period of our American history for which we should be ashamed of ourselves in our deep, wide, dry throats — the Prohibition Error) and away from that little shack we could see ashore, plainly marked Cerveza Chicago Bar. And I suppose that firm bastion of righteousness, the Port Cop, also kept the hungry bunch of longshoremen from coming on and earning their food any sooner.

That was true, but he had one other purpose. After we'd leaned over the rail for about an hour or so wondering what now — since we weren't called to turn to — a large shiny limousine drove up and swung to a stop alongside our ship. Out stepped a tall, aristocratic-looking, elderly gentleman, dressed elegantly in gray spats, striped trousers, dark jacket and a big black sombrero with a rolling brim. He sported a handsome long white goatee — more the type that real goats wear, not the little trim chin whiskers that the name usually implies — and in one hand he carried a glossy, black walking stick topped with a handsome silver knob. And in the other a fine leather brief case.

Unquestionably, a suave, spirited elder statesman, one high up in the diplomatic corps or something. I'd been told old Captain Brandt had been making this run down to the Argentine for the past thirty years, that he spoke Spanish like a Spik, and was well-liked by all south of Venezuela (don't know what he did there that made that country an exception), but I did not know he rated this. The elegant gentleman with quiet dignity and long steps quickly made his way through the path the longshoremen had automatically made for him to our ship's side.

At the foot of the gangplank the Port Cop greeted him with a broad smile and touched his cap in respectful salute. The gentleman took it in his stride and, without stopping, checked his fine shiny black walking stick and its silver knob with the Port Police. The little man seemed grateful to receive it and his hand was thrust out expectantly. For a moment he looked around with a glowing smile and then, carefully, he rested it on the ground just a little as he posed with his hand on the silver knob. He was happy to be minding it even for a short time, it went so well with his sailor suit. And it was clear this was one of his regular pleasant duties.

Our elegant visitor made the gangplank in one or two graceful leaps, and when we wanted to direct him to the Captain's quarters, with a wave of his long sensitive hand he indicated he knew — he knew — and he was off and up the ladder with the same stately, swinging stride with which he had descended from his shiny chariot.

Captain Brandt was up on the bridge wearing his best blue uniform and his very best beaming smile. He looked down, and even before the gentleman had gained the bridge they greeted each other cordially. The Captain spoke in Spanish. The diplomat returned his greeting in an accented English— "Goo' morning, Capitain Brandt."

A short time after, the Bos'n rounded us up — everybody up on the Captain's deck. The black gang were already climbing up the ladder on their side of the ship. The sun had come out and we lined up single file, all thirty-two members of the crew— deckhands, black gang, and mess — sort of mixed up in this line that began down on the deck below, up the ladder, and snaked around in back of the Captain's cabin to its door.

We stood there quietly. Some of the men had been through whatever was happening up there and they passed down again, squeezing by those of us who stood on the narrow ladder with a subdued polite grunt — that genteel, white-bearded aristocrat up there had already made his influence felt. This, I thought, was the work of a master diplomat, a true gentleman. .

"A damn old goat, dat's all he is."

Philip, the Captain's messboy, was grumbling in back of me. I turned so fast it almost knocked me off the ladder.

"Philip, what's the matter? The old guy with the whiskers? What did he do you?"

"No, no, not him," said Philip hastily. "Not him. He's a gentleman — I don't speak of him. I min that goddam ol' pilot, who came aboard last night. He's worse dan goat. He's pig—"

"What's the matter, Philip?" I'd never seen him carry on like that. That boy was always patient and soft-spoken.

Philip, ashy gray in his anger, told me how that old pilot had messed up the Second Mate's cabin, where he'd been bunked during the night — messed it up completely. There was a handsome polished-brass cuspidor in that cabin. The old pirate never even aimed for it, but hit out from every side and splashed overhead and bulkhead with equal disregard. And poor Philip had just now finished cleaning it up.

By this time, the line we were on had advanced until I was just sixth away from the Captain's cabin door and as we stood there, the door swung open and let out three more of the crew. They swaggered off the Captain's deck with embarrassed, self-conscious grins. The Bos'n who was acting as doorman let the three nearest the door into the cabin. I got a flash of what was going on inside. The Captain was seated at his desk and the red-headed Second Mate stood talking to the tall, bearded gentleman.

Listening to Philip's unsavory gripe further down the line, I hadn't had a chance to ask anybody what this was all about, and we now were too close to the cabin to speak — couldn't be indiscreet. Perhaps the thirty-two members of the crew were being formally presented to our distinguished visitor. That's what it looked like — Captain Brandt must be introducing us all proudly, three at a time, to this Secretary of State of Argentine — or maybe he was just a governor of one of the provinces.

So I thought as we stood shivering in the sun outside that door. There was a sharp wind and it found its way through the pea jacket, sweater, and two pair of dungarees I was wearing. Finally, the door swung open for us — a dirty, old guy from the black gang, the white-haired A.B. with the pink-lidded eyes, and me. The sun was bright in the cabin — the first and only time I ever saw the interior of the Old Man's quarters. It looked comfortable.

They all looked at us with a pleasant smile as we came in. The Argentinian towered over the others in stately dignity. He stood there rubbing his hands together. The red-headed Second, who had been talking to our visitor in a rapid Spanish, turned to us and said in English:

"All right, you guys, loosen your belts and open your pants."

We fumbled with our buttons and undid our trousers — what kind of a diplomatic reception is this? The Mate motioned me toward our visitor. I clumped forward holding up my pants.

The old gentleman had his snowy white starched shirt cuffs folded back over the sleeves of his elegant black jacket. With his long, pale, tapering hands, he directed me to stand facing him in the sun that came from one of the portholes. Then with a graceful wave he indicated something toward me and rippled in Spanish to the Mate.

"Take ya glasses off, kid, didn't ya hear him—?"

Now you try that sometime — try taking off a pair of springy specs that get caught in your matted hair (I hadn't had a haircut in a long time) from under a hat you'd had pulled down over your ears, while you're trying to keep up two pairs of pants that you're trying to hold on to under a lumped-up pea jacket and a sweater.

I did — and held my precious glasses in one hand and all the rest of me together with the other, while the old gentleman, smiling quietly, efficiently flicked up the upper lids of both my eyes, looking for something. Then with one quick movement, his slender fingers probed about on either side of my neck just back of the corners of my jaws. He said a word to the Captain, who scribbled it on the papers in front of him. Then this possible Secretary of State or governor of one of the provinces with no warning swooped those long aristocratic hands of his down and into my open trousers and out again so fast — surprising me so I gasped, fumbled, almost dropped my glasses, and lost my pants altogether.

Then he tapped me on the shoulder, said something again to the Captain, and dipped his hands in a bowl of water that smelled of disinfectant. He stood there wiping them on the clean towel while he waited until the embarrassed old white-haired guy with the pink lids arranged himself before him, trustingly but desperately holding up his pants.

Somehow, I got myself pulled together — glasses on and buttoned up — before he'd completed the inspection of the white-haired guy's eyes. He was somber and talked to him in Spanish. I was proud of my shipmate's halting response in the same language — I'd written sometime back he was a nice old guy.

The Port Doctor — of course he was that; even I'd guessed it by this time — completed his inspection of the old guy. Then he bent over the Captain's desk and talked to him in a low voice. The old guy was told to sit down in a chair over in the corner of the cabin, and after the doctor had gone over the dirty black-ganger — right down to the same quick loin inspection he'd given me — we were let out of the cabin. But the old white-haired guy with the pink eyelids remained sitting there, sad and forlorn, in a corner of the cabin, nobody talking to him.

Yes, we had been inspected carefully to make sure we brought no foreign germs to contaminate the Argentine, and the white-haired guy was the only one — because of his pink-lidded eyes — who was not a perfectly clean, harmless, physical specimen. They didn't inspect us as we left the last Argentinian port to check up on how many of their domestic bugs we carried away. They gave them away free — there was no tariff on them.

13. Thirty-Two Bridegrooms

BACK ON THE DECK UNDER THE SUPERVISION of the young Third Mate, with the Bos'n as his lieutenant, we began to sledge out the big wooden wedges which locked the long, flat iron bars that had been used to batten down the hatches. We'd begin unloading after lunch.

The Bos'n told us to lock up our stuff—"Lock your lockers, lock your cabin doors, nail down anything that belongs to you before those Spik longshoremen come aboard. They'd pick up anything lying around loose, and if you see any of these guys in 'tween decks where they don't belong, or back there in the fo'castle or in any of the passages, kick 'em the hell out — hard and fast."

That was a long speech for the Bos'n. He spoke it quietly, as if he didn't like Spiks. And sometime later, when I did a drawing of him and he talked a little about himself, I could see why.

The labor boss had come aboard and Philip had been sent ashore to get some cheroots for the Chief Engineer. It looked as if we had established contact with the mainland. I imagine a number of members of the crew would have gone on a toot that afternoon, but there wasn't much money around.

Perry% glistening with his "inside dope" look, grabbed big Joe and me and dragged us off to a quiet spot on the deck after the hatch covers had been neatly piled alongside the open hatches.

"Lissen, y'ain't gonna eat d'slops on dis ship today, are ye?"

Big Joe grimaced. "Yeah, what else? Can't get no money till night."

Perry brought his head down with a wink that screwed up the whole side of his face.

"Don't worry about dat. I arranged a deal — with that hombre," and he snapped his head back, still with that wink in the direction of the labor boss scribbling officiously in his little pad as he talked to the Third Mate.

Joe nodded knowingly and grinned.

Just before we knocked off at noon. Perry with much secretive twisting of his head from side to side disappeared into the fo'castle door and after a few moments appeared dressed in an overcoat which bulged suspiciously in strange places. It was one of those shaped coats, and that strange bulk Perry had hidden under it was as obvious a bit of smuggling as if he'd waved his crime from the masthead. Joe and I crowded around him and we stumbled down the gangplank in a huddle. The smiling sailor-boy policeman at the foot of the plank gave us the same bright smile he'd worn on his face all morning.

We kept our formation as we walked away from the river. Quickly, like an irregular-shaped six-legged crab, we made the shack — the one that had flaunted that intriguing sign Cerveza Chicago Bar.

We entered the door in a lump. The proprietor was standing behind a narrow little bar — need I say he wore mustachios? — and it looked as if he'd been expecting us.

There were three or four small round tables arranged around the room. Perry directed us to pick one, and then, with his coat-tails jutting aft and his newly acquired appendage bosoming for'ard, quickly crossed to the bar. The proprietor signaled him to a door. He and Perry disappeared behind its ragged cretonne curtain.

We'd picked a table and sat there. Joe stretched out his long legs, loosened his jacket, and looked around the unpainted, sparsely furnished room. He smiled happily and said, "Nice, huh, keed? No slops today."

"Yeah. What'd Perry get—? What'd he bring along—?"

Joe shushed me. "Sh-u-sh. Forget it."

Perry rushed back to us, his face all aglow. The curtain to the back room bellowed out in his passing wind. He sat down and rubbed his hands vigorously together with his elbows held high — evidently he'd concluded a fine bit of business.

"O.K., fellers — all fixed. Now lessee what we gonna have. . "

"What dey got special?" asked Joe.

Perry threw himself back in his chair with the violent way he always moved and turned toward our host leaning there on his elbows at the bar. He had lit up a sawed-off cheroot which dangled from his mouth now. He too was satisfied with his business acumen.

After a few minutes of give and take in Spanish, Perry turned back to us, banged the table with his fist, and said, "That's it — dat's fine. Oh boy, oh boy. How's about some steak Caballero and a couple of liter of swell Argentine wine, de rojo — some good bread and some fr-e-sh butta—?" And he switched his head back and forth from Joe to me with such a delighted anticipating grin, his mouth open and drooling, we said sure, swell — promptly.

Perry straightened up, and with a straight-armed wave of the hand gave our host the go-ahead signal. Whereupon he disappeared into that door and returned with a fistful of bone-handled assorted cutlery which he dropped on the table in a heap, a long loaf of bread, and with his fingers gripped into three heavy glasses. Then from under his arm he plucked a large, dark, unlabeled bottle and banged it down in the center of our table and shuffled back into the little room.

Perry grabbed the bottle, held it high for our inspection, then worked the cork loose and sniffed its contents with his eyes blissfully closed.

"Boy — d'bouquet, d'aroma — here, smell it," and he thrust the bottle at my nose.

"Come on, come on, set 'em up." Joe was impatient.

Perry flourished the bottle and carefully filled our glasses to the brim. We all raised our glasses to each other. I took my first mouthful. It tasted exactly like the red wine — the red ink — I'd been drinking in the Italian speakeasies in New York for the past five years.

After his first gulp Perry sniff'ed the remaining wine in his glass, sampled it gently, and rolled the taste of it around on his tongue. Again he went through a spiel on its excellence. Joe had taken his drink in one swallow.

"Feenish up — pour anudder. Dees good for de tonsil."

Perry poured and midway he stopped and sniffed the air around us.

"Get dat. Dat's dem."

There was the distinct smell of meat being scorched and a thin cloud of bluish smoke began to seep out from the door with the cretonne curtains.

"Yeah. That smells good." Joe grinned, nodded his head, and emptied his glass again.

It wasn't long before the unsmiling proprietor, bartender, and cook of the Chicago Bar backed into the room with three smoking plates. He silently set them down in front of us and gave no response to Perry's enthusiasm.

"Bueno, bueno — muy bueno."

"Look at them," he directed us. "Look at them. Dere's food for ya — no galley slops — steak Caballero."

They did look good and Joe's gurgling laugh and his quick attack indicated he thought so. And they lived up to their looks. I was tempted to ask — since steak Caballero is a broiled steak with a fried egg riding on top. Why, since egg and steak were good in themselves — and alone. According to Perry, who talked with egg yolk and steak juice dribbling down his chin, "Dese steaks is prime — yeah, prime Argentine beef — dere's none better. And d'eggs — dere fried in butta," he told us confidentially, his eyes rolling back and forth from Joe to me. "Yes, butta, fresh butta. D'ya taste it?"

Why mix them up? They could both stand on their own merits. But I remembered hearing of some Europeans visiting in the States who on being served our national concoction— the sacred ice-cream soda — questioned the logic of combining an ice (as they called it) with flavored carbonated waters, and damn near brought on a diplomatic incident by their indiscretion.

So I swallowed my curiosity with my steak Caballero and drank my share of the second and third liter of wine Perry ordered with his magnanimous gestures. When he called for a fourth bottle, the proprietor shook his head and brought a slip of paper scribbled in Spanish to the table. After Perry and he pored over it a few minutes, Perry was convinced there was no more coming to us on that deal he'd managed and we'd get no more wine. We sat there munching the crisp white bread smeared with butter.

"Did ya notice dis butta — unsaltered butta," Perry gourmandized as he sprinkled his hunk of bread and butter liberally from a salt cellar. "Yeah, dat's strictly fresh unsaltered butta — regular Jew butta. Tastes good, huh?"

When there was nothing more to eat or drink or enthuse over we happily strolled back to the ship.

The crew was standing around waiting for an immense derrick on a slow-moving flatboat to edge up alongside and lift the iron boilers we had brought down up off our decks. Joe, Perry, and I kept our mouths shut. We weren't talking. We had made a pact to stick together that evening and do this port right. Perry knew every bar, every dive, every dark crevice in it, and would lead us right.

The longshoremen were busy on the afterdeck and there were a few men who had come aboard who looked as if they had something to do with the ship's business. One, a round-faced, pasty-complexioned young guy with slicked-down black hair and wide-open, long-lashed eyes was talking to some of the deck crew. He said he was an American down there with a three-year contract to work for the steel company, that it was terribly lonesome down here with no one to talk to — none of the Argentinians spoke English. Then he suggested in an offhand manner if some of the fellows wanted to see some places in Rio Santiago he'd take us around. He knew all the best houses, swell girls, etc.

Perry shoved Joe and me off in a comer — again. Again he had some dope.

"Lissen, that guy's a pimp. Don't lissen to him. He's just roundin' up business for some bordellos he's workin'."

"Well, if he knows de houses," Joe said.

"What do ya mean if he knows d'houses? He can't know 'em any better dan me. I tell ya I know dis port — I shipped down here before. And furdermore, he's a pimp I tell ya. He's commoicial. Sure, he gets a commission."

Well, that topped it. Joe shrugged his big shoulders, dug his hands in his pockets, and nodded his head. Of course, if Perry could get it for us wholesale, he was amenable. Our pact to do Rio Santiago together still stood.

There was a lot of hustling around the deck that afternoon, but the crew hadn't much work to do. It took a long time before that tremendous derrick on the flatboat had ponderously moved itself into a position alongside the ship so that it could pluck first one, then the other, big boiler off our decks. We just stood by to unlash the chains that held them down. There were no watches now and all the crew were day men. I wondered how experts like Joe, Perry, Slim, and the rest would manage to keep their records and hands clean when we started the sloppy port work I heard was in store for us.

When we knocked off that evening we lined up in the officers' mess and the Captain, seated behind a table flanked by the Purser with his account books, dealt out Argentine money — an advance against what we were to be paid off in New York,

I drew the equivalent of ten good American dollars in Argentine pesos — the most unconvincing money I ever held in my hand. Those pesos, a two-inch by three strip of smudged tissue paper, rolled up in our palms like the leftover debris you find in a little-used old coat pocket. If I'd ever decide to make a career of counterfeiting, that's the sort of money I'd start with. An interwoven complicated engraving all over the note and then dip it in a greasy bath of dishwater and let it linger in a pool of spilled coffee, and you have a perfect peso worth, in those days, forty cents real money.

Having collected our money, off we dashed for the bathroom. What a splashing, scrubbing, shaving (except me, I had a beard) everybody gave himself. It looked like a big night. Thirty-two bridegrooms anointing themselves for the community brides…

Everyone was eating ashore — no slops for anybody tonight. After a lot of ducking and squirming around in front of the fo'castle mirrors — almost everybody had a piece of mirror clipped on the inside of his locker door — everybody had his necktie knotted to his satisfaction and fancy armbands arranged on the sleeves of their striped silk shirts.

Let me pause a moment on those gaily striped, heavy silk voluminous shirts cut from some immense Joseph's coat, or patterned from one of the color schemes of some exotic jungle flower. They were beautiful and all — because somehow you'd ruin them if you washed them — all smelled of old sweats on the mixed perfumed bosoms of the whores of half the seaports of the world.

The night was still young as the crew began to troop off the ship in groups of three or four, all dressed up and looking strange and unfamiliarly commonplace in their going-ashore clothes. It seems all the younger guys wore suits too big for them — the sort people buy for their sons expecting them to grow into them — and the older men all wore suits too tight, as if they'd grown beyond what they had expected. The majority wore caps or hats they'd worn aboard ship. Perry — that large flat cloth cap with the broken peak; Chips — his hard, smudged straw; others dug out hats and caps they'd carefully stowed away. Big Joe wore a sharp straw hat on the back of his head. The Fat Guy, tightly buttoned in a suit that showed about six inches of heavy tan sweater between his vest and his trousers, had a dented derby perched on his shaggy mop. I was no Beau Brummel either. I hadn't any good clothes with me. I hadn't left them home — I didn't have any. The brown suit I wore looked as if it had been hung out in the rain and had been rolled up and stowed away dripping wet. I marveled how well pressed everybody else's suit looked when they unfolded them from their cramped lockers.

Mush and I had dressed quickly in our cabin up forward— we weren't crowded up like that gang back aft. So we got out on the wet deck (it had begun to rain) and stood in the fo'castle door watching them put the last touches to their preparations for the big night ahead. The smell of the silk shirts mingled with the lotions and toilet waters some of the guys put on their hair, and with the acidy smell of shoe polish some were dabbing on their shoes; and all these, mixed with the reek of a number of pipes going at once, made an aroma that had a weight to it.

I wondered, as I watched the flash of multicolored shirts and knife-edged trousers, whether Perry and Joe mightn't be sorry they'd included me in their plans for going ashore. I only had a white shirt, and my suit I've already described. That beard of mine didn't help. Maybe there was some compensation in my golden spectacles.

Mush was traveling with Al, Scotty, and the Polack from Baltimore. They were going to meet that guy Perry decided was a pimp. Mush was eager to be off — incidentally, he too, had only a white shirt and so did Al — and he kept bellowing to his gang to step it up, he was rarin' to go.

This sudden snorting, rushing ardor had just developed aboard ship during the afternoon. Birdneck's prophecy that the latter half of the trip would be devoted to talk about the women everybody planned to get when the ship reached port hadn't come off. At least, I don't remember any. Maybe the cold and rain accounted for that. But now the ship was full— if you believed the talk — of a herd of fiery stallions, bellowing bulls, and roaring bucks.

I snorted, bellowed, and roared with the best of them, but I didn't mean it. Working the deck of that ship was the hardest physical labor I had done until then. I'd worked nastier jobs with longer hours than that before, but that Bos'n had driven us and the work was not easy. I didn't feel like a frustrated, seething volcano; I'm sorry, I was not one of Whitman's pent-up rivers. And then again, I'd lived through longer periods of celibacy than those past twenty-eight days. And finally, and perhaps this is the main reason for my reticence, I never had had any occasion to buy a woman and I was uncertain of the proper procedure. Was it like the Automat — does one pay before — or like other places where one pays afterwards? Could one choose caresses a la carte, or is it table d'hote or even a plat du jour a la maison? I'm not implying I was an innocent, but it so happens the girls I had known were nice girls to whom one doesn't pay money — counted money.

Of course, no one figures on the cost of how many dinners, flowers, theater or concert tickets before you were granted certain privileges and certain favors — and how many hours and weeks of your time, for which you might have been paid if you were gainfully employed, is spent mooning, writing, telephoning, and waiting around street corners — because of your beloved.

And how many drawings and painted portraits in various poses, how many planned lectures on plastic form and anatomical structure — for all of which, if you had received a just pecuniary remuneration, you would get a pretty penny — you bestow upon the girl of your choice before she finally grants you that which any member of the crew of the S.S. Hermanita that night could buy for two pesos Argentine (eighty cents in our money).

Indeed, I remember spending the whole day before Christmas, Christmas Eve, and the long night and all day Christmas until late afternoon working steadily with no sleep at all to carve a piece of sculpture from a stone for my beloved — a Christmas present. For which, after I'd washed the stone dust out of my reddened eyes, shaved, and put on a clean shirt, and lugged my finished sculpture over to her house and put it on the mantel, she gently patted me on the cheek and said I was nice — that's all!

Outside of a few, rare, beautifully generous girls who asked nothing but your complete attention and concern for the time you were with them, most of my experiences until then had been like that. Maybe this two-peso system was better. It definitely was less wasteful and I wasn't at all certain I preferred the thornier paths of the chase. I was inexperienced and, as I have indicated, worried about the proper procedure.

So I thought, as I waited for Perry to finish fussing and primping in front of the cracked mirror hung in his locker door. Joe stood around with me. Most of the gang were gone when Perry, Joe, and I marched down the gangplank to wallow in the fleshpots of Rio Santiago's saturnalia.

14. The Epicureans

THE THIN COLD DRIZZLE OF RAIN which had begun during the late afternoon made shallow puddles in the hard earth along the river bank. We turned up our coat collars and walked toward the center of town.

Some of the crew had stopped in the Chicago Bar for a stirrup cup before galloping off to the hunt. That night some of them never got beyond the Chicago Bar, and old Pat the oiler — dressed up with his uncreased felt hat sitting his head like a hornless, Gaelic helmet — never went further inland than that Bar for the ten days our ship was docked in that port.

Their carousing broke in waves of sound on the wet night. Just as we passed the yellow glow of its stained window, the flimsy walls of that shack quivered with a baroque swell of laughter. Old Pat must have told that joke. We could hear his rattling laugh above all others.

Perry was scornful. He hurried us quickly past the lighted window, for he didn't want any of those noisy gluttons in our select party.

"Dose guys are a bunch of dopes. Dey ain't got any excrim— descrimin — appreciation of tings. Now lissen," and he threw his body across our path while his legs walked straight ahead and he gestured with his arms, hands and face. "Lissen, we ain't gonna be dopes — see what I mean? Dere's no sense in guzzlin' a lot of vino and then goin' to a house and lettin' one of d'old bags rope ya in. Dat's a lousy way to spend d'night."

Joe walked along with his head back, shoulders square, hands in his pockets. He was all dressed up and felt it. Soberly, he nodded his head.

"You betcha."

"See — what we'll do. I know lots of d'houses here in dis port."

"Are there lots?" I asked.

"Lots? Look — y'see dat?" And Perry pointed to an inlet we were passing. "Y'know what dat is?"

"No, what? Wait — she looks like one ol' battleship out dere. No?" Joe knew ships and could spot them as we passed out at sea usually by just a glimpse of their lines, even on a dark night.

"You're right — dat's d'Battleship, dat's d'Argentine Navy. And they got a place like Annapolis here — a Navy yard. Navy Academy or something. And dere — see dat?" Perry continued swinging in the other direction. "Dere's d'big steel works and back dere was d'big slaughterhouses, and den dere's all dese ships in port. Now lissen, dese houses gotta service dem all. Why, you know, dere's some of dese houses which has as much as seventy — yeah, I'll betcha dere's even a hundred girls in some of dem."

"Naw-w?" Joe was incredulous but he grinned hopefully.

"Sure — I'm tellin' ya. Ain't it wonderful?"

"0-o-h boy, come on. Shake d'lead out and c'mon." And the big fellow lengthened his stride and I trotted along.

"No — No. Lissen." Perry grabbed the flying Joe and me and clung to our lapels. "There's no sense rushin', see. Foist we'll have a good dinner— Wait, before that even, we'll stop and have a fine drink — Cafe Expresso wit cognac — y'know what dat is, kid—?"

Joe knew. He nodded his head, I didn't and I shook mine.

"An' no cheap cognac, either. What's d'best cognac dere is?"

I scurried around in my memory to the time I'd hopped bells and tried to recall the fancy drinks I'd carried up to stuffy hotel rooms that had smelled of talc and cigarette smoke.

"Five star Hennessey," I dug up. "That's the best."

Perry blinked at that and he quickly piped me down.

"Naw — dat used to be. M-ar-tel cognac, dat's d'best. And dat's what we'll get. Cafe Expresso and Martel cognac. Boy, wait'll ya taste dat."

We had reached the town and Perry steered us into the first corner cafe we saw. He ordered for us after we had sat down around a little marble-topped table. We leaned back, grinned at each other, and smoked our cigarettes.

"Ya sez ya don't know what's Cafe Expresso, kid. Look over dere." Perry nodded his head over toward the bar. "Dat's it. Dey makes it right before your eyes."

And they did. There was a gadgety nickel-plated machine, like those immense coffee urns one sees on the other side of cafeteria counters, but this was bigger, brighter and with more doodads on it. The waiter who had taken our order went behind the bar and swung out a metal saucer-shaped attachment hinged to the machine. He measured some ground coffee into it and then snapped it back into place. Three metal tits hung from the rounded bottom of the container — he placed a heavy small cup under each tit. Then with a tap here and a look there he pulled a lever and steam spouted in various directions from the big shining machine. Evidently the metal saucer of dry coffee was getting some of it, for the tits began to sputter and dribble large black drops of coffee into the cups.

"That's it — see? Dat's coffee Expresso — see what I mean? D'steam is forced tru de coffee — it expresses tru it, see— d'steam does. Ya gets d'essence of d'coffee — d'essence — ya see what I mean? D'essence. . "

The waiter returned and switched back the lever. He took the heavy demitasse off the machine and the steam stopped shooting out and eventually died off into thin wisps here and there. He loaded them on his tray and then set down a slim glass of amber-colored brandy and a small cup in front of each of us.

Joe and I both dragged out those sticky tissuepaper pesos. We insisted on paying. Perry was out. He'd paid for the lunch with that mysterious deal. Joe took care of that check. I am not a consistent check fumbler. I just couldn't get those damn papers separated quick enough and read their denominations before he'd already paid off that round. I isolated one peso from the mass of others so I'd be prepared for the next round of drinks. I shoved it into my vest expecting to snap it out quick. I never saw that peso again. It just crumbled up and disappeared. That's the kind of money it was.

Joe and Perry gulped half of their ponies of cognac, then floated the remainder from their narrow glasses on top of the black coffee. I followed suit. Then they delicately sipped the mixture. So did I.

Perry smacked his lips. "Get dat — some cognac, huh? Mar-tel, d'best dere is — and d'essence of d'coffee."

Joe was happy. "Yes, sair — heh, keed?"

"You bet," I added.

And we didn't hog the rest of that drink. We took it easy.

"Now, lissen." Perry recrossed his legs and gestured wide with his cigarette. "Here's d'way we ought to do — see? Now I sez I know d'best houses in dis port. What we'll do is dis. Let's finish just dis one drink — take your time — an' den. ."

"Hey, lemme buy a round," I interrupted. I had my pesos out ready.

"All right — just one, see." We gulped the dregs from the bottom of our coffee cups. Perry called the waiter, ordered the same all around, and then he went on.

"So we'll make the rounds of d'houses, see. We'll just look d'girls over — go to anudder house — look 'em over— Ya see, we'll pick 'em out — we'll be choosy—"

Joe smiled, winked at me, said yeah, you betcha.

"Den, after we look dem over, we go back to d'goil we decided on — see what I mean?"

The waiter had brought our drinks and I paid for them. Our second drink went down quicker than the first. Perry crossed and recrossed his legs a number of times. Then he rose, stretched a bit, straightened his necktie, and rubbed his chin.

"Well, what d'ya say, fellas, we take a look around — huh? Dere's no hurry — we'll jes' look around."

Big Joe stood up, tapped out his cigarette, took a few extra hitches in his belt, and said he thought we ought to, too.

It seemed to me for some guys not in a hurry, we were walking rather fast. Perry led us down a dark side alley and we turned into a narrow unpaved street lined on either side by one-story stucco buildings each lit up by red and white electric signs over their high doorways. New York Bar, Boston Bar, Paris Bar, etc. These were the houses. It seemed to me that town was one main street on which there were a few cafes, a few stores, and a couple of other nondescript buildings, and the rest of the town on either side of the main street and branching out from it were those narrow streets with their stucco-faced, one-storied buildings with an electric sign over their doorways.

I don't remember which one Peny decided we should try first, whether over the door it said the Philadelphia Bar, Boston, or the High-Class Bar — the interior had nothing to do with any of those names. It was not a bar. There was no sign of one. We had been walking faster and faster as we came along the street, until by the time we reached that door I was puffing, keeping up with the pace Perry set. He opened the big door and we all walked in slowly like gentlemen who have all the time in the world — we were in no hurry. Anyone could see that. We intended to choose very carefully the girls whom we intended to honor with our virile masculinity and our pesos.

It was a large room somewhat like a high-ceilinged hotel lobby. There were many small round tables placed in rows around the room. The place was quiet. There were no men there at all. At the further end of the large unheated room a group of women in bright-colored bathrobes and kimonos sat around talking and smoking. They all looked up as we came through the door and sat ourselves down carefully. There was a stir among them and a number of the women came toward our table.

Perry gave us his last warning. "Remember what I sez — we don't pick 'em now — we jes' looks 'em over."

They swarmed down on us chirping and chattering like a cloud of varicolored locusts. Perry carried on what must have been a brilliant repartee from the backslaps and chin-chucks the girls showered on him.

Joe gurgled and made some crack. A few of the girls who could understand his French broke away from the group around Perry. One of them tried to sit on Joe's lap. He laughed and warded her off with a gentle tap on her saggy quivery bottom—touche. Both Joe and Perry leered at me and gave me a quick wink.

A middle-aged lady with a massive, waved coiffure piled high on her head, resplendent with earrings and many necklaces, brooches, watches, clusters of bracelets and rings, joined our party. A big pocketbook swung from her belt. She was dressed, along with all the metal and stones, in sweaters, skirts, and a black apron. I couldn't tell how many of each — definitely more than one, I'm sure. She seemed well bundled up. That place was cold and those girls looked sort of blue and goose-pimply.

The Madame, the general contractor who took a percentage on the girls' earnings — some of the crew later said it was about fifty per cent — carried on a bit of banter with Perry. It was evident she urged him to go cavort with one of her kimono-clad, slop-bottomed charmers. Perry giggled and no-no'd and resisted a couple of the hustlers. Joe was having the same difficulty. One or two of the older women made a vague dab at me, and then concerned themselves with trying to help promote the affairs of their colleagues who were prospecting on Perry and Joe.

It's strange how much these girls looked like people I'd known before. It seemed to me some looked like schoolteachers I remembered — not any of my own schoolteachers, just some I'd seen before. Others like women who'd worked in stores or some I'd seen along the streets, respectable women I didn't know.

Perry had evidently convinced the Madame and her gentle little brood that we were gentlemen of taste, leisure, and discrimination, that we were not to be pushed, that we intended to study the fine points and qualities of all the girls in the houses of Rio Santiago before we came to any decision. Incidently, he talked quietly to her for a moment and found there had been no change in the rates from the last time he had visited this port. It still was two pesos for a short time, but for ten you remained with the girl of your choice after she was through her regular business of the evening (which might range from twenty to thirty engagements) and you might have her to yourself after that from midnight when the house closed until dawn — she and you alone!

Perry found that all out from the Madame and passed it on to us later as inside dope. We rose, pulled ourselves together, rearranged our hats which had been knocked askew with the ardor of their persuasion, and after much waving, laughter, and hoarse-voiced (many of the girls had colds and sniffles) invitations to come back, we walked toward the door that opened to the street. A few girls who hadn't mixed with the general gaiety at our table were sitting there talking among themselves, coughing and smoking cigarettes.

One dark-haired, slender girl in a tattered, red silk kimono rose as we passed. She was rather pretty with a broad, white forehead and a thin pointed face. She smiled and then called to us. Quickly she tripped across the floor and stopped in front of me!

"O-o-o — ve la pequina barba" and with her cold fingers she gently stroked my chin. She had recognized that I had a beard, that I just didn't need a shave!

Right there I knew I'd found my girl. No matter how many fat blonde or red-headed sirens I saw in the tour Perry planned through all the houses of the town, I'd return to her — this sweet, gentle brunette. We had something in common. She was the first person (outside of myself) who ever knew, who ever granted recognition to my first and favorite beard.

Perry, Joe and I strutted proudly out into the night. There, we'd proved it. We had character, stamina, stuff. There we were with all those women willing and eager and we had the wherewithal and the right, and we had stood up and walked out. We'd stuck to our resolve, not to rush. We'd been choosy and taken our time.

"Now — y'see." Perry was joyous. "What'd I tell ya? See, all dose women and all dose houses are just like that — oh boy."

"You betcha," said Joe. "Where we go now?"

"We-l-l-l, lessee — le's try dis one. But remember we're not gonna be dopes. Remember take it easy — take your time—"

A thought struck me and I tugged at Perry's arm just as he set his face with the proper expression of indifference and reached for the knob of that door.

"Look, Perry. Wait a minute — there's something screwy around here. How come there ain't any more guys around— you know, the gang from the packing houses, the steel works, and even our own crew. Where's everybody?"

There was no one along the streets, no men in that big house we had just left, no sound of men around anywhere. We stopped and took stock in the lights of the doorway. Joe brought out his watch and studied it a moment. Then he said, quietly:

"Y'know — I tink — it's suppertime now. Maybe everybody's eating supper now."

The smug expression of that debonair and patient epicurean. Perry, drained out of his mug and left it a bleached blank as he too realized we had been so eager not to rush, to take our time, we'd all forgotten about food completely. We hadn't stopped for that good dinner as we'd planned. Without a word he led us back to the main street. In a small, dull restaurant we ate our dull steak Caballero (again) and we chewed it slowly, quietly. We had another Martel cognac and Cafe Expresso and we lingered over it as if to prove that, although we had made the mistake of dashing off to the women ahead of all the men on the ship, the men from the packing houses, from the big steel works, the Argentine Navy yard and its whole Naval Academy personnel — for all that, we were in complete control of our passions — discriminating gentlemen who were very particular about their women.

For a little while longer we did penance.

We rose and walked up the darkened main street of the town. This time we didn't cut down one of those alleys, as we had before too quickly, to get to the bright-doored houses. None of us talked much. There was no one along the main streets. The few shops were dark. Now and then we'd see a dim light in the windows of one of the low wooden houses that lined the streets. About the center of the second block there was a shop with its windows lit up. We crossed the broad dirt road to look in.

Through the shop's window, lit by an unshaded bulb, we could see two round-cheeked young girls sitting on straight-backed chairs facing each other so that we saw them in profile. They were busily, silently, sewing some pinkish satin material. Both were dressed in long black clothes and looked very pretty, pale, and virtuous as they sat there plying their needles. Between them facing the window sat a corseted older woman also dressed in black. She too was sewing on some stuff that fell over her lap and down to the floor. Only the old woman talked — to one girl, then the other, and they didn't answer. They kept their heads bowed over their work. We could see their high young bosoms rising and falling as we watched.

It was a pretty picture — probably the town's seamstress and her daughters, or these round-armed, black-gowned sweet girls with their gentle, rounded pale faces might have been her assistants. In any case, they were her charges and she clucked to them like a fussy, pompous little hen.

We stood watching them there.

"Betcha dose are virgins," Perry whispered.

"Yeah."

"Pretty, ain't they?" I said.

"You bet — dey're nice girls."

The old woman had lifted her head and saw us staring in at them. How she clucked and fussed at her little plump chickens. And those little darlings turned their heads, looked at us with a fleeting smile, and quickly turned back to their work. The old hen was having tantrums as she sat there, so we gave them a wave and left their window. We turned in at the very next alley and went down to the houses.

Those narrow streets had taken on a completely different character. Now they were filled with men walking in groups. Here and there, spotted among them, were young naval cadets in uniform and some ship's officers. They moved quietly; the gleam of their cigarettes flecked the street in a steady slow-moving stream. Occasionally a few would break off from the main flow and open the large doors of one of the houses and disappear into it.

In quick succession. Perry, Joe, and I walked in and out of a couple of the smaller places. There were usually only four or five mature-looking women in them. Our entrance would raise a flurry of activity, but we backed out quickly. Those houses weren't doing much business.

Perry led us into one of the biggest houses in the port, he said. There were a lot of women there — not the seventy or a hundred he'd promised and Joe had anticipated, but I'd judge about thirty or forty. It was pretty much like the first house we'd been in. There again was the big lobby-like room with the same little round tables, but in this house men sat at some of those tables and the girls talked to them or sat on their laps and gossiped across to girls sitting on some other customer's lap. Those guys were just seats.

One of the biggest, happiest, most docile seats for a frowzy, sandy-haired dame in a Paris-green kimono was our own Chips — the big Russian. His dame sat his lap as if she rode a wooden horse on a carousel. She rode sidesaddle with her knees crossed, exposing her heavy legs with sagging garterless stockings, and she was in the midst of a heated discussion with a skinny woman perched on the lap of a sad-faced little man a few tables away. We could see Chips' radiant face now and then through the swinging of her kimono sleeves as she jabbered to her girl friend. Chips smiled at us shyly. He wore his straw hat straight, his shoulders squared, and one of his big hands around her waist sank into the rolls of fat that graced her middle. His other hand shyly cupped her pudgy knee. Chips was having a good time.

Joe was impatient with this marching around and insisted we sit down in this house a while. Perry was willing to be persuaded, though he reminded us we hadn't seen one tenth of the girls. We'd hardly seated ourselves before some women plumped themselves down in our laps. We had no choice. We were nailed down. The big hard dame with the blue-black hair who pinned me down said a word or two, scrubbed my head with a rough hand, then having begged a cigarette, took up her interrupted talk with the one sitting on Perry. My girl had a heavy beer stimme. Joe's lap held a pleasant brown-skinned girl. He stretched up and spoke to me over her head.

"Hey, keed, you gotta a mam'selle dere. French girls are some stuff — ver' passionate."

I peered around the swinging elbows of my chattering bargain and asked, "Do you wan' her? You can have her."

The hard bones of her meager buttocks wearied my thighs.

"No, no, you keep her, keed. She's good. I got nice leetle peegeon here. She's Malay girl, I tink—"

My passionate raw-boned Frenchie, during pauses in her conversation, would remember she had a living to earn and my love life to cope with, and she'd give me a quick sandpapering pat on the cheek or pinch my body somewhere and make some hurried crack that would bring a smile from people around who heard her and understood her language. I didn't. That done, again she'd dig her sharp elbow into my shoulder hollow, flick cigarette ash in my eye, and take up where she'd left off with the girl on Perry's lap.

There I was, and no getting away from it. If I stood up and dumped this dame on the floor, there might be trouble. I looked around the room, ducking my head occasionally to keep her elbows and that swinging sleeve of her kimono from sweeping my glasses off my face. Chips and his girl were gone. So was big Joe and his little Malay pigeon…

I felt dry mouthed, wished I knew the Spanish for a glass of water. It seems no liquor was served in those places — only little cups of lukewarm, very bitter black coffee. My Frenchie suddenly became very insistent, pawing and clawing away at me with what I understood was a demand I do my duty by her. The Madame of the house was coming over toward our table.

Perry had stood up. As he walked off with his dame he turned and said, "G'wan, kid. Go ahead with her. She's a French dame. You know what dat means—" and he winked significantly.

I called after him, "Hey, Perry — just a minute — please."

He politely disengaged his arm from his lady friend, gave her a sweeping bow, and came over and asked impatiently:

"What's d'matta?"

"Look, Perry," I said, "what's the Spanish for a drink of water?"

''Vaso de agua" — and he started off again.

"Perry — one more thing."

"What's d'matta now?"

"Look, Perry — and how do you say no?"

"No!"

15. Violet Goat's Milk

THE HOT WHITE GLARE FROM THE PORTHOLE flooded our cabin and stabbed the one eye with which I had tasted the dawn of a new day. There was too much light. I withdrew that eye again and tried to straighten out the slowly whirling four-cornered lump that shoved against the inner lining of my brain pan, scraping and bulging the sides.

Slowly, I tried again and looked over to see if Mush had made the ship too. He had, and his shoulders, neck and head were dripping over the side of his bunk in a weird, sagging slump. How could a guy sleep like that?

With each movement carefully planned and calculated I climbed out and began to dress. Sure, Mush was aboard. I'd helped bring him aboard, and as I tried to fit the pieces together of the kaleidoscopic night, there were some pieces missing and others overlapped. When and where had I lost Perry and Big Joe, or had they lost me? What had happened to our pact?

We'd been together when we left that big house, Joe still trim and roarin'—his little Malay pigeon was just an hors d'oeuvre, so to speak. Perry appeared a bit disheveled — the peak of his cap shaded his right ear and the spring was gone from his usually buoyant, heel and toe walk.

It was he who had suggested we go round to the main street again to pick up another pony of cognac. Damn the Cafe Expresso — just straight cognac this time. To "rewitalize ya, see what I mean? Rewitalize. Afterwoids, if you take just a shot, it rewitalizes ya—"

Joe agreed and I saw no objections to being revitalized, so we went and were. We gulped a couple of drinks so quickly and whirled toward the streets with the houses so fast, the waiter stood in the doorway of the cafe calling after us that no trains leave Rio Santiago until the next morning. Perry translated that as we bounced gaily down the alley.

Those narrow, insidious, uncounted ponies of cognac were beginning to take their toll. My knees felt well oiled and were working easily both ways — fore and aft. The patellas weren't functioning or they might have slipped sidewards. My arms felt strangely loose at the elbows and shoulders and swung free in the breeze as we rounded the corner into the streets of the houses.

Somewhere sometime we saw Mush and the gang he'd gone cavorting with. Mush was riding high, and above a wave of shoulders, sombreros, berets, and uniform caps he "sooyed" a hoosier hog call. Hatless, his yellow hair, wetted down by the drizzle, dripped over his heated beaming face and he triumphantly threw up one hand with four fingers spread. That obviously meant he had safely weathered four major engagements and was still up and going strong.

Perhaps that influenced me to suggest we experiment with one of those smaller places. Perhaps those mature women might— That must have been the time we lost Joe. I don't remember seeing him the rest of the night. He snorted at the suggestion. He'd have no truck with those small, poorly equipped establishments. Goddammit, why in a port full— yes, full of all kind womins — and girls (and his voice had risen to that shrill gurgle it always did when he was aroused) — yes, charmantes girls — why we go pick some blousy mamas in a sal maison—?

That was just the point I was trying to make. The maternal intuition of these women was not to be scoffed at, and in that turbulent island we formed in the middle of one of those crowded streets I tried to quote that letter Benjamin Franklin is said to have written to a young man contemplating matrimony (the original I'm told reposes in state in the Library of Congress)'—particularly, the passage on the universal similarity of all women — but I couldn't remember it too well. And Joe wasn't listening. He'd gotten beyond the inadequacies of English and was shouting in a mixture of undeterminable French and his Island language.

You couldn't argue with anyone whose language you couldn't understand and one who wouldn't listen to your cool, logical reasoning. Joe pushed off through the crowd — and we lost him.

But Perry stood by. My garbled reference to Benjamin Franklin's attributed writing had swung him, and Joe's French and Island gibberish had been as incomprehensible to him as it was to me.

Sometime in the dizzy tangle of the evening, we had returned to that first house. Seems Perry remembered his obligation to the Madame of the house and he felt it was his duty to pay his respects and keep his promise to hasta luego. It was curious how quickly the gentle, slender girl with the broad brow had completely forgotten me, and seemed a little frightened maybe because I'd lost my hat somewhere and my untrimmed hair, a tangled mat from the rain, might have given her another impression of me — the coarser me. The house was crowded and very busy. And my poetic, thin-faced brunette sought refuge in a group of uniformed cadets as if she didn't know me from any other Adam that clumped into the place. She looked weary and paler…

There was one clear moment I remembered like a black sharp dot on the interwoven labyrinth of a surrealist canvas— when we met the little Bos'n walking sober and alone in one of the streets. I greeted him with my customary camaraderie and he told us to be careful, some of our crew had got mixed up in some trouble further down the street — and he indicated a couple of uniformed men going back in the direction he'd come from. The crew had been plunking stones at some electric bulbs over some doorway, in the manner of the Coney Island games, and they laid bets. It was about that time I was vaguely conscious of Perry melting away in the other direction and he was well mixed into the crowd before I could call after him.

Those uniformed men had been policemen. Seems there had been a number of cops around, but I never could recognize them — their uniforms varied so much. Or so it appeared that night. Some cops dressed in olive-green belted overcoats and wore little helmets with a short spike atop — the German helmet the Kaiser thought was so becoming with his spiked mustachios in his last war. There was another group who wore black uniforms; other cops with flat-topped visored caps who toured in pairs through the district; then, of course, there were the sailor-boy cops down along the waterfront. And as I finally got dressed and stood buttoning up, I looked at Mush sprawling there half out of his bunk and I remembered — sure, he's there because I helped put him there.

We'd met someplace and we draped him over our shoulders, Al and me, and we walked him and dragged him back to the ship completely spent, sopping wet, and irrevocably boiled. How'd we make the gangplank that way, three abreast? Since, cold sober, that narrow plank with its dangling rope rail provided for only one man's passage — come to think of it, I remember lugging my end of Mush until we stopped in the Chicago Bar, which had no cognac, only vino — and I don't remember leaving it—

Setting one foot in front of the other so I'd not jar my head, which I carried high and delicately with its painful inner burden, I turned, let myself out of the cabin, and walked around and climbed out on deck.

The cruel light of the sun exploded all over the place. Again, I protested petulantly the glaring white paintwork all over the ship that blinded my eyes and sent red-hot pain searing through my long-suffering head. I laid my course for the messdeck and took off. A steaming, bitter cup of black coffee I'd been told works wonders, or the skin of the dog that bit you, or a pickled herring was good for a katzenjammer too. Since none of the latter were available, I knew where there was black coffee and I made for it.

In checking my tack I risked my precious retina and blinked up at the messdeck. There I saw a large, violet-colored, orange-whiskered nanny goat!

I rockily swung out, made the ladder and climbed up to face this apparition. She was there all right, accompanied by a swarthy, slender boy — one Argentinian without mustachios — and surrounded by admiring members of our crew.

"Howya feelin', kid?" Perry greeted me. "Bad, huh? Ya know what's d'best ting for dat — d'very best? Goat's milk."

"I don't feel good—"

"Dis is d'stuff for ya, den."

"You sure, Perry? My stomach's a little—"

"I'm tellin' ya, ain't it?" And Perry whirled his head around the circle of those others who stood there so fast, if they had said no he couldn't have seen it. Nobody said anything. Perry continued.

"See, what'd I tell ya? It's de healthiest stuff in d'woild." And he said something to the boy which must have meant "Fill 'em up." If my tongue hadn't been so thick and unco-operative, I'd have argued that "the healthiest stuff in the world" part. I mean, since I know — in fact, I have first-rate authorities who maintain that kumiss, mare's milk, supersedes any liquid lactic food in protein, vitamin and mineral content, and it's well known that invalids and infants among the central Tibetan tribe have been known to—

But before I could gather my scrambled, scattered wits about me, he'd ordered the boy to draw me a measure and he generously dug down into his jeans to pay for it. The young fellow sat a little can under the goat and squatted on his heels and squirted some of the old gray nanny goat's (it was a trick of the sun that keyed up her color scheme to violet and orange) milk into the little can with a sharp tinkling sound.

He straightened up and placed it into my hands and I carried it to my innocent mouth with no thought — g-g-g g-u-g.

Now as one who has experienced that I warn all in similar circumstances against imbibing from a greasy can any such libation fresh, warm, and smelly from any and all gray or violet-colored nanny goats. It's disastrous, and does not appease your misery — it intensifies your suffering. With a grievous hurt look at this guy Perry who had been my friend I stumbled, crawled, and rolled toward the bathroom back aft.

And I almost made it through that stretch of afterdeck with the rope cradles laden with case oil popping out of the open hatch and threatening to sweep me over side, when I heard a shout and someone calling me from the messdeck I'd just left. I turned. That renegade Perry was enthusiastically pointing me out to a pompous little man clad in an olive-green, brass-buttoned uniform. One look was enough. In desperation I tried to think quickly — shall I just jump over the side and swim the river or try to outrun this?

With these untabulated numbers of varied police uniforms, how did I know what law I'd broken? Under whose jurisdiction and what branch of the Argentine Police Department — federal or local — lay the crime I must have committed during one of those black vacuums in my memory of last night?

I scrambled up on the poop, with a vague plan to slide down the hawser, but about the time I reached the rail the little man in olive-green was already coming up the ladder to the deck. In one hand he held a folded blue paper. I've seen court summonses before — blue seemed to be a favorite color. Or was this a warrant? I looked down and a fit of vertigo kept me from going over the side, so I whirled and stumbled to the other side of the ship and tumbled down the ladder on the black gang's section of the deck. The little guy was taking short cuts and gaining on me. My head was beginning to clear now — the rush of air that swept by helped, I guess. I doubled back with some fancy broken field running I'd never believed I was capable of and made the shelter deck of the ship and beat it for the prow. This was getting me. I was breathing hard. I definitely smoked too much. I resolved then and there if I ever got out of this mess I'd quit smoking and burn a candle to St. Christopher…

But that damn Perry had joined the chase and was shouting after me. At last, they had me cornered. There was no sense fighting and adding resisting an officer (or whatever they call a deserving sock at a nasty cop) to whatever crimes in which I'd already become involved. There I was, cornered up on the for'ard end of the deck up against the bulkhead. All I'd ask for I calmly decided — ask for? I'd demand the attention of the United States Ambassador and a fair trial in English. They'd have to wait until I got my own counsel, a young fellow I'd gone to school with in upstate New York who had just become a junior member of a law firm in Weehawken. His name was going to be painted on the door, on the bottom line.

He'd promised me he'd get me out of trouble if I ever got into it just for practice's sake. They'd have to wait until he'd come down here. I'd trust no other barrister to plead my case.

The officious little man faced me, puffing and waving that folded blue paper in front of my nose. Then he insisted I sign some other papers. What — without reading them? Oh no, not me! I'd sign nothing till I heard the charges. Perry added to the din by shouting at both of us, directing his Spanish at me and his English at the uniformed man. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Captain Brandt jutting his bleary head out of his door up on his own deck. He bellowed to the Mate up on the bridge.

Well, I don't see why the Old Man didn't do more than just bellow. After all, it was his ship, and he bloody well had an obligation to me to see that I had a fair trial at least and I—

Perry threw his big arms up in the air and brought them down between the little man and me.

"SH-U-T U-P," he shouted. "Per Ch-r-i-s-t sake, SH-U-T U-P. He just wants ya to sign for a cablegram."

Well, I did. It was a sweet, inane message from that dame up in New York. A forget-me-not sent sixty-five hundred miles — that had created all this furore. I studied it carefully, frowned, and folded it up. Then I thrust it deep in my pocket as if it were something important.

The dame wrote it probably because she'd forgotten to write a letter to be carried on one of the faster ships coming down to the Argentine — as she'd promised. She had money to spare, so she spent it that way on cablegrams.

I thanked the little messenger man and shook hands with Perry, too, to show there was no hard feeling.

"But what'd ya run fer?" he asked.

"Who was running? I wasn't running. Just happened to remember I forgot my glasses up here in our cabin and I was getting them."

"Well, whyn't ya stop when we hollered at ya?"

"I don't hear good — without my glasses."

He blinked, and I walked off before he could think of anything else to say.

The crew thought that the cable carried some weighty message and I did nothing to change their impression. They always maintained a respectful silence about it and never inquired concerning its contents, as if they assumed someday I'd unburden my heart and take them all into my confidence.

Suddenly, it struck me I'd discovered a new and absolute cure for indisposition brought on by excessive indulgence. My head was clear, my innards were settled, and I wanted my breakfast.

Why, perhaps this might be a real contribution to science. It's not the first time a series of mistakes and misunderstandings led some bewhiskered gentleman to a landing on a pedestal immortalized in the Hall of Fame. What about Watt? (I'm not punning — how else could I write that?) Him with his steaming teakettle, or Jenner's this and that with a lumpy milkmaid which finally brought on those dainty vaccinations we all wear more or less proudly.

I understand there's been nothing definite concluded on two popular ailments which afflict us all — the common cold and the head-splitting hangover. As for the former we can't say they haven't tried. It's just that no one has become involved with an experience comparable to Watt's steam kettle, Newton's windfall of apples, Jenner's lumpy milkmaid or my own strenuous gallop around a cluttered iron deck after swallowing a measure (a half pint will do) of warm goat milk, which I am led to believe is a new and absolute cure for a katzenjammer. Granting a scientific experiment must have more than one positive reaction to be considered absolute — well, this goat-milk shake therapy was new anyway.

I've not tried that cure again since then, but now that I remember it, if this New Year's Eve turns out to be as hilarious as it seems to promise, and I can find a cluttered little freighter in the harbor and I can borrow a goat this New Year's Day— I'll play pinochle. And I'll play with a clear head, to win.

16. I Buy a Sombrero

THERE WAS ONE IRREPARABLE LOSS that couldn't be cured with goat's milk. I mean my hat. Somewhere during the night it had disappeared. It wasn't much of a hat, but it was the only hat I owned. I arranged to have Philip, the Captain's messboy, come along as an interpreter and help me buy a new one.

Perry, on whom I depended as my liaison with the untutored Argentinians who spoke no English, was out — or I should have said — in. He'd been jugged along with the Polack guy from Baltimore. And we saw no more of them and they no more of Rio Santiago until they were led meekly back to the ship on the day we weighed anchor and shipped south.

We all had been doing port work. Yes, every last one of those pampered A.B.'s were as greasy and dirty as any of us Cinderella men — the regular day men. And we gloated.

They couldn't stall or finagle any angles — the first few days anyway. Maybe that's the reason Perry and his accomplice pulled what they did. They'd rather languish in the calaboose than lift a hand in honest toil. Under the watchful eye of the Swede Mate, the Bos'n and the young Third Mate — whose business it was to superintend the loading or unloading of the ship, and he was always on deck — the crew worked and got dirty.

The Mate set us to painting oversides, unpleasant work but not very strenuous — the sort of job where you can look as if you're working a lot harder than you are, and it's only you and your conscience that is any the wiser.

We paired off (Slim was my partner) and we dropped heavy, twelve-foot-long planks about ten inches wide over the side. Of course, we had lines tied to both ends of the plank — that is, to the second one Slim and I shoved over. That first one I managed to get over (with my new-found strength from the goat milk) that morning before Slim had tied his line to it. We lashed our lines to the rail and that was our scaffold.

When each of us with a bucket of red lead, a brush and a chipping hammer, climbed over side, and settled on our plank to spend the morning chipping rust blisters on the old tub's hull. Then we'd paint the patch with red lead. The opportunity to stall there is obvious — only you could see and judge how much chipping the plate you were banging your nose against needed, if you felt like chipping, or how much red leading, if you felt like painting. And you could twiddle your hammer with a concentrated look on your face for hours at a time, while you thought of the finer things of life.

And if the Mate leaned over the rail and howled, "Vat d'hell you doin' dere?" you could calmly and with complete assurance say, "Come and look," and know he wouldn't, since two of us on that tilting plank served to balance it, and if he just dared to climb down, we'd all surely be tumbled and go splashing down into the cold, dirty river. And we knew it and so did he.

Perry had carried that attitude just a little too far in his argument with the Mate that afternoon. The insatiable Perry had talked the Polack guy into lunching at the Chicago Bar. He must have been very persuasive for the Polack was a quivering mess from his night ashore. They came back to the ship with a rolling list that made you dizzy while you watched them. With a whoop and a howl they scrambled over side and down to their plank. There, Perry stood holding on with one arm crooked around the line at his end of the plank, as he gestured wildly with his dripping paintbrush held in the other hand and edified us all with a lecture on the rights and privileges of American seamen in foreign ports. The Polack, giggling and squirming at the other end, joined in at the infrequent pauses in Perry's dissertation with his hard inane howl.

The Swede Mate poked his head over the rail and shouted down at Perry, and he, with great bravado and his massive accumulation of questionable Maritime Law and a venomous sarcasm, told the Mate off to the grinning silent approval of the rest of the crew. And Perry almost drew an irrepressible round of applause when at one time during his oration a magnificent gesture upward with his paintbrush caught the Mate and spotted his white yachtsman's cap with big gooey drops of red lead.

Perry concluded with the Marseillaise, followed by a direct and very personal—

"And foidermore, f'cue, Mr. Mate. We're walkin' off dis lousy ship any time we wanta. Yeah — right now. Howya like dat? Come on, Polack."

The Mate didn't say a word to that — not a word. He looked down at them in a roaring silence, then he was gone from the rail.

Perry and the Polack climbed back on the deck, marched back aft, and dressed themselves up in their striped silk shirts and going-ashore clothes. It seemed that a lot of us had tumbled our buckets about that time and lost our paint so we too climbed back on deck to get a refill. We all politely waited our turn at the big barrel of red lead Chips had mixed, so that there were quite a few of us on the shore side of the ship when Perry and the Polack burst through the fo'castle door to rumble down the deck to the gangplank, still helling around and haw-haw-ing to each other how they'd showed this Mate up.

The Old Man up on his deck quietly looked down. The Mate stood astride the messdeck. Well, it looked as if Perry and the Polack knew what they were doing — no one stopped them. I wished I'd been on Perry's scaffold. I'd have gone along, taken my portfolios, and done some of the painting I'd hoped for instead of smearing this damn red lead—

They went down the narrow gangplank trying to walk arm in arm, laughing and waving good-by — free as birds. And when they reached the soil of the Republic of Argentine they were nabbed and caged for the next ten days. The little sailor-boy Port Cop enforced by a couple of other men in uniform stepped out of the shadows of our ship's hull, collared our free spirits, and marched them off to the hoosegow without a break in their stride.

No one knew how come the cops were there waiting. Had the Old Man signaled? Had he radioed an S.O.S.?

We all went about our business, carefully chipping and red leading the hull of the good ship S.S. Hermanita, some murmuring Perry shouldn't have done it, and it's tough on the Polack kid. The Mate didn't shout down at us the rest of the afternoon. He didn't have to.

Philip went ashore with me as interpreter to help me buy that hat that evening. All the officers were eating ashore that night so he got out early. He couldn't speak Spanish as well as Perry, but the language he did speak was less apt to land you in some of the complicated situations Perry always seemed to get mixed up with.

We walked up to the town. A few of the shops were still open. One we passed showed pink feminine flimsies in its windows. Philip said that shop catered to the bordello ladies. He always called them that — he was always a polite boy. That might have been true but none that I saw wore any stuff like that.

Then we came to a shop that exhibited a number of large, black sombreros, a few berets, and a couple of bags of charcoal in its window. In the center on a stand was a light-yellow velour hat. There was an old woman sitting in the shop near a small stove.

We entered, I first, and as I swung the tall door open, it crashed up against the inside of that shop with a tremendous clatter. That was my first experience with those damn doors — they gave me a lot of trouble later. It seems the Argentinians never have those air brakes we always take for granted on our New York doors and they keep their hinges too well oiled. Whenever I'd swing a door open, I'd always forget to hang on to the damn thing and then close it, carefully. I'd just push it open and expect some resistance from those nice little air brakes which quietly and modestly add to our comfort.

The old woman jumped as if she were shot and chattered some nasty stuff in Spanish.

"She says you are a big beef," said Philip quietly.

"Tell her I just want to buy a hat."

He told her. She grumbled and went to the window.

"She says she don' see why a dumb ox needs a hat."

Philip was taking his job as interpreter too literally, I felt. The old woman's remarks had no bearing on the business at hand.

She gathered up a few large sombreros and then threw them down on a wooden counter. But Philip, who had gone to the window too, called her back, evidently insisting she bring that prize yellow velour out for our inspection.

I'd begun to try on a few sombreros. They didn't look bad. I got one that fitted and was quite pleased with my reflection in a glass that hung in the darkness of the shop. But Philip objected.

"No — no — not dat. Here, try dis golden one. It goes good with your whiskers, I bet."

See — everyone was recognizing that beard.

Philip had tried the yellow hat on and was knocking himself wall-eyed trying to get a view of his profile in the glass alongside of me.

"Not that one, Philip. It'll dirty up too quickly."

The old woman broke in with a word or two. Philip responded. Evidently her remark was not directed to me.

"Ask how much for the hat I'm wearing," I said.

He did and told me.

"She says seven pesos — too much I'll tell her."

He did, and she talked quite a lot then.

"She says I have head like dumb ox too. Don't buy it anyway."

"But I gotta have a hat."

"Sure, all right — here's a fine hat. Buy dis one."

Seems that Philip liked that yellow velour so much, unless something happened quick I'd have to buy me a hat I disliked very much.

"Look, Philip, ask her how much it is."

After a moment, he turned back to me with a broad smile, holding the hat out to me.

"She's only twelve pesos fifty centavos. That's a bargain— cheap."

I figured quickly. "Hey, whatta you mean — cheap? Four dollars and seventy-five cents — or almost five — for a hat!"

"Dat's a fine hat," Philip insisted. "Velour is a little more dear but it's worth — here, try it on."

It looked as if there was no way out. Philip was going to see that I got that hat.

"But I ain't got that much money. Last night — I spent—"

"Dat's all right. I'll lend you."

And he lifted the hat and carefully set it on my head. I turned to the mirror. That settled it. That hat had fitted Philip roomily but it just perched on the top of my dome. I have an unusually large head — not the melon type, I mean — just a large skull, and when I need a haircut which I usually do — I did then — I have quite a headsize. I'm not boasting.

Anyway, I bought the broad black sombrero I had put on my head when I first came into the shop and I paid off, and opened that door again forgetting about the swing of it and I got us both out quick, before Philip could give me a literal translation of what that nervous old woman said.

We ate our supper in a little ramshackle shed of a restaurant. The man who ran the place and cooked on a small stove in back of the counter served us grudgingly.

He had greeted me as we came in and surprised me so I had not responded — it was that black sombrero he was talking to, not me. I concluded he must have thought I was native. We had a couple of fried eggs sans steak.

Then Philip and I walked along the dark main street for a little while. Every time we'd come to one of those alleys which led down to the streets with the houses, he would find some reason to linger and stall around, kicking the unpaved walk with his heels. Finally, he broke down and frankly said he'd like to go see some ladies. He had not been able to get ashore last night, and I told him I had and that I had a big time and guessed I'd go back to the ship early. I wished him good luck, warned him against that bony French dame, and walked back toward the ship alone.

Back along the darkened streets, time and again Argentinians would give me a nod and a buenas noches—I must have reminded them of some well-known characters around that town with my face in the shadow of the broad-brimmed sombrero. In daylight there were quite a few sloppy-looking guys I noticed whom I might have been mistaken for. They, too, wore suits of some dark material that had never been pressed and stiff broad-brimmed hats. It must have been about ten when I climbed up on the ship. Our haggling with that old woman had taken longer than I thought.

As I walked along the river bank toward our ship she had looked sort of staunch and almost homey — it was good to know I had a bunk on the old tub. The old fellow who had been employed to sit smoking his pipe on the top of our gangplank as watchman was all for putting me off the ship, until I took my new hat off and he saw that no Argentinian ever wore a mustache and beard so thin and sparse. Undoubtedly, I must be a member of the crew. I was a Nord Americano, if not worse. I turned aft to the fo'castle to see if any of the gang were around — I wanted to show off. It seemed everyone was ashore except a few of the old fellows who had their bunk curtains drawn. I stopped to light a cigarette in the passage and almost yelped when my match lit up old Pat, the oiler, standing there propped up against the bulkhead, staring at his cabin door, his eyes glassy, and his cabin key held clutched, stabbing straight out into space. He evidently had been jabbing at his keyhole for some time and couldn't make it. His eyes rolled toward me.

"What's the matter, Pat? Ain't you feeling right?" I asked.

A thin drool of saliva bubbled from his stiff lips as he tried to say something. He gave that up finally and spoke from somewhere deep inside of him like a ventriloquist.

"Uper — er up — huh? Uper er up— Can' get th' gar-damn key in 'er."

I took the key from his stiffly curled fingers and opened the oiler's cabin. Pat waved me aside, pushed back against the bulkhead, and then went slowly forward on the momentum of his push. He leaned far back with a slight list as he went by, though his uncreased felt hat kept an even keel. I looked in after he'd landed in his cabin sprawling prone on his bunk.

"O.K.? You all right, Pat? Want me to get something?"

His head lifted slowly and his eyes stared at me as if he'd seen me for the first time. Then he blinked and growled through his drooling mouth.

"Ger ra 'ell arra 'ere, ya gar damn furriner. Warra 'ell ya doin' on 'is ship? 'Er 'merican ship — I'm er 'merican—"

And as he tried to pull his wandering lips into a snarl and comer his eyebrows into a vicious righteous scowl to say something else, I quietly closed his door and went forward to my cabin. I wondered if I ought not to get me one of those small American flags one sees stuck in Washington's Birthday cakes, and wear it tucked into the hatband of this new black sombrero the way people wear feathers at big football games to show what side they're on.

That hat aroused some controversy aboard and in a sense split the ship into two distinct factions. Conservative, muscle-bound mentalities who sneered at my black sombrero contended Pd crossed over and had gone native. These unimaginative provincials laughed with cruel sarcasm whenever I dressed up to go ashore. There were even vague threats, and I kept my hat hidden lest it be burned by those Ku Kluxers.

Then there were the Liberals, Joe, Perry (when he got out of the clink), Birdneck, and a few others who found my hat dashing and very provocative. Perry, on occasion, tried to borrow it. They were happy to go ashore with me and seemed proud to be seen with so debonair and cosmopolitan a deckhand.

Mush — naturally — and Al (he of the untrustworthy short upper lip) sided with the rightwing. I felt their companionship was no loss. Their sartorial tendency was completely collegiate — a fad prevalent in the ginny twenties and still preserved in the offices of some publishers and a few architectural ateliers (where my ideas on hats and sundry aesthetic matters are still not acceptable) to this day.

17. Joe, the Maestro

IN ONE SENSE RIO SANTIAGO WAS A CLEAN PORT, there was a semi-weekly inspection by the medical authorities that kept it that way. Not the harbor or sewerage — that was what it was. I mean the houses with the high lighted doors.

These examinations took place on Mondays and Thursdays, I was told — and I wondered if that elegant aristocratic savant with the handsome white beard was the medico who performed the rites. And did the sailor-boy cop with the black mustachios guard his shiny black walking stick with the silver knob at each doorway as he had at our gangplank?

Since Perry and the Polack had been jugged, we hadn't seen much of that cop either. Maybe Perry had talked him into a game of Seven Up or some other time-killer to while away the long hours. Perry was a very persuasive guy.

After that first wild night ashore, there was never again a mass stampede for the Elysian fields below the main street. On occasion some of the guys would wander down that way singly or in pairs.

Early one morning I recall Chips climbing up the gangplank still dressed in his going-ashore clothes with a gentle, satiated smile on his face. He'd invested ten pesos and spent the night. An eye-opener of mate, the native herb tea which is sipped through a metal tube, was thrown in for the same price. Chips said it (the mate) was very good, healthy, and invigorating. He considered his ten pesos well spent.

At breakfast each morning those individuals who couldn't resist the charm of the ladies and had the pesos to spend would bring the latest reports on the personnel and conditions behind the large lighted doors. But those reports were often confusing and misleading.

For example, if one said, "Hey, remember that big blonde wit' d'red ribbon around her hair — in d'Paris Bar? She ain't dere any more."

And someone would sputter into his oatmeal:

"Ya mean d'one with d'gold toot' in front?"

"Yeah, dat one. She ain't dere any more."

And everybody would try to remember if his relations with the lady in question had ever advanced beyond the stage of a cordial good evening.

But that type of reporting was inaccurate for this reason. The lady in question might have been absent from her particular tramping ground not because of any edict passed by our suave friend, the port medico. There was another handsome diplomat who might have been responsible for tapping the inmates of half the houses within a hundred-mile radius of Buenos Aires.

I mean his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

During the couple of weeks we were tied up in Rio Santiago there were big doings in Buenos Aires just twenty miles away and every girl in the district planned to take time off, get dressed up, and go up to see the handsome blond young prince who was touring the world at the time, spreading good will and slipping in occasionally a word for Manchester's cotton goods.

He was being feted everywhere he went and I had seen the ticker-tape parades in his honor in New York. Now he finally had reached Buenos Aires and set all the passionate, feminine hearts of our Latin sister republic aflutter. And those girls in Rio Santiago fluttered with the rest of them and that was all they talked about — their planned visit to Buenos Aires.

So that big blonde dame with the red ribbon around her head and the gold tooth in front might just have gone to stand on a crowded street curb and sigh as the boyish Crown Prince dashed by in an auto. So a lot of guys who might have known her too well may have had nothing to worry about, if they could only be sure which of the two handsome diplomats were responsible for her absence, the young blond one or the older bearded one.

The first few days in port everybody worked. The black gang had a lot of stuff they had to do down in their engine room and they always came topside looking blacker and greasier than ever — all except old Pat, the oiler, who had held down his regular table at the Chicago Bar and was never sober enough to hear the young cherubic-faced First Engineer, whose watch he was on, give him hell. The First was an Irishman too, and Pat knew how to manage him.

The deck crew worked pretty steadily. That quick, complete squelching of Perry and the Polack had stifled their imaginations somewhat and had taken the spine out of them. They all turned to promptly and put in a good day's work — or seemed to.

The one who appeared to be concentrating most on port work, whose face seemed a little grimier than anyone else's, who always walked the deck with the intent look of a man profoundly concerned with doing his daily stint to the best of his ability, and seemed "to live [as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus has assured us in his Commentaries we should] each day as if it were his last — then if there be gods. . " I guess I've got that mixed up. The one who worked like that was my pal Joe, A.B., M.S. — able-bodied seaman and master staller — to my complete befuddlement, until, after studying his intense calculated movement carefully for a day or two, I realized the master hadn't let me down. He was still the biggest, laziest, canniest staller on the seven seas. And I quickly apprenticed myself to him, since a deck boy is an apprentice to an A.B.

I learned about stalling from him. That accomplishment has stood me in good stead through all these years and I have a deep debt of gratitude to Joe for my ability to do nothing with an air of such busy concentration that it broods no interruption. That is no mean ability, and lest I've given the impression that Joe or I or anyone else who has studied the science of stalling are just a bunch of good-for-naughts, or indigent, shiftless, bums, accept my assurance I have precedent, authorities, and persuasive arguments.

Stalling has the same relation to performance that platform presence, showmanship or personal touch has to any and all creative work, and requires as much careful training. It is my conviction that the concert pianist's hair tossing, wiggling and squirming at the stool (some prefer a backed chair, others a wide smooth bench, longer and wider than their bottoms, allowing for a slide either way), the needlessly high-flung hands for beating out the deeper fortissimo, the back-breaking crouch for tender pianissimo, is all a planned and calculated stall. What is known to the trade as platform presence.

The honored master of them all, of course, was De Pachmann with his individualized piano juggling, plumbing its legs with his vest-pocket plumb-bob, his chatter and mugging, etc. The pendulous swaying and tiptoe straining for the high notes by the artistes of the Opera, topped by that genius, Caruso, is froth from the same brew. I only heard the master's voice on the His Master's Voice Red Seal recordings. (Why should I mention the name of the recording company? I'd offer them this plug and receive no response — not even a curt no.) And in those recordings it struck me that the ingenious chest-collapsing wails with which he ended every high note and every second musical passage was a definite display of his training and ability for the stall.

The concert violinist's ceremonious large silk handkerchief thrust into his collar before applying the fiddle to the neck, preparing his audience for the sweat he expects to pour down on his rose-amber Stradivarius; even the desperate prayerful frown of the cornetist, a suggestion he fears he mightn't reach the phenomenal high C he's blowing for — are all of a piece with the circus performers who amble across the tightrope (to quote the Chinese again, a very admirable, useful people if only for that reason) with the care and heroic courage of a "man walking on the tail of a tiger."

Friends of mine have told me they have seen these same performers, these funambulists who timidly advance and retreat along the silver thread of their taut wire at scheduled performances, saunter carelessly across the same route shod in flopping galoshes with their hands in their pockets some mornings on their way out to breakfast. It seems they prefer that type of footing to the unswept circus floor after the chariot races which are usually the grand finale of the previous night's performance.

It's needless to go on into my observations of the practiced swooning of the ballet dancers, the heart-rending grunts of professional wrestlers, head-clutching photographs of the philosophers, scientists, writers, et at., that stare back at us from newspapers and periodicals when they are awarded the Nobel Prize or merely a Pulitzer or just pictured there to help peddle their latest book — to go on with this thesis, since that's what it seems to have become. Nor shall I indicate the stalls used by my colleagues in the plastic arts, lest I be accused of betraying my trust and be dubbed the Benedict Arnold of the clay bins.

From all this careful observation I've concluded that all work of any consequence is fifty per cent good sweaty honest toil and fifty per cent a frothy appearance — an air or look about you that you're working very hard. One is useless without the other and in practical performance requires as absolute a balance as the alkaline secretions of your liver.

The dangers of a predominance of either is obvious. How many plodding tireless technicians have we all known who were fired from their jobs just six months before they completed the thirty or forty years of service which would have pensioned them off, for nothing more than the fact they did their work so easily and completely it seemed effortless, therefore useless?

While on the other hand I remember a gifted staller — a studio hack in an architectural sculptor's studio — who had trained himself so well he was able to sleep sitting upright on a high stool every afternoon after a heavy lunch. His case is worth a little more attention. His method briefly was this and I don't advise it for beginners. He spread a large blueprint on a drawing table, rested his elbow on the drawing table, and leaned his chin on the fist of his leaning arm while his other arm and hand rested on the table holding a long pencil. Anyone approaching from any direction on that creaky floor would set the hand with the pencil slowly in motion from point to point on the blueprint as if the aroused sleeper was carefully figuring a knotty problem in scale relation. Eventually he was promoted, given a raise, and assigned to a job that kept him standing up all day! Of course, this person had a fine scholastic background. After years of study he'd given up trying to be an engineer to do sculpture on the assumption it was the easier of the two professions.

But the training for both requires undivided attention. I don't mean sculpture and engineering. I mean the ability to work or stall.

Therefore, this ability I have of looking harried, earnest, and deeply immersed in important work, while I contemplate shall I or shall I not go to lunch now, I owe completely to my pal Joe.

Joe never painted overside in that port. Nobody asked him to. He was always too busy. As we carried our paint buckets to the rail and then lugged those splintery planks (our scaffolds) and dropped them over side, his work looked so important the Bos'n, the Swede Mate, and the young Third each gave him an approving glance and left him to weave his gossamer of nothings while they drove us other stupid galley slaves.

Even before we'd be called to turn to, Joe was at it. With the Mate or one of the others watching he would suddenly knit his brows as his eyes (only his keen eyes) saw something up on the prow that needed his immediate attention. He'd hop off the hatch where the rest of us less imaginative dopes sat, snap out his cigarette, and hurry forward, picking up a long strand of rope yarn, and then make the ladder to the prow in two long steps. There he'd tackle one of the big coils of rope or hawser and tie them neatly with the yam. That always happened just a moment before we'd be called to turn to. I never saw him look at his watch; he had an instinct for timing.

Joe would stall around the prow hunting another piece of yam and not finish up that hawser till we were well along with our painting. Seems to me those hawsers were always loosening up and had to be tied almost every morning, either on the prow or back on the poop.

When I caught on after a day or so, I rolled off the hatch and chased after him with another piece of yarn. Two were better than one on that type of job. Then Joe and I would spend the day in a carefully calculated stall. He'd get back to the main deck and walk aft with his eyes knotted in a searching frown. He'd stoop and unearth another long straw-colored wisp of rope yarn. I, following, would hunt another. Then, with the strained look of an expert, he continued along the deck with deliberate tread, trailing the yarn toward midships and climb into the shelter deck, I, his self-appointed assistant, following him.

In the darkness of the shelter deck we'd find some packing case or piece of riggin' to sit on and there we'd light up our cigarettes and sit talking quietly, watching the door out to the deck. No one coming along could see us, but we could see them quick. After a cigarette or two we'd walk back through to the deck aft. Joe would come out the door with a rush to his walk, I trailing him. Again he'd hunt a strand of that rope yam, having discarded his last piece of the golden fleece of indolence in the shelter deck. (That golden fleece that Jason hunted. What'd he want with that stuff — was that a stall, too?)

We marched back to the poop, found some way of finagling away another hour, and then forward again. That stall was good for a few days.

Then, since Joe was a good sailor and knew what was to be done often before the Mates or Bos'n decided it should be, he knew when a section of the hold would be emptied even before the Third Mate who was checking the unloading and marking off the cargo on his charts. Joe was ready to climb down with a big straw broom the instant the last cradle laden with case oil or machine parts had swung up and out of that hatch, and I riding along had possessed myself of a broom too. Sweeping out the sections of the hold was a nice easy job with plenty of chance for rest and smoking.

The cargo slated for Rio Santiago was almost all unloaded now. We'd been tied up in that port for almost a week. I'd begun to develop a rankling grievance that was bound to bust out all over that ship. Here I'd traveled for the first time in my life, not a mere jaunt of five hundred or a thousand miles — why, I'd shipped some six thousand five hundred miles for what? I asked myself. All I'd seen of the Argentine was that flat stretch of muddy water, those dirty North American Packing Company buildings, the shaggy little town, and those dreary houses with a lot of bedraggled sniffling floozies — yes, and even they could go and come as they pleased to Buenos Aires or any place.

Had I known what I know now, had I not been so cocky on what I thought was subject matter worthy to be immortalized in some form of plastic expression, I'd have settled down and made a stack of drawings and paintings right there, and gathered a wealth of material from those pathetic stucco houses and their inmates, that silver-gray and sepia port and those sanguine slaughterhouses. But no — I wanted to see Argentinian culture. The accepted version of Culture with a big hollow C.

Finally, I boiled over and spilled my resentment into the ear of the Bos'n, and he was patient and nice about it. He tipped me off to skip the Mate and go over his head to the Old Man himself.

I did, one afternoon when something had gone wrong with the forward winch and Joe who really knew his stuff brushed aside the Spik who had been working the levers and looked it over and then sent me forward to get a metal marlin spike (used for splicing cable), and I brought one and he twiddled the point of it between the gear wheels of that winch and sent it chugging along as good as new.

The Old Man had come along the deck when Joe and I were congratulating each other. I got my hand as smeared with black grease from his as if I too had contributed. From the look of things no one could tell who had done most to get that winch working. Captain Brandt gave me a beaming, approving smile, so I hit him up for a day off.

"Y' mean you wanta go paintin'—?" He froze up at once.

"Not exactly, Captain Brandt. I'd hoped—"

" 'Cause if you wanna paint, there's still plenty overside. I've been watching you lately—"

Uh, uh. The Old Guy sounded as if he was wising up.

"And I've seen you assisting the A.B.'s — mainly that big feller there."

Joe turned and looked back at that.

"It'd be a shame to have you go overside paintin' now that you seem to be catching holt of the work. You'll be a sailor yet and I'd hate to see you slip up now." He smiled that fatherly smile of his this time. "Yes, son, I'm gettin' proud of ya. I always could pick 'em."

"Thank you, but — you see — I hate to knock off too. The work is more interesting than it's ever been. But that cable I received the day we tied up—"

I fumbled it out of my right-hand pocket with my cleaner left hand.

"There's some important mail waiting for me at the American Consul in Buenos Aires, it says here. I didn't wanna bring it up until now, but I imagine we'll be shipping out soon, and I have some — I have to sign some papers or something at the Consul's office—"

Of course, Captain Brandt wasn't accustomed to having cables delivered to his deck boys — not in ports like Rio Santiago at least. I suppose on rare occasions that might have happened, and news, something to do with life or death or perhaps some wealthy relative's bequest, was folded up in one of those mysterious blue papers and brought aboard in some such obscure mudhole to some more obscure humble member of his crew.

All seafaring men are incurable romanticists. Captain Brandt was no exception, although his romantic ideas had a rather practical bourgeois twist — this news I had received might have been about my share of a wealthy uncle's gold-lined salt mine. And after sucking his teeth and squinting off into the distance as he thought it over, he told me I could knock off Friday and go up to Buenos Aires for the week end.

Neither he nor anyone else aboard that ship ever learned that the mysterious blue cablegram delivered to the bewhiskered deck boy with the gold-rimmed glasses had read:

DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER — I'LL BE WAITING.

SIGNED YOURS.

18. Eight Thousand Miles for Stravinski

PROMPTNESS IS ONE OF MY VIRTUES — in fact, I'm usually so prompt for an appointment, applying for a job or a date with a dame, I always show up an hour or two before the time set and wait around so worried and so perspired that I'm completely wilted come the hour, the minute, or the instant I should look my best. And I've smoked so many cigarettes standing around in corridors or on street corners, I usually have a sore throat and a ripping headache and have forgotten completely the sparkling bon mot I'd planned as a lead-off.

My date with a couple of million Buenos Aireans was no exception, though I tried to approach my first encounter with the Paris of America del Sud with a dignified restraint. Neither Mush nor I had a watch, and since it was winter down there and the day dawned late, how was I to know what time it was when I was dressed and ready to be off long before the man on watch struck three bells, which if it was the First Mate's watch should have made it 5:30. I hoped it was not the Third Mate's watch, for that would be 1:30 on that cold morning. Even then, 5:30 was rather early, and as I sat around in the cold darkness of our cabin I contemplated getting back into bed.

I gave the daylight one more chance and smoked a cigarette out the porthole, waiting — no dawn by the end of that smoke and I'd go back to bed. I burned up three or four cigarettes in quick succession.

Slowly, the livid streaks of the new day dragged across the horizon. Homer has it "when rosy-fingered dawn topped the distant hilltops" or something. If he wants it that way he can have it, though it seemed to me every new day in the Odyssey began the same way. Didn't it ever rain down in the Mediterranean? There was no mention of dreary cold mornings such as this. And how come those rosy fingers always found a few round hilltops to tip? What, no plains?

There was no sense getting angry with old man Homer. The old guy was said to have gone blind. Perhaps those rosy-fingered dawns, etc., were the last he saw before the light faded, and die thought always suggested something else to me anyway.

I didn't expect to have anything to do with the girls up in Buenos Aires. Not many of the crew knew that city and those that did said there was no sense going there — the houses down in Rio Santiago were better and cheaper. And the city was full of clip joints anyway.

None of them knew much about the real Buenos Aires. They knew only the outer salty crust of that port and found all they wanted in the area along the waterfront. Somebody remembered the name of the fancy Main Street: "Avenida del Mayo— how ya like that? May Avenue. Dopey, huh?"

But don't worry, kid, you'll get around," Birdneck assured me. "There's lots of Limeys around, and even some of the city Spiks speak American — not good — but they speak it."

Captain Brandt had doled out twenty-five pesos with a heavy-lidded, sidelong glance, his ragged eyebrows raised with the unspoken question how did I spend that last ten dollars' worth of Argentine tissuepaper. I didn't try to explain, but I did say I had bought a new hat and I expected there might be some longdistance telephoning I'd have to pay for in the city, etc., etc.

Twenty-five single pesos made a sizable lump of money in my pocket and I felt rather affluent, figuring the rate of exchange. Two pesos can buy as much as two bucks or even five along the New York waterfront. If everything else were proportionately priced, I ought to go far on twenty-five.

I'd hung my jacket on an improvised wire hanger for the past few days and slept with my trousers spread under my mattress for a number of nights. My suit didn't look too bad, though the legs of the pants had a curious waffle effect from their contact with the springs of my bunk. My good shoes had been rained on a few times and had a curl to them. The polish I'd dabbed on them couldn't hide the bluish water marks that showed through. The clean pressed shirt I'd kept tucked away for just such an occasion had been scorched in that last laundering. Well, I did have a fine new hat and clean underwear. In the dim gray light that had begun to come into the cabin I tried to get a curl to my mustache, but there wasn't enough of it to grab hold of yet.

Suddenly, the day was with us. There was a stir on deck, and Mush was up. I saw big Joe ambling along the deck on his way to breakfast and I talked him into lending me the dollar watch he always carried. And I gobbled down my breakfast quick, put on my hat, and was off. I didn't run through the town — I walked quickly. The breeze kept lifting my stiff-brimmed hat.

The long narrow platform of the railroad station was completely deserted. In a flat straight ribbon the tracks shot off into the horizon — no sign of a train to break its unerring aim. I picked up a timetable in the little station. It was easy to figure out — that spur of track began at Buenos Aires and went through forty or fifty assorted names of saints, ports, and villas, and came to a dead end in Rio Santiago. There would be no train until about noon. The only other morning train had pulled out about the time I tried to curl my mustache at sunup.

A typical suburban train schedule — if you want to get away from any of the festering little colonies outside of any metropolis you usually have to get up at some ungodly hour in order to make the city at some reasonable time, or else you must wait until the housewives have sent all the children off to school, rushed through the dishes, finished with their household chores, and travel with them around noon in a train which gets into town in time for them to grab a marshmallow sundae and dash off to a matinee or do some shopping. That noon train seemed to be that sort of setup, even though housewives in Rio Santiago were as rare as marshmallow sundaes and the city was only about twenty miles away.

After I'd marched a few miles up and down that narrow station platform, I sat in the sun on some damp railroad ties at the station end nearest Buenos Aires and wished I'd planned the day better.

The morning limped along. About an hour before the train was due a few people had begun to gather along the platform. A few women among them might have been from the houses, but I couldn't tell. They wore dark, sedate clothes and so many of those women had looked like any others I'd seen, there was no way of telling their profession without their kimonos or bathrobes.

Then along came two little old men I knew. I'd seen them around in some of the barrooms and had spoken to them and occasionally bought them a drink. They were a couple of American beachcombers, nice old guys who looked and dressed so much alike I couldn't tell them apart. One was a little shorter than the other, but if you didn't see them together that didn't help, since they both were so frail and small, you needed the two of them around to scale each other.

They wore massive short white beards that jutted (mustache and all) out and away from their pinched regular features. Cloth boys' caps, pulled forward, shaded their eyes so you couldn't see them. They talked through their beards like department-store Santa Clauses, with their mustaches hiding their mouths. I noticed when they crooked their thin necks back and swallowed their drinks they seemed to pour the liquor into the bush of their whiskers. You never knew where they wore their mouths — but they did.

I was glad to see them. The littler one told me they were going up to Buenos Aires, and when I asked if they knew the address of the American Consul they said sure. That's where they were going. Stick with them and they'd show me the way. Now that was lucky meeting them there.

The little one, standing there with his ragged collar pulled up against the wind and his hands thrust deep into his threadbare, patched trousers, squinted up at the sky and mumbled:

"Looks like a fine day."

"Yeah."

"Gittin' sort of warm too — ain't it?"

Well, he might have had a bit of fever, I thought. Though the sun was out, there was a cold wind blowing that this little man felt too as he shivered and I said, "Yep."

"Yep — it's getting real warm and dry, too," he coughed.

His bigger twin brother nodded sagely. We'd been walking along the station as we talked, they on either side of me. I found somehow we had stopped in front of a shack that peddled cigarettes, newspapers, and big bottles of black beer. They stood there staring at the bottles displayed in the window of the shack.

"Say," I said, brightly, "d'ya think we've got time to drink a bottle of beer before the train comes along?"

"Sure have," and they had edged me into that shack, ordered three bottles, one for each of us, which I paid for before my invitation for one split bottle was out of my mouth.

It was good beer — un-iced. Seems there was a large German colony down in Argentina and I'd been told that the heavy black beer was brewed as well there as it was anywhere in Deutschland. Since I've never traveled in the homeland of those beer makers, I just pass this on for what it's worth. Since then I've drunk a finer, heavier beer in Holland which I think surpassed this Argentine-German product, but I might have been prejudiced. I like the Dutch, and that maniac paperhanger had just begun to spew his filth in those Munich beerhalls at the time.

I don't remember how much those bottles cost and how many more we downed before the wooden coach train finally rattled into the station, nor do I remember much about that train ride to Buenos Aires, outside of the recollection that the engine stopped with a great crash almost every three minutes to rest three. And my kind little guides, the hoary old beachcombers, would suggest we'd stretch our legs, and again we'd find a station shack that sold more bottles of black beer.

Not every one of those forty-some-odd milk-can stations to Buenos Aires had a beer shack, but almost every other one of them did, and my guides found them. My pesos were wearing thin, but I figured it was a good investment. Here I had not one but two guides to lead me around a strange country. They could act as interpreters, since they'd been on the beach there for some twenty years and could make their wishes and mine understood. They knew the right places. I'd been warned prices are hoisted for tourists; these shrewd little men couldn't be fooled — they knew how to get things cheaply, since their life on the beach was so sparse. And then it had come to the point where we all smelled sort of beery and I no longer minded nor could I distinguish their own rather sour aroma.

It took our train almost three hours before we finally clanged, crashed, and banged to a stop in the station at Buenos Aires. We didn't waste a minute, dug our hands into our pockets, and hiked off in a slightly wiggly beeline for the American Consul — first thing.

We walked about ten blocks, and the Consul's office, they told me, was just a few more straight ahead. We had stopped in front of a corner bar, so we went in for one last mug of beer. The old guys wiped the froth off their whiskers, and I licked my mustache clean, and we were off again. About a dozen blocks further on we stopped again for another last spot of beer, then on and again and again, until my feet began to give. A glance at Joe's dollar watch told me it was four o'clock. We'd been hiking and drinking our way to the American Consul's office for about an hour.

I asked my silent little friends when the Consul closed for the day. They told me about five. Well, I wouldn't have time to get to any of the museums today, but I could spend the night and the first thing in the morning. .,

But we still shuffled along that narrow long street. The character of the buildings had changed. It seemed we were in the business district with large wholesale dry goods shops on either side of us. For a number of blocks now I'd noticed the large proprietor signs over the windows seemed to have developed a familiar cast. One read DePina & Bernstein, another, Gonzales & Berkowitz — del Soto & Lichtman, Juan Ruamos & Cohen. There was a strange nostalgic quality about those large black signs with their large gold letters of familiar names at the after-end of the sign — names not unlike those I'd seen in our garment center in New York.

Not that I didn't trust these kind little bewhiskered fellows who'd adopted me and had milked a lot of my pesos away into bottles and mugs of black beer, but they were old and maybe their memory wasn't too good any more. So when I saw a particularly homey-looking sign over one of the shops, De Riviera Castilliano and San Horowitz, I left my little friends standing on the curb and entered that establishment with the hope of contacting the junior partner, San Horowitz. There had been a Sam Horowitz who had a delicatessen near my studio. Maybe this Argentinian member of the family would trade some information in exchange for a "gris" from a landsman — or maybe even a cousin.

I entered the big shop. I didn't have to try to get the junior partner. A stout gentleman wearing a hat on the back of his head and a full, curly, grayish beard fanning out over his chest stood talking with both hands to one of the clerks. He understood the language of all Horowitzes and Slobodkins, so I threw my badly mangled muttersprache at him:

"Pliss, vol is de Americanische Consul's plotz?"

He looked at me, keeping one of his hands gestured to pick up his interrupted conversation. I guess that "pliss" got him— that's a New York addition to the international jargon of Yiddish. Then, swinging his unoccupied hand out, he pointed back in the direction from which I'd just come, or had been led.

"Geht man asoi direct.''

I "danked" him heartily and left the shop.

The nice little beachcombers had disappeared and I never saw them again. I hotfooted it back toward the railroad station and found the American Consul's office a few blocks the other side of it. An Englishman whom I'd picked out flaunting Bond Street tweeds in that crowd of black-scarved, dark-suited Argentinians had directed me after I returned to the station.

It was after five — the Consul's office was locked up for the night. If that girl ever wrote me those promised letters, I've never been able to find out. They were to have been addressed to me in care of the Consul's office. I never came back to it— never could believe that dame anyway.

I stood in the streets of that large strange city. The sun was going down and it was beginning to get quite cold. People who looked like office clerks filled the narrow streets, overflowing into the gutters, and brushed by me in their rush to get home or wherever they were going.

Now the thing to do was to lay plans for a fine cultured evening — music or something — and no girls. That was a sailor's night ashore. I was on the hunt for a feast of the spirit, not the flesh. The Buenos Aires' season is quite the thing, I'd read in a tattered old Vogue magazine once. All the ranking musicians, dancers, etc., who give concerts in New York, Paris, and London during our cold months come down there to do their stuff in July, August, and September. Here I was a tourist in a fashionable city with lots of leisure and pockets lined with money of the realm. Thinly lined, to be sure, after all that black beer, but enough for a cheap ticket to hear music, a middling good restaurant, a bed down at the docks, and, if I didn't get too hungry tomorrow, I'd do the museums. Fortunately, I had my return ticket to my ship in Rio Santiago.

I stopped a couple of English-looking guys and asked the direction to the music halls. They were Germans, though they dressed like Englishmen and spoke the language with a guttural accent. As soon as it was clear that I meant concert music and not girly shows they pointed out the way and I found a large concert hall.

A large poster displayed the gaunt head of Gabrilowitsch. Even though I'd never heard him play and never seen him, I'd have known him. His name was clearly printed in large letters. I hastily looked over the range of prices listed alongside the box-office window and picked a cheap one and thrust two pesos fifty centavos through the window at an elderly man with long white mustachios who sat there dressed in a few sweaters, coats, and a small cloth cap.

He looked up as my money came through and I nodded toward the Gabrilowitsch poster in the lobby. He grunted something and shoved my money back at me. Evidently all the low-priced tickets were gone, so I piled on another peso and slid my money back. Again it came back to me. The old man simply said, "Miercoles" as if that settled it. So I slapped on a couple of more pesos and he shoved back my money. Again he said, "Miercoles" abruptly — back came my slowly growing pile of pesos.

Evidently this old fellow didn't realize how I hungered for a bit of music, how much I yearned for Gabrilowitsch. All right, so I wouldn't have dinner — and I piled on pesos and shoved them through. He seemed to be irritated as he kept repeating miercoles until it had become a shout.

When my last peso and all the loose centavos I had in my pocket had made their last journey in and out that window with the old man's mustachios bristling and his nostrils flaring as he shouted miercoles, we glared fire at each other through that barred window. We'd come to an impasse. A tall, long-nosed man stepped out of the queue which had lined up in back of me and tapped me on the shoulder.

''Miercoles — that means Wednesday," he said gently, as if that explained everything.

"Oh — well, why don't he say so?"

Then I asked this Englishman who seemed so well informed where I could hear some music that night, and he directed me toward the Teatro Colon — the big Opera House on Avenida del Mayo.

I walked off wondering why the old guy hadn't taken my money anyway. H the concert was for the following Wednesday, it would have just been my loss. He couldn't have known I was in town for that night only. But then it might have been for the Wednesday passed, and they just neglected to take that bill poster down, like the circus posters one sees in the late fall on windows of unrented stores.

The posters on the big, ornate Teatro Colon indicated that Adolf Bohm would dance Petrouchka and Stravinski's Firebird would glow through the rest of the wet night.

Hastily I bought a ticket — a pretty good one — and spent a little more than I'd planned. Then I walked along the Avenida del Mayo for a short spell. The green-yellow street lights were coming on and that fashionable avenue looked dreary. I spent a little time poking around one of those flowery, bronze-dripping monuments that the French Beaux Arts sculptors delight in sticking up in the squares of the cities of South America. When I felt the cold wet night seeping through my jacket, I went hunting a reasonable restaurant not too far from the Teatro Colon.

The effect of the beer had worn off completely and I was cold as I tramped those side streets. I had found a place that looked pretty good. There were pagodas painted on the window and the sign said Cafe Oriental — a chop-suey joint! I walked in with confidence. Here at least I'd not have to eat Stek Caballero.

The place was empty — it must have been too early for dinner. I sat down at one of the tables and enjoyed the luxury of the first clean white tablecloth I'd seen in months. Then I opened the large cardboard menu to choose which one of the numerous chop sueys I'd like to eat. I always liked fried onions (and who doesn't?); the shredded shrimp, pork or beef which christens these vegetable stews I felt was never of much moment. So I galloped down the menu to Cocina China and found no chop suey at all — not even plain.

There were plenty of incomprehensible Spanish words preceded by "China," but nothing that even remotely resembled the mysterious hashes I'd eaten on Mott Street. Maybe here they really let themselves go. I'd been told there are things done with fat little puppy dogs, venerable fish eyes, and tender young rats I'd not like to meet up with hidden in a thick soybean, sauce.

A young Chinese waiter had come to my table and stood there waiting for my decision. Finally, I frankly asked him:

"Haven't you any chop suey at all?"

He just stood there, and when I repeated my question a little louder he broke out with a grin. He didn't understand a word of English!

For some reason that amazed and annoyed me. It seemed natural and I could understand these Argentinians not speaking our American English — but a Chinese waiter in a chop-suey joint — I tried repeating chop suey and varied the accent to get him to understand I wanted any one of the numerous combinations of fried onions, celery, etc., that his ancestral grandfathers had dreamed up on our West Coast long ago, the beggar's hash they call chop suey — but no dice. He giggled and just shrugged his shoulders, so I sadly ordered Stek Cabal-lero.

He took my order back to the kitchen and waited near the door until it was cooked for me. A sleazy young Argentinian who had come in and seated himself at one of the back tables there gave him the wink. My waiter walked over to his table, leaned over it, and they both snickered at me as they gabbled in Spanish. To them, I was funny!

The Stek Caballero which was finally served me was no different from a dozen or so I'd already eaten during the past week. After I downed it, I rapped for that smirking little waiter and asked for a Cafe Expresso with Martel cognac. He understood that all right and wasn't grinning any more when he served it.

There was one difference in that food and drink from any other I'd already had in Rio Santiago — it cost a lot more. After I paid my bill I found I had one peso and a few loose centavos left from my original wad. That settled everything. Unless something happened I'd have to get the last train back that night.

I looked up the train schedule that I had thoughtfully carried with me — the last train left at 10:30. I hunted my ticket for the Teatro Colon; the performance started at nine. Well, it looked as if I'd get one hour of Stravinski's Petrouchka or the Firebird, depending on which they started the evening with, before I'd have to dash for that last train to Rio Santiago.

It was too early for the opera. I sat there nursing my drink. There never was a little cup of cold black coffee that was coddled as carefully and as long as I fondled that Cafe Ex-presso. The restaurant was filling up, and my young waiter had flicked and straightened the cloth at my table about a dozen times before I finally took the hint and walked out.

I stood in a doorway out of the wind across from the big Teatro awhile, until I'd seen a few people enter who looked as if they might be some of the audience — patrons of the opera same as myself. Then I crossed over and, after giving my hair a quick lick with my pocket comb, straightened my tie, folded my wet collar back into place, gave my mustache a pinching twirl, and entered the big lobby of the Teatro Colon.

It was rather quiet there. A few men wearing white tie and tails who turned out to be ushers stood around talking. When they saw I held a ticket, one approached me and studied my precious pasteboard and indicated I was to climb the stairs. It was a long climb up, but after an usher led me to my seat I realized it could have been a lot longer. There were a lot of balconies above the one I sat in and there seemed to be quite a few below — I must have been seated midway. I felt like a fly in the center of that huge web of seats.

The seat I had was a good one, too, with a good view of the stage. Some of the choruses or secondary characters who peopled the back of the stage would be cut off from my line of vision as I looked down at them, but that was of little consequence. If those people amounted to anything they'd have been up front, and even if I wouldn't see some of the entrances at the back of the stage, I figured that stuff was always hammy posing — I'd just as soon miss it.

So I thought as I sat halfway up and about midcenter of the Teatro Colon and as I looked around it seemed I was the first of the audience to arrive to this performance. It wasn't lonesome in that brilliantly lighted, many-balconied auditorium.

There were ushers standing at the head of the aisles, and some women wearing black dresses and short white aprons would appear occasionally in the empty balconies above and below.

There was one standing at the back to one side of the balcony that I sat in. She might have been in charge of checking wraps or something — looked like a nice quiet person, about thirty, I guessed, and sort of pretty. Her eye caught mine, and she gave me a pleasant smile, and what might have been a wink — or was she blinking at the bright lights?

A midinette! Or did midinettes work only in dress shops to midday or was it midnight? I never could read that claptrap La Vie Boheme. There was a continental atmosphere to that theater. In fact, the whole city suggested it was an imitation of Paris. And if this pretty, dark-haired, check-room girl or powder-room maid, or whatever she was, was a midinette — with those worthy qualities which had been attributed to those little dears — maybe I could stay and see and hear the whole performance. Then, afterwards, I'd linger up at her end of the balcony, see her home, and take the train back to Rio Santiago tomorrow morning. I might even stay over Sunday and get back to my ship on Monday morning.

I'd tell her the truth — I'd let her know I was an artist with a touch of genius — didn't have to know the language to get that over. All I needed was a pencil and paper. I could make a drawing on the back of my program — perhaps show it to her as a starter. And then suggest I'd like to make a more careful study of her charming head. I planned to do an important piece of sculpture when I returned to the States which I would exhibit at the Salon. All midinettes knew about Art Salons.

That might sound like a lot of malarkey, but if I remember La Boheme, that's the sort of line that was fed to midinettes. And it was not all quatsh. I did plan to do a large showpiece when I got back to New York — if I could afford a studio. If I did, I might use her head on one of the figures. It was a good plastic shape. That piece would have to have many heads — Pd made a lot of promises. Though I wouldn't show it at the Salon — anyone could show with that gang if they paid five bucks entry fee, and they accepted all comers and everybody's bucks.

Joe's watch told me it was almost nine o'clock. The balcony I sat in had not filled up very much. It might have been the rain that kept the Buenos Aireans away — perhaps they didn't like Russian stuff. They'd rather listen to Humperdinck or Puccini than Stravinski. The minute hand on the watch ticked past the hour and there was no sign of anything stirring in the orchestra pit.

I didn't see that dark-haired dame much any more and I was getting a little fidgety. I hadn't decided yet whether I'd try to make her — or the train. If I didn't make either I'd surely sleep in the park, and that wasn't a very happy thought.

The house lights began to dim. Members of the orchestra hugging their instruments had begun to crawl out of the little door under the stage and were taking their places in the pit. They plinked at the strings of their fiddles and sounded a few blaring tests on their horns. The woodwinds were heard above the general chatter. It was getting too dark to see the face of that watch. When last I'd looked, the minute hand had almost reached 9:30.1 had checked again on that train schedule. That hadn't changed. It was still 10:30 for the last train. Well, I'd surely hear a half-hour of good music anyway if I finally decided to dash for the train. Couldn't see that dame any more.

That orchestra seemed to take an awful long time tuning up. Maybe they were waiting for more customers. It seemed they'd never get started.

Time moves slowly in darkness; sometimes it gallops. I was getting a little panicky — no use kidding myself. I'd never get anywhere with that check-room girl. I almost popped my eyes trying to see that watch again. The orchestra had begun to settle with the sound of a huge henhouse quieting down for the long night.

The little door under the stage opened, and the conductor bowed out into the wedge of light from its entrance and climbed to his little stand.

Christ, what the hell time was it? I was perspiring freely now. I had a date with that goddam train. I stumbled over legs getting out the aisle and climbed up the steps leading to the back of the balcony, in a sweaty panic. That possible midinette stood quietly in the corridor at the head of the balcony stairs. Maybe I could have done something with her, but it was too late now.

I got to the big stairs whirling down to the lobby. There was a trick I'd learned as a bellhop that came in handy then. By holding the rail and just letting yourself fall, tipping the corner of the steps with your heels and landing with a loud slap of both feet when you hit the landings, you could really make speed. It sounds good, too — like a machine gun with every tenth shell extra loud. At the balcony landings I could hear the orchestra had finally started to play.

At the bottom of that long staircase there was a tremendous double door leading to the main lobby. The upper half of these doors were glass and I grabbed and swung them open — Crash!

Gawd — I'd forgotten those goddam brakeless doors, with their hinges swimming in oil! That was the biggest door I'd tackled yet and it banged against the stone wall of the lobby with a deafening roar. I stood there watching it quiver, expecting those immense plates of glass to come shattering down about me. With one movement every door leading into that lobby was thrown open and a mob spearheaded by the white-tied ushers surrounded me, all jabbering and waving their arms at once.

I backed up against the wall and grabbed out the watch, railroad ticket, train schedule, and my seaman's passport and assorted papers, and tried to explain with sign language and futile gestures that I was just trying to make a train — and I was late.

Nobody seemed to understand, and I wasn't getting away so easy. A long, elegant-looking lady edged her way through the circle of ushers who fenced me in and stood looking me up and down a moment. Then, with a regal gesture of her raised hand, she silenced everybody, and with great care she spoke, pointing a gloved finger at me with each word.

"Are you Eengleesh?"

Phew! What a relief to hear a language you could understand under such circumstances.

"No — no, Fm not. You see, I'm an American, an American sailor from an American ship. We're docked down in Rio Santiago—" and I waved that train ticket, railroad schedule, watch, etc., at her. "You see — there's this last train. I gotta make my ship— We may be sailing—"

This dame, who stood facing me with (what might have been a nice) long leg thrust forward, drew herself up and folded her arms across her middle.

"You — min — Nord—"

I said, "Huh?"

"You are naught American. You min — you are Nord Americano!"

"Huh? — Nord? — Yeh — yes, ma'am. North American, of course. You see, this—"

But she wasn't listening to me any more. She had turned her head and spoken quietly to the group around her, at one side and then the other. They looked at me with a sneer and then, wrinkling up their noses as if there was a bad smell, they slowly broke up and walked back into the Teatro, looking over their shoulders at me as they went. The ushers had gathered into small glowering groups, their hands clasped behind their backs, and they watched me menacingly until I left the lobby of the Teatro Colon and gently closed the big doors that opened to the street.

Out in the safety of the cold, wet darkness I ran. Vaguely, I remembered the crowded streets and the dark, uniformed traffic cops topped by their spiked German helmets wearing large, white gloves and directing the crowds with their enameled white billies. I reached the railroad station with plenty of time and sat around waiting for that 10:30 train to Rio Santiago. Joe's watch was a little fast.

The trip back was colder and longer than that beer-studded journey to Buenos Aires that noon. The coach was heated by a pot-bellied stove at one end. A couple of naval cadets kept feeding it lumps of wood, but the wind blowing through that cracked wooden coach never let the heat accumulate. I must have dozed off — I can't remember much about my trip back from the Paris of the Western Hemisphere. I was happy to crawl into my dry bunk aboard the S.S. Hermanita. Never again on that trip did I try to have anything but a sailor's night out when I went ashore

19. Fo'castle Waltz

THE NIGHT BEFORE WE SHIPPED SOUTH FROM RIO SANTIAGO everybody was almost broke. We had exhausted our credit with Captain Brandt, and no one dared ask him for any further advance. We pooled our resources. Joe slid his cap along the supper table and we all dug up our last crumpled pesos and centavos and dropped them in. It made a small pile on the table when we counted up the money. It didn't amount to much. He pocketed it and went ashore. After a while he came back to the fo'castle where we waited for him, loaded down with twenty-two bottles of vino, a number of long loaves of bread, and a package of sliced, smoked ham. Joe had done well with the money and we were all proud of him.

It was quite a shindig — that fo'castle party. All the deck crew were in it and only Scotty and Birdneck from the black gang and Philip from the mess crew. Toward the end of the evening old Pat, the oiler, came in and sat in a corner, drunk and glowing. He'd been ashore drinking alone as usual The Bos'n stuck his head into the door later, too, and told us to quiet down and took a drink with us.

We had good wine. After the second coffee-cup full of that staining red-purple aniline, it tasted good — though its goodness lasted only while we were going up the hill of hilarity. When we'd rounded the bend of saturation the wine was like any other I've ever known — a dread, sour obligation. And we had good food, though we didn't want to eat. We had just finished supper, but we all felt duty bound to scramble about filling big hunks of bread with ham after a drink or two It was good ham. I never heard anyone ever say any ham was bad (a bit on the salty side, perhaps, or a mite briny or just a little stringy — but never bad). I'm not a ham addict. To me— and this sort of thing, I know, brings on pogroms-ham is al-ways a dull, dry, and distinctly flat-flavored meat.

There are many sections of the pig I prefer — hocks, ribs, snout, tail, and an occasional chop that has not been fried to a burnt sienna cinder or a greasy undercooked slab of trichinosis. I know — I know. There's Westphalian, Polish, Smithfield, Virginia — and I've recently met up with a Smithsonian ham.

A few summers ago a good friend of mine drove me down to Philadelphia to a big sculpture exhibition we'd both been invited to. I'd have preferred to have taken the train down because even more than long train trips I hate long auto rides. I piled in with him and his family and we rattled along through the hot afternoon and pulled up to the museum that housed the exhibit, tired, thirsty and bladderful, about sunset.

A local artist, an old friend of my friend, was leaving the show as we came along. He insisted we come over to his house for a drink and a spot of dinner and then we'd all return to the show for the reception in the evening. We drove off with him— some twenty odd miles out of the city back toward New York to his place. And needless to say, we never returned to see that show so I never saw my sculpture in place and have no adequate excuse why that piece was not sold during that exhibit — or since.

His place was one of those modem arty houses so fussed over and so original I felt, as I always do in such surroundings, that I was one of the lesser motifs in a picture hung in a non-objective show. Outside of some crudely painted atrocious deep-sea fish that goggled at you, the bathroom functioned normally. Though there was a disturbing and perfectly killing musical accompaniment that came with the toilet paper — a gentle tinkle of a Swiss music box and the toilet seat jingled Ravel's Bolero in a rising crescendo.

The artist, our host, after giving us a few niggardly drinks of lukewarm watered Scotch, worked up a castor-oily looking dressing which he poured over a tremendous salad of chickory, cucumbers and radishes, none of which I can digest. It looked tremendous because of the springy rising curl to the chicory, and we sat down to a five-sided table to dinner. Perhaps I should mention that our host had made this table himself. He was wonderful — he carved, worked terra cotta, designed furniture, painted, wove, embroidered — and there were many examples of his craft around. In fact, the whole house was full of it, but I didn't like any of it. Seems to me it was ausgekvecht — tasteless, senseless, and unpleasant — but different.

That table we sat down to on three-legged, five-legged, two-legged benches and chairs, had five sides, all different. It was roughly the shape of a lopsided coffin.

The piece de resistance of our dinner was to be a ham. All the way out to the house he had talked of this wonderful ham— how they got it, when they did, and the taste— tiens, tiens!

The ham was brought to the table. It was mainly a large mis-colored bone with a little wart of mahogany-tinted meat at one end. Our host whittled off a few slivers of it and served. As we gnawed at the fibrous, tasteless stuff he told us the history of that ham: how long it had lain buried in a pit of lime, sulphur (and molasses?) and the ash of good Carolinian white pine. How it was brought north — his wife had kinfolk down south (remember they're clannish and would never release such a treasure to any but their own flesh and blood). How long it lay in their cellar ripening and ripening and ripening, with a cut lemon resting on it. That lemon was to keep away the rats!

We were told we should have seen that lemon when they finally decided to carve and scrape away the sulphurous green mold and cook this ham. I had wetted down, ground up, and swallowed my chip of this venerable historic lump of decayed schweinefleisch and decided, as I did again in Rio Santiago and I do now, ham is dull. Bring on the Cossacks.

After the Hamites had sputtered their delight in that Argentine version of their favorite food, we called for music. The fat Sailing Man with shreds of ham dripping from his chin roared a chanty. We shouted him down and called for Chips. With some ceremony Chips brought out his beautiful, silver-inlaid, four-hundred-dollar accordion. But before he could get started on his regular march, Scotty had started a whirling fling on his harmonica and he hopped a sword dance over a couple of mop handles crossed on the deck. When he'd exhausted himself with his blowing and dancing, big Joe did one of his Island songs and hula'd. Everybody gave him room and he wiggled his path up and down the narrow fo'castle.

Joe could have danced all night and we'd have been happy to watch him, but Slim, the Georgia Boy, had begun one of his low blues songs off at one end and a circle had gathered around to watch him work up his shuffle dance. He was a lean, thin-chested boy and his wind wasn't much good. Soon he gave up trying to play his harmonica as he danced and persuaded Scotty to accompany him.

Scotty learned the lazy Southern songs quickly, but when he blew into his instrument they came out Scotch and brisk. Slim tried to correct his tempo — he'd hum his song and beat the slow measure with his hand. Scotty's head nodded solemnly up and down, but when he brought his harmonica to his mouth, Slim's rhythm—"Seven years with the wrong woman" — came out sounding like "The Campbells are coming." He couldn't get the languorous magnolia quality Slim got in his stuff. It was all thorny. Highland brier.

Slim finally gave it up and tried to play a few flings for Scotty, but he couldn't blow hard or fast enough. Then, after a few more drinks, they both tried to make music for Joe's hulas, but that didn't work either.

At last they all asked Chips to play music — none of their own music — he'd concede nothing. He played his long repetitious march and he played it the rest of the night over and over again. They tried their own dancing to his music but none of it worked. We finally settled for a fo'castle waltz to Chips' music.

The fo'castle was long and narrow and only two couples could dance at a time. When they passed there was a lot of swearing and butt bumping.

I sat with the wallflowers at one end of the fo'castle. Pat, the oiler, the old guy with the pink lids, and I sat on a bench. The old guy was having a swell time. He'd wave his cup and tap his foot to the music and he kept pulling his upper lip down to keep from laughing out with no control. He hadn't been allowed ashore by the Medical Officer and I guess evenings aboard while the crew was out helling around must have been lonesome. This busy hilarious party was a great treat. To Pat the party was just another drink. He sat with us because the bottles were stacked under our bench, and he tanked up.

The bullet-headed guy, the athlete, came down to the fo'castle after his evening's exercise. He didn't miss a night even in port to perfect those beautiful, useless muscles. He sat down at the end of our bench and poured himself a drink. Nobody had invited him and he hadn't chipped in — he didn't rate. After gulping a few cups of wine he sat there morosely squinting at the dancers and grinding his teeth.

Chips with no warning stopped playing his accordion. The dancers Scotty and Al, Birdneck (who was a good waltzer) and Joe, looked rather silly with their arms around each other as they turned to watch Chips unstrap his accordion and stand up and stretch. He was thirsty and wanted a drink of wine.

We all got off the bench to let Chips get at the bottles underneath — all except Pat. He couldn't. He sat carefully erect, sweating and glowing as he mumbled something about "Shure, give all the boys in the orchestra a drink." Then he tapped his foot, tossed his head, and winked as he deedle-dum-dummed a fragment from an Irish jig.

The fo'castle was warm and the air was getting thick with the smell of smoke, sweat, and wine. A few of us stood around listening to Scotty crack wise with Al in the center of the fo'castle. The bullet-headed guy seemed disturbed. He was standing at Scotty's side grinding his teeth and squinting viciously at him.

Al, without turning his head, said quietly, "Careful, Scotty, something's eating this guy."

Scotty didn't turn but I heard him murmur, "Yeah — so I notice. I'm watchin' 'im. I'm watchin' the pink bastard."

Bullet-head kept thrusting his face forward until he must have been breathing into Scotty's ear. Suddenly, he swung and clipped the good-natured, inoffensive Brooklyn boy on the side of the head. For all his fancy muscles he didn't have much of a wallop. Scotty rolled with the punch and brought up his fist and clouted that dope full on the mouth. A spot of blood showed on his under lip.

Big Joe took charge. "Hey, take it easy. O.K. Stop. We all frien'. No?" and he threw his big arms around the bullet-headed trouble-maker from behind and very efficiently pinned him.

Chips appeared from somewhere. He had taken off his straw hat and stood with his bludgeon of a fist held high as he very deliberately rolled his shirt sleeve down his arm.

"Dis mus' be fair and square fight. You hear — dot fella mine countryman. One man fights one — dot's all."

That seemed curious to me. I mean, Chips and this bullet-head who were never seen talking together; but they were landsmen — a couple of Litvaks tied in an invisible silent bond — and Chips intended to back the dope up with a "my countryman, right or wrong, my countryman" attitude.

Joe, like a smart cop, had already lifted Chips' landsman clear off the deck and holding him in that bear hug was carrying him to the other end of the f o'castle. He turned his head and grinned at Chips.

"I'm no gonna hurt him. Just he'll go to sleep and cool down."

He lifted the bullet-head up into his own bunk, stretched him out, then holding him with one arm, he wrapped him up with blankets with the other. Quicker than I can tell it, he tied the ends of the top blanket down around the bottom of the bunk and he took a few turns with a line around the whole job. That cantankerous bug, the bullet-head, was now a neat cocoon, but his head was loose and he kept squirming it around, his mean snake eyes flashing hate, and spitting viciously all through the rest of the evening. We all stayed away from that end of the fo'castle.

The party started whirling again and gathered momentum.

Birdneck chose me from the bench of wallflowers and with a gypsyish come-and-join-the-dance gesture invited me to join the dizzy madness of the fo'castle waltz.

It was an honor to be chosen by Birdneck — since he was admittedly the best waltzer aboard — but one I felt I could very well do without. Birdneck wouldn't listen to my protestations — I couldn't dance a step, didn't know one foot from the other. He'd lead me.

He had been a part-time dancing master over in Jersey City for about a year while he was beached — getting a cure. Had a regular studio, he said, and he taught ballroom dancing, waltz, two-step, hesitation, tango and all the popular dances of the period, to the dock wallopers along that shore. He led me with the conciliatory dance-or-I'll-break-your-arm iron grip of the professional dancing teacher.

Back in my sticky youth up in Albany, I remember my Uncles Willie and Joe had opened a dancing class during the slow season. That as an irregular avocation. Regularly, they were employed in Uncle Louie's pants factory. Every Tuesday and Thursday evenings their class had met in Eintraeck Hall on South Pearl Street. They taught the same dances that Bird-neck had specialized in, and dimly I recall at Uncle Willie's wedding (a swell, catered affair at Eintraeck Hall, too) as I, along with a few dozen of my kid cousins, slid wildly back and forth through the spilt beer on that varnished floor screaming, "Look, Uncle Willie, look, we're dancing," he, in his rented tuxedo, with tender solicitude was teaching his bride the intricacies of the latest dance measures. He, too, had used the same rounded iron grip Birdneck had on me.

But I hadn't inherited Uncle Willie's great talent or even the lesser genius of Uncle Joe. I couldn't dance ballroom stuff and I resented being led.

For all his "Atta kid — take it easy — now one an'a two, an'a one an'a two," Birdneck and I didn't get anywhere. And we were bumped, stepped on, and sworn at until he, all asweat and puffing hard, admitted the floor was too crowded — we'd try again later. And for all his assurance that it'd take me no time at all to learn to dance — because he knew fat guys who were light as a feather on their feet, regular sharks on the floor— I knew I wasn't and never would be.

After I dug my way back into the bench of wallflowers, I sat there morosely wishing I'd soon get old enough, fat enough, and gray so that I'd not be expected to dance, play tennis, or go on brisk hikes.

I find whenever Fm getting along socially — the life of the party, so to speak — on my repertoire of bright stories, lilting songs, and sparkling anecdotes, some dim-witted, inarticulate character with a bony pinhead and facile feet suggests let's all dance, hike, or play tennis, and my social brilliancy fades, flickers, and goes out.

On occasion I've been led in the gentle, kindly arms of girls who could not be persuaded that I was purely the mental type and insisted I needed only sympathetic coaching to become an excellent terpsichorean. And after they had grimly struggled with my resisting bulk they'd usually straighten their bodies, pat down their coiffures and dresses, and in short pants breathlessly assure me I was coming along fine. And they'd leave me with a strange smile on their flushed faces which plainly said, "What a man" — that, I hope, not in its worst sense. So I'd creep off into some lonesome corner with a morbid heavy tome of pessimistic philosophy and try to pull the covers down over my head to deaden the sounds of the tinkling laughter of those charming girls pirouetting with that bony-headed moron with the educated feet who had lured them away from me.

Dancing, tennis playing, and mountain climbing or brisk hikes are three diversions which have always reared their ugly heads (singly or in toto) at every social gathering in which I find myself. Here it was in the fo'castle.

So I felt no resentment — as most everyone else did — when the Swede Mate stuck his head in the fo'castle door and shouted politely: "Please, pipe down on that goddam racket. The Skipper's got a headache." And our fo'castle party thinned out and finally died altogether, since we couldn't have fun without noise, and the wine bottles had run dry.

20. Two Sad Stories

THE RED-HEADED SECOND MATE LEANED HIS ELBOWS on the rail as he gloomily looked down at a frantic little tugboat.

"I hear you're studying to be an artist," he said.

That caught me unawares. He'd been howling just a few minutes before what a thick-witted, incompetent imbecile I was — he hadn't used those words — because I'd handled the big hawsers so clumsily and tied them so badly the little tug had gone chugging down river towing nothing more than our line. Our ship stayed put while the hawser whipped out after the busy little tug. Our lines were adjusted and he had calmed down.

Some years ago I remember a high-school teacher, Elly May Pluck (who looked like that — sort of a bloomer-girl type), scornfully asking me pretty much the same question, apropos of nothing, while I was mispronouncing a passage from As You Like It in oral exercise — Slobodkin, so you're going to be an artist? There was definitely the implication that one — who pronounces "hey nonino" "hi-non-nin-no" could never reach the Olympian heights of intellectual development necessary to push a lump of clay around or knock chunks off a stone until it looks like the form you're hunting, or smear clean sheets of paper until you've hoodwinked ever}'one including yourself that you've created an illusion of shape and space.

There was no use reminding that woman of little faith that I was then, at fourteen, the chief cartoonist of the Garnet and Gray, our high-school newspaper. She must have known that and disapproved heartily. Maybe she felt all members of the G. and G. staff should have a passing scholastic record like the football squad before they were allowed to play with the arts. For her information, if she's still around and hasn't corroded her innards with her own vitriolic nastiness, and for all others who sneer at inarticulate, mispronouncing, infinitive-splitting plastic artists — it is the boast of some of the best sculptors and painters I've ever known that they're completely illiterate and, for some reason, proud of it.

Her question had come out of the blue. I was having enough trouble with Shakespeare's vagaries without her heckling, and all I could answer was yeh! But I felt that was inadequate, and now that the Mate had sprung the same thing I was wary.

Maybe there was more than meets the eye in his simple query. It was the first time he'd ever spoken to me outside of his line of duty since I'd been aboard, and his orders were usually so larded with roaring expletives I couldn't understand them even if I could do the work. He might have been pumping me for the Skipper, who had assumed before I came aboard I was giving up my career as an artist.

The Second repeated his question and added: Are ya — or am t ya:

"N-o-o, not exactly. Well, I've exhibited — I had a studio before I shipped out. And though an artist never stops studying—

"Keep at it, kid. Never take up this goddam life. A sailor's life is a lousy way of livin'—"

I didn't know what to say to that — whether I'd politely agree with him or admit I'd taken this job aboard a ship just to settle an argument brought on by a young cat — but it seems the Second didn't want any answers. He was grouchy and rebellious and was sounding off.

He and I were up on the poopdeck watching the big tow lines that tied us to the tugboat. We were being towed down that narrow strip of river backwards since the ship couldn't be turned. We were leaving Rio Santiago to ship further south.

"Yeah, take my advice, kid. Don't let it get ya — it's a lousy life."

We leaned on the rail in silence. Then after a few minutes he went on.

"Every goddam time we make New York I tell myself— all right, that's enough. So I'll go back to school—"

"School?"

"Yeah, school. I've just got a couple more years to go to get me an M.D. But for the past six years — it's been like this. I get back to port, get tanked up, mixed up with some dame. Then I'd be broke and have to ship out again. God, what a goddam fool I've been. Don't let this life get ya, kid. Stick to your studying. Be an artist!"

I felt a glow of gratitude and sympathy for the Second, and started to tell him when he broke in with:

"Ya goddamned, fat-headed, bilge-livered fool! Whyn'tyou watch that goddam line—? Grab it!"

One of the hawsers had loosened and was slipping over the side and the other was so taut it would snap in a minute — and our ship was gently swinging toward the river bank. We retied those lines. That ended our friendly conversation and I never had any other personal contact with the Second until the time he kicked me up on the boat deck and almost knocked me overside.

We had shoved off from Rio Santiago late in the afternoon and it was almost dark before our ship had been dragged far enough down that narrow strip of river that emptied into the wide-mouthed La Platte so that the tugs could turn us around and tow the S.S. Hermanita by its forward end. There was something undignified about having your ship yanked by her stem down that muddy river and all the crew felt it. Maybe that's what disturbed the Second.

Just before we hoisted our gangplank Perry and the Polack had been marched back to the ship under the custody of the sailor-boy cop (still smiling) who'd led them away. All the starch had been taken out of Perry. He was unnaturally quiet; the Polack grinned sheepishly as usual. They looked paler, thinner, and both needed shaves. That spell in the calaboose seemed to have tamed Perry and he didn't talk that evening, but there was a gleam in his eye that indicated that conniver had "some inside dope."

Mush wore his worried look to supper. He told me Philip and Sparks had been left ashore. They had gone up to Buenos Aires on the early morning train to get some radio equipment. Sparks had taken Philip along as an interpreter. They had been told we were shoving off this afternoon. Mush bet it was that bastard Sparks' fault they missed the boat.

The old pink-eyed guy consoled Mush. He had been up at the wheel as we pulled out and had heard the Captain instruct our pilot (the same old pirate who took our ship into Rio Santiago) to carry a letter back to our ship's agent in port. He had told the pilot the letter contained orders to send those guys down to Ingeniero White — our next port — and that he, the pilot, must inform the port police every courtesy and consideration must be shown these men, or Captain Brandt would be mad.

He was as fond of Philip as we all were. I wondered if he would have been so solicitous if Sparks alone had been left ashore.

That guy wasn't very popular with the crew. He was a Southerner, not the slow, gentle, drawling kind like Slim, the Georgia Boy, but a snappy, crackling tarheel. Perhaps what disturbed me most about that long, wiry, bespectacled guy was the way he wore his thick black hair parted carefully in the center, and he always talked quickly and long as if what he was saying was very important.

On some of those long pleasant evenings on the poopdeck, as we were coming down, he'd join us. He picked Al, Mush, and me to talk to and would freeze out anyone else who wanted to kid around with us by inviting us three up to his shack up above the boat deck.

We went up there a few times. His radio shack was a pleasant place, and we'd have liked it a lot better if he wasn't there. He'd stretch out on a padded, swivel chair — the only one in the cabin — fold his long, white hands under his chin, and yammer away for hours at a time. Once he told about the time when he was a guard at a military prison for conscientious objectors.

"Come sunup, we'd march 'em out to the truck garden 'bout a half mile from the camp. We'd keep 'em on the double till we got out to the field. Then we guards would stand around in the shade watching those bastards in the hot sun hoeing, pulling weeds, and stuff like that. Then we'd march 'em back for dinner.

"Remember one afternoon a couple of those yellow-bellied bastards said they had to go to the can. We couldn't have 'em messin' up the field and there were no bushes around — those bastards knew that. I figgered they were just stallin', so I marches 'em back quick. I kept tellin' 'em move faster, keep goin' on the double. They would for a bit and then they'd take it easy again.

"It was goddam hot and I began boilin' over. Well, suh, I fixes my bayonet 'n m' rifle, and I tol' those two smart conshies if they don't move faster I'd let 'em have it. That perked 'em up a bit and they began to jog. Then they started to stall again. One of 'em says his guts feel loose, he was scared he'd mess his pants if he runs. I tol' 'em both to double or I'd let 'em have it. Well, they started agin, but they didn't keep it up so I let 'em have it. I jabbed 'em in the ass with my bayonet — first one, then the other…"

We never went up to his shack again and when he came down to the poop somehow we managed to sidestep him until he quit visiting back aft. Since meeting that guy whenever I read of a lynching and the pictures would form in my mind, it seems to me the faces of that crowd of the bigoted, intolerant blackguards I read about all look like that guy.

It took us five days to reach Ingeniero White. We spent the first half of the trip stowing gear and the last half unstowing it in preparation for unloading.

Perry, after a day or two, was normal again, though neither he nor the Polack would talk about those nine days in the calaboose. Perry had quietly tipped me off to stock up on cigarettes from the slopchest.

"But I've already got a couple of cartons, Perry. I only smoke a pack a day."

"That don't make no difference. I'm tellin' ya, stock up."

"And — there's only some crumby brands left. There ain't no more Luckies or Camels."

"Now lissen, take 'em before they're gone — or you'll be sorry," he said, ominously.

"But why? Why, Perry? Gimme one good reason."

"Sure, I'll give ya a good reason — none better." And he ducked his head forward and with his mysterious, hoarse whisper, "Down here, American cigarettes are legal tender!"

"No!"

"Yeah, I'm tellin' ya — a carton of American cigarettes which you pays a dollar twenty in the slopchest, in a small port like Ingeniero White you can get as much as two dollars or two and a half, five, six or seven pesos Argentine money and furdermore, you don't pay the slopchest now. It's advance against your payoff — so it's just clear profit."

That sounded a bit complicated but it seemed the thing to do. Perry had smuggled ashore a couple of cartons when he treated Joe and me at that first lunch ashore in Rio Santiago. Right after supper that evening I raced to the purser's window. He opened his slopchest for an hour each evening.

There was a lineup, probably Perry had spoken to some others — or they knew about it themselves — though not many of the older guys were in that line. I took my place at the end and by the time I reached the purser's window all he had was a couple of cartons of Piedmonts and one of cigarettes that he must have been trying to palm off on some dope for the past ten years — a large box of Sweet Caporals. I took them too.

We tied up in Ingeniero White on a cold, dark morning. That was a dreary looking port. Perry told us it was named after an American (U.S.A.) Engineer named White. Take a commonplace word like engineer, give it a Spanish twirl, and you've got the name for a stretch of mud flats that suggest something important — Ingeniero White.

Our ship was easing up to a long metal pier that angled way out into the harbor. Perry for some reason felt he had to defend this port.

"What you bellyachin' for? This is a fine harbor — they ships more grain outa here than any place south of Buenos Aires."

"So what?" grumbled Mush.

"So what? See them granaries? They're big — big as you got any place."

"Yeah? Lissen, feller — you ever been to Chicago?"

"Naw."

"Well, what da hell you know of grain elevators?"

These flat granaries were the only buildings that stuck up on that murky stretch of coast. A few shaggy buildings were spotted along the road that led away from the pier — that must have been the town.

"Anyway," said Perry, backing down, "this place is only d'port for Bahia Blanca — it's just the outskoits of Bahia Blanca. That's a beautiful name, ain't it? Means white bay. They calls her the white queen of the south. Of course, this port's only the outskoits of Bahia Blanca—"

"Looks to me like the white queen got pretty muddy outskirts," I ventured. Perry turned one of his cross eyes at me while the other kept squinting angrily toward the shore.

"Whatcha bellyachin' for? Nobody stays in this town — it's only a few minutes to d'city. Dey got big cafes up dare — and houses like palaces, I'm tellin' ya."

Joe came along. "Oh boy — oh boy — what a croppy dump. Looks like a big gray cow wit sick stomach pass by. Plop — plop — plop."

Perry rolled that eye at Joe and just went on smoking. He smoked cigarettes very economically down to the last shred and left no butts. His cigarette was down to his last few puffs and he wasn't talking for fear of burning his mouth.

"Hey, lookit," Joe went on. "We're gonna have company. Looks like we gonna tie up between that Limey and those Belgium ships. Oh boy, look at that white paint works on de lousy Limey. Boy-o-boy, some Soogie Moogie—"

Joe was right. Almost all the superstructure, masts, cargo booms, on that Limey were a glistening senseless white — some Soogie Moogie on that stinker, we all agreed. There was another ship with her funnels and upper decks placed way back on her hull. Joe told me that was a Hog-Islander.

"Yeah, they built lots of dem cargo boats like that during the war — at Hog Island. They ship out of Mobile and ports like that in the Gulf and the crews on them ships is always a bunch of Texas guys."

"Well, that's good," I said. "We'll meet up with somebody to talk to, somebody who speaks our own language."

"Who? Dose Texas guys — they don' speak English like I understand. And most them fellers is kinda crazy anyway." And he lowered his voice. "Like that Maverick."

Suddenly Mush let out one of those ear-splitting hog calls almost in my ear.

"So-o-o-i. What da hell you know, lookit there, there's Philip and Sparks down on that pier."

They sure were — grinning and clean as they stood among the crowd of longshoremen, their white shirts (that guy Sparks went for starched collars) were the only spots of clean white in the whole gray landscape — or should it be seascape?

We shouted down, at them and they cracked back until a gangplank let them up on the ship. They were greeted with a lot of backslapping and handshakes. Mush's worry for Philip had seeped through the ship, and we were all glad to see them— even that guy Sparks.

They had taken a train down from Buenos Aires, and had been waiting for us a couple of days.

Later that evening, Philip told us they had been nabbed by the Port Cop and had spent the night in a one-room cement calaboose, until the Pilot had come along with Captain Brandt's letter.

That little cement jail was wet and cold. There was a permanent resident, a ratty emaciated old English sailor who begged them for a razor — he wanted to cut his throat.

He had skipped his ship a number of years back and had gone into the interior. When he returned to the coast the police had jailed him — that was some five years back and he'd been there since.

It seems while he had cavorted around on the pampas a law had been passed. Argentine was ridding herself of the beachcombers that had made her ports a stamping ground for the scum of the seven seas. He said that law fined the ship one thousand dollars for every man who was left behind or deserted. And all ships were responsible for their men and must not weigh anchor from their last Argentinian port unless they carried the same crew they'd brought into the country — or paid their fine.

The Limey tramp that the old Englishman had shipped on, and skipped, sneaked out of port one night without squaring up. This old guy had been thrown into that miserable damp hole of a jail and left there to rot. The Port Cops didn't feed him. There was no money provided for that. He ate only what he could beg from an occasional drunk who was thrown in there with him. The English consul did not recognize his existence. The shipping line that had owned his ship had gone bankrupt. There was no one to pay his fine, so he was left there to die in that calaboose.

Philip had felt awful sad about the old fellow and he (and even Sparks) had emptied their pockets of almost all the money they carried, but he accepted their largesse listlessly and begged for a razor. He wanted to cut his throat.

When Philip had finished the story of the tragic old English sailor Perry gave us a knowing wink.

"See what I mean? You see why there's no sense going on the beach in Argentine?"

21. The Classic Belly Laugh

THERE WAS NO REASON TO SPEND AN EVENING in Ingeniero White — not while there was money in your pocket.

With his stubby fingers Captain Brandt followed through our accounts on the books and then he carefully counted out the sticky pesos, clicked his teeth, and handed us our money with a dry comment — that we hadn't much more coming to us. In fact, he cut the advance of ten dollars which I asked for to six.

We pocketed our money and went up the muddy road through Ingeniero White without giving the town a glance, to catch the train for Bahia Blanca.

It was raining and that road was poorly lit by a few scattered unshielded electric bulb lampposts. A cop stood under each of these and they'd look us over as we passed. We had sloughed by the first cop and were about halfway to the next when he whistled a long, shrill blast. Obviously he warned his colleague further up the road to be on the alert — some suspicious-looking Nord Americanos were bearing down on him. We'd passed the next and he'd look us over and did his duty by his brother cop further up the road, until we'd gone by about four of them.

We resented their suspicions. How could anyone walk along a muddy road on a rainy night other than crouched over with coat collar up and hands thrust in pockets, and not look like a lot of sinister characters? I had tried walking with my hands out and swinging and my head up and with an honest look in my eye, but the rain carried by the gusts of wind beat around my head and chilled my neck.

The train ride was short and cheap — only one peso fifty and those trains run often. Bahia Blanca was a pleasant town with broad boulevards and cheerful cafes. They were big places with tremendous windows, clean-looking, and people sat around playing chess, sipping their drinks and reading newspapers. We stopped in one of them for a few drinks and discussed what would be the best way to find the houses of the town — the bordellos. Perry wasn't there to guide us. We were on our own.

Philip was sure if we asked anyone they'd tell us, so we downed our drinks, paid up, and went out on the street again. We stood at the curb making up our minds whom to ask. The rain had stopped. Philip, Joe, Mush, Al, and I just stood around for a while.

There was a vaudeville theater across the wide street that featured, so the posters indicated, a trained dog act. The reflections of the colored lights from its marquee made a sparkling pattern on the wet pavement.

A young guy on a bicycle had stopped and as he balanced his bike with one foot on the ground he stared at us. We egged Philip on to ask him where the houses were, but Philip was reticent. He thought he was too young to know of such matters. We scoffed at that. The guy looked about Mush's age; and then I'd been told a certain amount is included in the allowances of all boys (of the better class, of course) away at preparatory schools to be used in such places as we were looking for. A commendable adult concept, if true — and worthy of consideration, if not.

The young Argentinian had singled me out for special scrutiny and I was getting a little uncomfortable.

"Go on, Philip, ask him," I urged.

"All right." He stepped off the curb and began, "'Buenas noches senor.''

The boy butt in with some questions. Philip replied something that ended with "Nord Americanos."

Then the boy hopped his bicycle over to the curb where I stood and poked his finger at my chest as he queried:

"Nord Americano Indian?"

Everybody turned and looked at me as if they saw me for the first time. He probably had seen some photographs of our noble redmen — not the moving-picture type or those pictured on calendars (the hawk-nosed, lean, befeathered savages, profiled against a setting sun), but the fattish owners of Oklahoma oil wells as they stepped from their high-powered automobiles. I must have been mistaken for one of those since I was tanned pretty deep. Then, too, there were my gold-rimmed specs and that handsome black sombrero — and I was a little fat at the time.

I said, "No—Nord Americano juive."

He laughed, swung his leg over his bicycle, and rolled off.

"Well, where's the houses, Philip?" Mush asked.

"He didn't say." "Oh, nuts, I'm gonna ask that cop." And before we could stop him Mush had broken away from us and squirmed through the busy traffic that seemed to be going every which way, paying no attention to the traffic cop in the center of the road who waved his white baton aimlessly.

Mush climbed up on the little platform the cop stood on, and, though it was some distance from where we stood, we could hear him over the noise of the street.

"Where's — houses — girls?" and he semaphored his arms in every direction, trying to pick one the astonished cop would agree was right.

His voice became louder until it was a shout. Finally, he tried Spanish.

"Where d'hell's — the bordellos — the senoritas and stuff?"

At that the cop lit up with a bright smile. He stepped off his platform and pointed the direction down the street with a lot of chatter. We shoved Philip out into the street to give Mush a hand, since he didn't seem to understand what was being told him. Philip joined them and after a few minutes of polite talk, accompanied by gracious smiles and much flashing of teeth, he bowed, the cop gave him a quick little salute, and we were off to the houses of Bahia Blanca.

"How you like that?" gloated Mush as he swaggered along. "I kin speak Spanish. That Spik cop understood when I sez bordellos — bordellos and senoritas. How you like that?"

We walked quite a distance and came to a big house with the proverbial high-lighted doorway set back from the street. That was the bordello — a big one.

There was a little cop stationed in front of that door who searched each of us before he admitted us en masse. Philip told us that was to make sure we carried no knives — to start trouble. He didn't want us fighting over any of the women. As he was giving me the once-over he grinned and mumbled some crack to Philip who had been using his Spanish on him.

It just about killed Philip and he sputtered a translation which I didn't get — something about "the only weapon the professor carries is the same as the rest of you caballeros and there's little danger" — and whatever else was said was lost in the stir when the cop opened the big door and we went into that big house.

The lobby of the place was larger than any we'd seen up in Rio Santiago and it was crowded. All the small tables were taken and we stood around waiting for one. There weren't many girls sitting anywhere — seemed they were all busy — and as soon as they returned from the patio and deposited their money at the Madame's desk, they wearily marched back into the darkness with another customer.

We finally got a table and sat around sipping black coffee. The Madame occasionally would climb down from her desk and move among the tables. Now and again she'd question some of the Argentinians and they'd bring out some official-looking papers from their inner coat pockets. Sometimes her voice would rise in anger as she'd grab some little guy by the shoulders and pull him out of his seat.

Philip told us she was checking on the under-aged kids who got past the cop outside. Those papers must have been birth certificates, or cards of identification, he thought.

We sat there smoking and quietly considering whether we ought not to try another big house the traffic cop had told Philip about. It wasn't very cheerful sitting where we were, and no one seemed eager for the girls, even Mush. The place was quiet for a little while. Then a shrill scream coming from the patio gave an added chill to that already cold lobby we sat in.

The girl who had let out that squawk let out another — then a few more in quick succession. The silence of the lobby was broken by the cackle of the high heels of the Madame and a couple of the girls as they ran across the tile floor and out into the darkness.

The screaming girl out there, between hysterical sobbing, kept repeating a few words — over and over again.

'"The woman hollers — he's too big — the man — he killed her, she says." Philip murmured a translation of the girl's scream.

Her cries had subsided into an incoherent wailing. I looked around the lobby. None of the men sitting around those little tables had stirred. They looked pale and tense as they quietly smoked their cigarettes and looked toward the sound.

Well, here was that time-honored Joe Miller of bawdy jokes. The one Rabelais, Balzac, Boccaccio, and numberless other literary lights had tossed off so brightly — and it had been repeated in countless versions — always good for a belly laugh in every smoking car, club, stag party, barroom, barn, schoolyard, back alley, and been cleaned up again for tea parties and refined socials — here it was in the flesh. Well, it wasn't funny.

We sat there uncomfortable for a moment or two listening to the girl cry. Then we saw her, a skinny, coarse-looking woman, being supported on one side by the Madame and on the other by one of her colleagues — as they led her slowly toward us. Her face was blotched, her hair disheveled, and a lot of the girls hovered around giving her hoarse-voiced sympathy until they led and carried her through the door into the lobby.

The man had been back in the shadows. We could see him lurking there. Then he slithered along the patio wall and we caught just a flash of him as he quickly and silently came out into the light of the room, picked his way through the tables, and was gone out the front door.

He was a narrow little man who kept his hat pulled down over his swarthy face. The eyes of everyone in the room followed his quick passage. The girls looked after him too. They weren't angry with him — they seemed sorry for him. A gloomy silence settled over that big room broken only by an occasional stirring of restless feet and the whimpering of the hurt girl.

"Aw, come on, let's go someplace," said Mush. We all nodded "sure" and left that house.

22. Pink Shrimps and Sweet Caporals

JOE LIT A CIGARETTE, GAVE ME A BIG WINK and after a few drags, began to chip. I couldn't understand this deliberate masochistic choice that he'd made to red-lead the stem of the S.S. Hermanita. If he felt he had to do his duty by the ship he could have picked a lot easier one. I sat there for a few miserable minutes studying the flat stretch of cold muddy water which lapped at our heels. It was no consolation that the harbor looked pretty, with the black hulls of the bumboats and fishing smacks breaking the flat sheen of the water — their reflections streaming away from them like fluttering silken ribbons.

"And damn it, it's cold down here. What the hell you got me into this for—"

"Chip!" he ordered.

So I chipped — not a moment too soon. The Mate had stuck his head out the porthole and had strained his neck around trying to see the section we were working on. He couldn't, but he seemed satisfied we were getting something done from the intent look on both our faces and the noise our chipping hammers made.

A few minutes after the Mate had withdrawn his head, Joe quit work for the day.

He smiled and gestured toward me with the flat of his hand, a gesture that was intended to mean everything is hunky-dory and according to plan. He squinted out toward a passing bumboat and hailed the Argentinian who stood in it rowing with long easy strokes.

"Buenos dias."

The guy looked up and swung his boat toward us. When he was close by he responded, '"Buenos dias."

Joe laughed and made a crack or two in his Spanish. The guy didn't know what he was talking about. After a while, he said:

"Mucho trabajo."

I knew what that meant — too much work — we were working too hard — everybody down there said that — everybody was working too hard.

"Si, mucho trabajo y poco dinero."

Then one thing led to another and I heard vino mentioned and the guy rowed off to one of the small fishing boats, and came back in a few minutes. He pulled alongside of Joe and the big fellow loosened his bucket of paint from where it hung under his scaffold seat. The guy in the boat lifted a gallon glass jug of purple red wine. There was an exchange and a few "'gracias, senors," and some other chitchat, and then he slid off quietly with Joe's bucket of good ship's paint in his boat.

Joe grinned. "S'notbad — heh, kid?"

He swigged a big gulping drink of the wine and reached it over to me. So we spent the morning sitting there quietly, smoking, talking and emptying that jug.

I apologized to Joe for misjudging him and expressed my admiration for his excellent planning. He modestly shrugged that off—pas de tout—it was nothing, and he told me of more worthy occasions: the time he had sold a couple of hundred running foot of brand, new and shiny hawser off a ship for the equivalent of ten American dollars and a small keg of brandy, one inky black night in Marseilles.

The morning passed pleasantly and around about noon there were only a few more drinks left in that jug. I told Joe I didn't want any more. I was holding on to my edge of that plank rather grimly…

Joe threw his head back and drained the last of that wine in one long, continuous swallow. As I watched the wine bubbling out of that jug into his mouth it looked as if those bubbles were going down his thick, curved throat carried by the spasmodic rolling of his Adam's apple. It made me feel seasick as I watched.

After what seemed an endless period, while he waited for the last few drops to roll down the inside of the jug to his waiting outthrust tongue, he sat bolt upright, his chin pulled back, and rested the empty pinkish glass jug on his knee. He belched — a long, rolling, roaring belch — and then he jerked his head around toward me with a big grin of accomplishment.

"Oh boy — dat's good — heh, keed?"

I yeah'd. I tried to belch too, but no go.

Then Joe got busy. He swooped his long arm down, filled the jug with water, and let it sink down into the harbor. He took my bucket of paint and with a few expert twirls of the brush, smeared the unchipped hull with a series of dabs, streaks, and blotches. When he was through it looked as if we'd put in a hard morning's work, and had chipped and red-leaded a lot more than our share on the stern of that ship.

A very artistic-looking job, we both agreed, and Joe carefully arranged a series of dabs and smears down near the water line which made a crude but readable big capital J.

Being a provident, farsighted guy, he had tied a rope ladder up at the rail and attached it to our plank early that morning. At that, when we loosened the lines that had curved us around the hull and swung out, I had quite a time getting back on the ship; but after he grabbed me a few times as I thrust my foot through the wobbly rungs of the ladder and almost toppled into the water, he boosted me up to the rail and told me to stay off ships. I'd never be a sailor.

There were two important topics of conversation at lunch. One, how did the Chief Engineer break his arm? And the other, the prizefights at the Seamen's Mission the crew were all invited to that evening.

Some along the table said the Second and the Chief had squabbled over some dame, and the Second broke old One-Ton's arm — that was too preposterous and no one believed that. Others thought the old bastard had got tanked up, toppled over, and just cracked his arm with a fall. That, incidently, we found out from Philip later, was the story. The Chief had been up around the deck that morning with his right arm in a sling and swathed in bandages. They said he looked very sad, grousing around the deck with his eyes bleary and bloodshot, sipping long drinks of bromo seltzer. From the look of him you couldn't tell if it was his arm or his head that hurt him most.

The second topic of talk was the Seamen's Mission boxing bouts. It seems the crews from the Limey ship, the Belgian, the Hog-Islander, and we were all invited. It was free. No collection to be taken up, no religious service, no strings attached at all, and there was a rumor lemonade would be served (old Pat coughed so hard at that he almost upped his lunch).

And who was going to fight? Us. The purser of the Limey ship had been a middleweight ham and beaner and he would referee the bouts. There'd be a real roped-off ring set up in the Mission. Any of us who had any talent for boxing could pair off. A nice old guy from the Mission had come aboard that morning and given the dope to some of our crew.

There was no great enthusiasm shown for the boxing bouts. The crew felt it was a trap, a device (Perry called it) to steer them away from the houses and the barrooms. Nobody was going. What did they think we were — a bunch of dopes? None of us would be caught dead in a Seamen's Mission.

Perry nailed Joe and me as we stalled through the afternoon. We'd been fussing with some gear in the shelter deck, and we'd been taking turns sleeping off the effects of the morning's wine. He had contacted a swell outlet for our cigarettes — a small shop in Ingeniero White that serviced the fishermen of the harbor. Perry had sold a number of cartons the night before and was sure we'd get the best prices there.

After supper we tucked the cartons of cigarettes under our jackets and went ashore. Neither Joe nor Perry was satisfied with the way I carried contraband. They complained the stuff showed, and tried to poke the long cartons around under my jacket so they'd be less conspicuous. They complained I bulged too much, particularly around that box of Sweet Caporals. We'd never get by the cops. I maintained my bulges were natural and I knew more about the possibilities of anatomical structure than either of them or as much as both of them put together.

Had either of them ever heard of the curious physical developments prevalent among the Hottentot and Kalahari Bush people? Naturally, I referred to the mature female of the species, but I didn't mention that — we weren't talking sex.

Joe, because of the build of him, was a natural-born smuggler. His shoulders were so broad he easily carried a few packages under his armpits without disturbing the line of the loose windbreaker he wore, but Perry showed his stuff all over and I must admit I swelled with a peculiar angularity in spots.

The first cop we passed was picking his teeth — he had been working on the back molars as we came along and his mouth was so wide open he couldn't have taken a good look at us as we passed.

The desultory blast he blew on his whistle didn't sound very suspicious, so naturally, his brother cop further along the road, after a quick glance at us, went on reading his newspaper as we passed under his lamppost. Neither he nor any of the cops were very vigilant so soon after supper.

We got to the little shack and we unloaded with no preliminary ceremonies.

Perry who was handling negotiations for all of us seemed disturbed at the prices the fat Argentinian was willing to pay. The market was decidedly bearish — there were too many American cigarettes around. That gang of Hog-Islanders had probably dumped a carload all over Ingeniero White and sent the prices crashing.

The best Perry could get was four pesos fifty a carton — just a profit of sixty cents American money and hardly worth risking a fine or a stretch in one of those unpleasant Argentine jails. After a lot of pretending that we wouldn't sell — Perry would pile all the packages up on one arm as he kept howling what must have been the Spanish equivalent of Skinflint, Robber, Shylock — and then he'd wave us out with his free arm with a "Come on, fellers, t'hell with dis Jew." And as we reached the door. Perry would whirl and waggle his finger as he hoarsely warned that no Nord Americano sailor would ever enter this shop, etc., etc.

The fat Argentinian just shrugged his massive shoulders at all that.

Finally, Perry slammed the cartons down on the counter and took the four-fifty price with a hurt look.

My box of Sweet Caporals was not included in the deal. The guy gestured toward them, but Perry waggled that finger again. Oh no, not at that price. The Argentinian seemed interested. Perry screwed up his eyes and seemed to be giving the Sweet Caps a build-up. He topped his argument by dramatically pointing to a ragged poster of Firpo, the Bull of the Pampas, that hung on the wall back of the counter. That seemed to settle it and for those special cigarettes the Argentinian paid eight pesos — a profit of almost two and a half dollars, since the purser had only charged me (on his books) seventy cents for them.

He explained to us after we left the shop he had told the guy Sweet Caporals were the favorite smoke of Firpo when he was up in the States — the cigarette that all our heavyweight prizefighters train on. They're good for the wind.

We made for the only decent barroom in the town. It was over near the railroad station.

It was a high-ceilinged room lit up by a couple of electric bulbs over the Cafe Expresso machine behind the bar. The rest of the room was dark. A large battered pool table took up one section of the room.

We had stopped in on our way back from Bahia Blanca the night before and had a few drinks. The noisy crew of that Hog-Islander were draped all over the place, and a few Limeys and some of our own crew drank quietly off in one of the darkened comers.

Joe had been right — that Hog-Islander was manned by a lot of Texans. They looked and sounded more like a bunch of farmers than sailors as they cackled their thin jokes and yuk-yuk'd their delight with their own sallies. Our S.S. Hermanita crew seemed like a dignified, well-contained group in comparison. After we had a drink or two, one of those hatchet-faced yokels who wore his hat thrust over one eye grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward the light.

"Hey — lookit heah — this fella don' need a shave. He's raisin' a bea'd. What d'hell ya raisin' a bea'd fo'? Yo're an American, aincha?"

I jerked loose from that heel.

There it was again, the dilemma with which every guy who wears glasses is always being confronted. Should I take my glasses off or wait? If I took them off I was a touchy, belligerent boil (cancha take a little kiddin'?) looking for a fight. If I kept them on I was a yella-bellied-sonovabitch who hides my cowardice behind my specs and the seven years of prison everyone knows he'll get for hitting a man with glasses on.

I'm getting a little doubtful about that seven-year yam. Although I've slugged and been slugged now and again with and without my glasses on, nobody landed in prison for it, and though some of my best friends are ex-cons, I never met any who served time for that offense. Mayhap I don't know the right kind of criminals. In any case, we weak-eyed guys get the worst of it when we take our glasses off and almost always the first sock in the moosh (our own) while we blink and try to get our eyes focusing and looking fierce at the same time.

For example, the proper procedure — after this Texas punk had rudely whirled me around — was to look him over to be sure he wasn't too drunk to take a punch. Then, that he wasn't too little. In either case a good-natured crack was the proper response. If he was too big, that's all right — a handicap of a bottle or a length of pipe was allowed in such cases. If he's about your own size and weight and sober enough to be responsible for what he said and did as this Hog-Islander was, you take your dilemma by the horns and juggle it quickly.

Before I could come to any logical conclusion Joe had reached over my head and straightened the Texan's hat as he said:

"Nice hat you got, boy. You a cowboy?"

"Yessuh, ya gad damn right. Ah'm a long ho'n from way back. I've rid' the range from Tulsa to—"

One of his buddies had said something that set all of them yapping and cackling like a birdhouse in the zoo at feeding time, so we never heard to where. He turned back to his outfit.

They were all medium-sized guys, and if there had been any trouble I imagine we'd have done pretty well.

A plumpish, pink-cheeked young fellow got talking to us. He was the radioman of that Hog-Islander, a well-spoken, nice guy, and he courteously invited us to sit at one of the tables and have a drink with him. We all ordered brandy but he asked for port — the only thing he could drink was port, he said. When he found out that Al and Mush were at school, and I was in the art business, he was delighted.

He hadn't had a chance to talk to anyone but those Hog-Islanders for months, and he yearned for some intellectual conversation. He wasn't drunk. That's the way he talked. It seems he'd read a lot of morbid German philosophers, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel, Schlegel — and that's what he wanted to talk about. That was all right with me, but neither Al nor Mush had read them or cared — and their interest lagged.

They left us and went over to try that dead-cushioned pool table. After they racked up the balls and Mush was just getting set to shoot, he let out a yelp.

"Gawd — what d'hell's that?"

We went over to his side of the table. He was crouched over looking down at some guy who lay there flat on his back, his eyes closed and a thin red trickle oozing out of his mouth.

"That's one of our crew," the radio guy said.

"Is he dead?"

"No — just drunk, I think."

"Well, how we gonna play if we keep stumbling over his head as we go round the table? Think he'd mind if we dragged him out?"

"He might."

We walked around the table looking for his legs. They stuck out plenty on the other side. This guy was long, and when we saw him standing up some time later, we found we'd underestimated — he was longer.

He lay there under that table with his arms folded over an empty bottle which rested on his chest, smiling gently, dead drunk. Al and Mush gave up the thought of a game and after promising to visit the radio guy on his ship some Sunday (he had a lot of books up there and he'd let us borrow some if we wanted any), we went back to our ships.

Perry wouldn't let us go directly to that barroom. First he had to find one of the shrimp peddlers he said were all over the place. Since he had our pesos lumped up with his own money and wouldn't settle our accounts out on the open road, we stuck with him.

A little kid with a sniveling nose came down the road toward us carrying a large damp burlap bag. He set his bag down when we met and opened it up. It was half-full of cold, boiled shrimps. Perry ordered a measure for each of us. The kid, after hastily wiping his nose, with an expert twist made wide-mouthed cornucopias of sheets of newspaper and he filled each of them to overflow with a tangle of bright, pink shrimps. We walked along the road eating them.

"Delicious, ain't dey?" said Perry. "They catches 'em right here in the harbor and boils 'em on the spot — strictly fresh."

Joe walked along nibbling and said nothing.

I didn't think they were so much, but I agreed with Perry they were good. There wasn't much to them. The body of them wasn't much bigger than healthy New York cockroaches, and they had long antennaes, legs, feelers, streaming out of their shriveled little bodies in all directions. Their tiny dead black eyes stared back resentfully as you started to pluck at them. When you finally had stripped them down to their edible tails — you had a morsel of food about as big as the half of a worm one sometimes finds in a partly chewed apple.

"Tender, ain't they? And sweet, too," Perry went on. "Tell you what we'll do — we'll get a bottle of sauterne. That'll be good, huh? White wine's good with shellfish."

Joe, who had been getting more and more irritated as he pecked at his shrimp trying to get at the tails, gave up in disgust.

"Shellfish! Hell, dese are bugs. You like them? Have some more." And he smacked his paper of shrimp down on top of the mess Perry already carried, stuck his hands in his pockets, and walked along feeling more cheerful now that he had got rid of those crawly little dead things.

The barroom was crowded. Our whole deck crew (almost) was there and quite a few from the black gang; the Hog-Islanders, too, with that big guy who had been stretched out under the pool table, upright now, and as nasty as the rest of them. Like them, too, he wore his ordinary felt hat as if it were a ten-gallon Stetson and his trousers low at the waist, trying to get the effect of chaps like the rest of those cowboys.

Mush, Scotty, and the young Polack were holding down one corner of the bar with their elbows spread. They squeezed together to make room for us. Perry offered them shrimp, but told them not to eat them yet. Wait'll he got the sauterne.

The proprietor didn't have any, or any other white wine, so we drank the regular vino rojo and we nibbled the shrimp. While Perry was telling them about the deal he'd pulled with my Sweet Caporals, a big hand reached over our heads and plucked a mittful of shrimp.

"Ah like these too — thanks, buddy."

It was the big Hog-Islander. Now that he no longer sprawled over the bar and had stretched to his full height, that guy was tall. He towered over Joe by a good four inches. Why, he was as big as a Shiluk, and just about as narrow. He stood picking at the shrimp, stretching his finely trimmed mustache with an insolent smirk.

"Hey, Big Boy, you goin' over to the Mission for the fights?"

Joe, leaning with his elbows on the bar, looked up at him and grinned.

"Yeah — maybe."

"Wa-ll, you looks about ma' weight. Wanna put on the gloves for a few rounds?"

Joe looked him up and down, still grinning, and said, "Yeah — maybe," and kept looking him over. His eyes measured this big skinny guy up and down and across — they weighed him and felt the puny muscles of his scrawny arms.

The Hog-Islander tried to look broader, but I guess he got discouraged. Joe straightened up, stretched, and took a deep breath. He was something to see, that guy, when he swelled out like that, and he knew it.

The tall Texan moved down toward his gang.

"Well — hopes Ah'll be seein' ya later."

We were all proud of Joe and happy he was from our ship. Chips, the big Russian, was as big as Joe and he sat at one of the tables, but somehow, with that straw hat set straight on his head, he didn't look tough. I'd been a little apprehensive about those Hog-Islanders, but now I felt just let them start something — we'd ruin them.

We finished those pink cockroach shrimps and quite a bit of wine. After a while the crowd began to thin out and we too thought we might as well go over to the Mission and take in the fights. Joe said he might put on the gloves if that big guy still wanted to, and we all went along hoping he did.

23. The Polack from Baltimore

THE MISSION HOUSE MUST HAVE BEEN BUILT RECENTLY, it still had the smell of damp mortar and the varnished wood door stuck as we came in. It looked like any suburban parish house — white stucco walls and brown fake wood beams. Those jerry-built houses seemed to act as a hyphen between the austerity, the spiritual unreality, of the church and the social and physical needs of the parish. They usually are chilly and bloodless places — just a come-on to salvation, and they fool none of the sinners they are set up to trap with their bingo games, hot chicken suppers, or emasculated boxing bouts.

We found the whole crew of the S.S. Hermanita sitting on the benches that circled a professional-looking prize ring. Some guys who must have been from the Belgian ship sat off to one side. The Limeys were there, and opposite us on the other side of the ring sat the Hog-Islanders yapping and howling like a lot of coyotes.

There were a couple of Belgian boys in the ring making vague dabs at each other. They laughed a lot as they kept punching, swinging and missing. The bald-headed English referee was busy bobbing around, ducking up and down and back and forth — he was much more active than the fighters. The howls and snorts from the Hog-Islanders bothered him, and he'd look over at them now and then and frown his disapproval.

That bout was over, I don't think there was any decision. It looked as if we hadn't missed much if they were all like that.

The ring was cleared and the referee walked out to the center and held his arm aloft until there was absolute silence. Then he said:

"Gentlemen, the next bout will be a four-round go. The contestants at 8 stone 6—Mr. Reginald Robertsbridge, and at 8 stone 4—Mr. Sidney Hamildowne-Barnes of the S.S. Dulcimer. I've been ausked to announce — this is not a prizefight, mind you. This is a boxing exhibition. I'd like to make that clear now — a gentlemanly boxing exhibition."

From over in the Hog-Island section there blossomed as ripe a raspberry as ever I heard. That drew a laugh.

Two gawky, pimple-faced English boys climbed into the ring — they had stripped to their undershirts. They both wore high-waisted black trousers held up by broad suspenders, and on their feet, those thick-soled heavy shoes (boots they call them) that somehow get the color of a polished black kitchen stove. The big padded cushion of a glove they wore emphasized their pale, bony arms.

They stood in the center of the ring nervously pushing one glove against the other, occasionally shoving their long hair back up on their pompadours.

The referee went through the regular spiel. They would perform under the Marquis of Queensbury rules for boxing exhibitions. He trusted they'd both abide by those rules, keep their punches up, never use the heel or back of the glove, step away when their adversary had received a knockdown blow, break clean in the clinches, etc., etc. We all recognized that was the regular preamble, and the audience was respectfully silent.

His conclusion, "Now then, gentlemen, please return to your comers and come out boxing. May the best man win," opened up the dam, and the crews from all the ships shouted advice and encouragement.

The boys turned and walked with calm dignity to their comers. There they wheeled and returned with the same dignified walk, but a little nervous now, to the center of the ring. They stopped a good two yards away from each other, planted their heavy feet on the canvas, struck a fighting stance — left arm thrust forward, right back, held cocked for a murderous blow if your adversary comes within range — and just stood there!

It was undoubtedly position No. 1 from the shilling sixpence book on the Manly Art of Self-Defense (profusely illustrated with charts and diagrams).

The Hog-Islanders howled. Some of our gang joined in. Then the boxers moved their feet and, with heads up, backs straight, both arms thrust forward in the offensive defensive position No. 2, warily circled each other and now and again, driven on by shouts of "mix it," "sock him, boy," they timidly shoved their gloves at each other, thus throwing their long dank hair from their pompadours down on their faces. They both stopped and shoved their hair up again with their gloves, then resumed their stance, pose and move. The referee moved with them, watching them both carefully. When the catcalls and howls from the Hog-Islanders' bench got too much for him, he stepped between the boxers (there was plenty of room), stuck his arms straight up in the air, and faced that noisy bench.

"Gentlemen, please, please. I must repeat this is not a prizefight. This is a boxing exhibition."

That round ended, and the next three were repetitions of that excellent display of gentlemanly conduct, fair play, and gallantry.

Unquestionably, both of those boys must have read the same book, and countered each other's distant roundhouse swing with such efficiency neither suffered any unforeseen physical discomfort. When one of them tripped and grazed the large nose of his opponent with the tip of his glove — to the cries of "Atta' boy — kill 'im" from the Hog-Islanders — the bout was stopped while they all, including the referee, went into a huddle to inspect the damage. He who got smacked smiled bravely, tossed his hair back in place, and they shook hands. The minuet went on.

That book they both might have shared couldn't have been written by Phil Scott, the heavyweight champion of the British Isles (in those days), for as I remember he was called Phaintin' Phil the Horizontal Champ, since he finished all his bouts on this side of the Atlantic — prone. Those two completed their exhibition upright and parallel, a mite perspired perhaps from lifting their feet and holding their arms out for so long a period, but they were flushed and happy. They left the ring arms entwined, still good friends.

The referee had another speech to make.

"Gentle-me-n-n—"

("Yeah, Sugah. Heah we is," came from the Hog-Islanders.)

"Gentlemen — quiet please. Are there any big fellows 'ere who per'aps might volunteer to put on a bout in the 'eavyweight clawse, before we put on the main bout of the evening?"

And he turned from the Hog-Islanders to our crew with raised eyebrows and an inviting smile, since the big guys jutted up only from the American benches.

We all looked toward Joe sitting there easy and grinning. He was looking across the ring. The big Texan sprawled in his seat over there puffing away at a cigarette. He studied the ash, flicked it, and turned his head this way and that as the referee waited. It seems he couldn't see Joe across the ring. His eyes were all squinted up from the cloud of smoke he'd made.

"Well then, since we caun't get any volunteers, we'll now 'ave the main and final bout of the evening."

A door had opened in a far corner of the Mission House and out of it came our whole mess crew — Chef, Purser, and all. They were led by the little Filipino Pug dressed in a big bathrobe and a towel wrapped around his neck; on one side of him Flip, our own messboy, carrying a bucket and more towels, and on the other, our pal Philip, wearing a sweatshirt. Then the Chef and Purser.

They were a very professional-looking lot and I could see everybody was impressed, even the Hog-Islanders.

Mush leaned across and whispered, "What d'you know— lookit behind 'em. It's the Old Man."

Captain Brandt came up in the rear of that little brown gladiator and his handlers. Mush had never before seen the Captain in his pencil-striped going-ashore suit with the gold watch chain. The old guy wore his pince-nez with his heavy black ribbon and smiled benignly at everybody as he walked arm in arm with a gentle-looking white-haired man — the missionary. Captain Brandt looked very much the sporting gentleman.

Then it struck me. This was it.

We knew the Captain didn't drink, smoke, or gamble, and he didn't go to the houses. His secret vice might be imagining himself a sport with a private (one man) fight stable.

The little Pug did very little aboard ship outside of his eternal bag punching, rope skipping, and shadow boxing. Perhaps he had been in training all the way down from the States for just this evening at the Seamen's Mission in Ingeniero White. That's not too preposterous a conclusion. I remember that someone had said our young Third Mate was the only one of the deck officers or crew who had shipped with the Old Man before. It was said he had sailed with him since he was a deck boy and the Old Guy had helped him get his license. That Third Mate was a stocky young guy with the flattened nose and gentle eyes of a natural pug. Couldn't he have been Captain Brandt's one-man fight stable until the little Filipino came along?

The little Pug accompanied by Philip and Flip climbed up into the ring. He pranced about until they had set down the water bucket and placed a stool they carried in a corner. He sat on it and let them fuss over him a minute. He waved them aside as the referee went to the center of the ring to make another announcement.

"Gentlemen — the main bout of the evening. We are privileged this evening to 'ave the very talented and very competent semi-pro featherweight boxing champion of the Isle of Kowaho. Battling Thomas — the Filipino Tornado — who will be 'appy to meet any challengers of approximately 'is own weight in the audience. Will the challengers come to this side of the ring?"

It was a good speech and everybody listened respectfully, but there was no response. No challengers arose to meet the featherweight champion of Kowaho. He looked too good.

All of the guys in the Mission House who were outside of his weight (like me) observed the little Pug with admiration, but those who might be about in his class tried to look as if they weren't there. Their eyes moved all over the house except on the group that stood in or around the ring. Al, who had wanted a crack at the little Pug a few weeks ago, was studying the ceiling. A few of the Hog-Islanders who might have been right weren't showing any interest.

The referee looked from them back to our crew with a hopeful look. Seems the Belgians and the Englishmen weren't involved, though the majority of them were featherweights. It's evident their ships didn't feed good. They considered this an American go — just a little trouble amongst the Colonists, perhaps — and their eyes moved with the referee back and forth across the ring.

The Pug and his handlers became anxious. Old Captain Brandt began to click his teeth as he threw his head back and peered from under his glasses. The featherweight champion of Kowaho finally stood up and looked around dolefully. He looked as if he were ready to burst into tears — no challengers, no fight — and here he was all dressed up and ready to show his stuff.

The referee tapped his foot impatiently.

"Well, gentlemen, cawn't we get one challenger—?"

The Hog-Islanders over on their side were shoving each other about, each trying to get the other to get up. Over on our side somebody had said, "How's about it, Al?" But Al wasn't listening. I couldn't understand that. Maybe he was self-conscious or something. I'm sure the little Pug didn't scare him.

Scotty, who was too big for the Pug, said out of the side of his mouth, "Somebody ought to take the little mon — or thot mess crew is gonna be unbur-rable abu-r-rd thot ship."

The young Polack sat alongside of me. He had enjoyed the evening and had har-har'd and slapped his knee at the funny bout the English boys had put on. The wine he'd drunk had given him the hiccups and he belched painfully now and then — he was quite drunk. Quietly he stood up, tightened his belt, and climbed over the benches to the ringside.

He made it in four long measured steps and without a break in his stride he grabbed the ropes, swung his leg over, and was in the ring. The Challenger!

The only sound from the time he stood up was the hollow clump of his work shoes on the wooden floor. It was a great relief to everyone that he had volunteered. The gang in the ring welcomed him with broad, happy smiles. It seems the referee was a little uncertain about his weight, since the Polack was a lot taller than the Pug. He had Captain Brandt translate the Polack's weight from American pounds into English stone. The Captain beamed and might have juggled that translation — anything for a fight. But there was no question they were pretty well matched.

The Polack pulled his sweater and shirt up over his head in one quick gesture and stood there with his legs astride, rocking a little as if he were riding a rolling deck. The guy was drunk, but that bunch in the ring were so happy to have a setup for the Pug, they overlooked that. Stripped down it was obvious his weight was about right. For all his heavy tanned arms and the couple of inches he had over the Pug's height, his white, knobby torso was narrow and flat.

They tied a couple of gloves on him, and they hung from his wrists as if they didn't belong. Then they led him into the center of the ring. The referee anglicized his difficult Slavic name in his introduction. The Polack got a good hand, and after the regular spiel he, the Pug and both their handlers went to their corners. A couple of Hog-Islanders had climbed up into the Polack's comer. The Filipinos lent them a few towels and a sponge, and the main bout was on.

It was no boxing exhibition and not much of a fight. The little Pug was an aggressive pushy little fighter and the Polack was a heavy-handed pathetic lump. The little guy couldn't show his best stuff — I imagine he'd been dubbed the Tornado because of his style. He rushed the Polack and was a little miffed when he didn't back up.

The Pug danced around, slapped, jabbed, pushed, but the Polack, grinning, always came toward him swinging and missing. A few clouts in the Polack's flat stomach sent the wine sputtering from his mouth. Then a couple of stiff jolts in the face started his nose bleeding and cut him over the eye. The mixture of wine and blood dribbled down his face and sent thin red rivulets rolling down the flat hills of his white belly.

That went on all through the bout. The crowd didn't cheer and the Pug and his gang weren't happy about it, but the Polack wouldn't quit. They washed him up between rounds and he'd go back to bleed again and vomit blood and wine. When the fourth round was finished no one waited for the referee's decision. The crowd got up and started back to their ships. Some went back to the barroom; a few of us helped wash the Polack up. There were a lot of hands that gently tugged his shirt back on.

24. Girls Sailors Remember

WE DIDN'T HAVE MUCH CARGO TO UNLOAD IN INGENIERO WHITE. In a few days our holds were clear. Joe and I spent long, pleasant afternoons stalling around the big barnlike shell of our empty ship. Of course, we carried our brooms with us and held on to them firmly as we sat around and smoked and talked the day away. Joe said we were waiting for cargo, and as we waited it became more difficult for him and me to find contrivances to stall about.

The goddam, brass-polishing, yachts-Captain of a Mate had set the crew to painting the bulkheads and overhead, as if we were a goddam crew of fancy-pants sailors on a lousy passenger liner. That was Perry's version. And furthermore, as soon as we shipped north again and the first port we hit beyond Argentine, he was going to skip this stinkin' tub.

He'd even beach in Montevideo, if that was our first port.

We had two Sundays in Ingeniero White. The whole crew was broke and rebellious. They weren't having fun in that port and the majority of them were cold sober for a week. Some growled they hadn't had a woman for a month.

I visited the radio guy of the Hog-Islander on one of those Sundays. He had a nice layout up in that radio shack of his. His ship was loaded down with lumber piled neatly on its decks up to around six feet above the rails. Long chains tied across those timbers lashed them down. I climbed the ladders from the pier to this immense raised wood raft and another shorter one to the radio guy's shack. The few members of the crew I saw on the ship were cordial. The Polack and the Pug's bout at the Seamen's Mission had given all of the members of the S.S. Hermanita s crew quite a prestige.

The Hog-Islanders, the Limeys, and the Belgians, while they were tied up alongside our ship, always greeted us pleasantly after that night and occasionally bought us a drink. I was sorry to see them steam out as they left the long steel pier a few days apart, until our empty ship was the only one tied up out there.

That radio guy had a five-foot shelf of nineteenth-century German philosophers up in his cheerful cabin. He kept his books in a glass-topped box that looked as if it had once held radio equipment. After we'd talked ourselves dry on the deep-bellied, heavy-headed Schreibers und Philosophischer Erklarers von der Deutsches Herrenvolk (just a lot of Weltschmerzen), my host broke out a couple of bottles of tawny port and a couple of sparkling, stemmed glasses.

It seemed to me port and Schopenhauer were incongruous, and we drifted into talk about women. Schopenhauer's ridiculous essay that argued the ugliness of the human female brought that on.

This plumpish, pink-cheeked young guy housed the splinters of a broken heart in his soft gray-sweatered bosom…

He had fallen in love with a co-ed up in Louisiana State University, but her papa and mama wouldn't have him, for he was a goy. That's putting it simply. He ramified, rationalized, and held forth at length on racial prejudice, tolerance, equality of man, and the survival of the species. She was Jewish, he a goy. His folks acquiesced, hers didn't.

C'est tout.

That had driven him to sea. He quit school, signed on this Hog-Islander, and would never return to Louisiana — he hoped.

It took a liter of port to finish the story. Then, after he'd opened the second bottle, we went through half of it with some biscuits he dug up, as I sat there, pondering and occasionally asked a leading question to indicate I hadn't dozed off. I suspect this guy had a couple of English novels tucked away in that cabin, which he didn't display as ostentatiously as he did his German philosophers. Seems I've read time and again, in some Trelawney novels, about school ties and English regiments in India, port and biscuit at ten in the morning — very Pukka Sahib.

Through that last half bottle I mulled over his tragic problem of love unrequited, and when we held our last drink in our glasses, I suggested a very clear and obvious solution.

Go thou and be circumcised!

It was as simple as that since her parents' only objection to him was that he was a goy. His pink face lit up like a rising summer sun — he would! He was delighted and thanked me profusely.

That guy took me too seriously and that had me worried. I warned him it hurt. Did it? Well, I'd been told— But I thought all Jewish boys—? Of course, of course. But it happened so long ago — anyway when a fellow's only nine days old that's one thing — it's only a snip — but from then on it's an operation, and terribly painful.

But that didn't faze this guy. For his dark-eyed, ivory-skinned little darling, why, he'd do more than that — why, he'd cut off his arm. He was ready to die for her.

I suppose I might have told him that story from the Old Testament (Genesis 34th Chapter) when that goy Shechem, son of Chamor the Hivite and a prince, at that, saw "Dinah the daughter of Leah whom she had borne unto Jacob," and — to quote again—"he took and lay with her and did her violence" unquote, and Shechem got to love the gal and wanted to marry her. Her brothers were all wrought up, and when this guy's old man, Chamor the Hivite, came along and said his son was sorry and that he and all the other goyim of that city in Cana'an admired the Jew girls and would like to marry them — to quote again—"the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Chamor his father with cunning and spoke: because he had defiled Dinah their sister," and they said "on this condition will we consent unto you — if ye will become as we, that every male of you be circumcised."

The Hivites granted that and every man-jack went and got operated on. Then the story goes on that Jacob's boys avenged the family honor. "And it came to pass on the third day, when they [the Hivites] were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took each his sword, and came upon the city unresisted and slew all the males" — including of course Shechem and his old man — them "with the edge of the sword." I suppose that hurt more.

Old Jacob for practical reasons hadn't approved of that, but his boys were hot-headed and had their Irish up. And so it was written.

Of course, this moon-calf sitting there opposite me with his empty glass and the biscuit crumbs clinging to his cheeks was no rapacious Hivite. But I suggested he get some guarantee before he made hospital reservations, just to be sure that it wasn't only his goyishkeit that her family objected to in him. I didn't tell him that it might be this quality of wide-eyed immaturity and pompous preciosity I too found very wearing after spending the morning jabbering with the guy, and made me glad to say good-by after those bottles were emptied.

Back on our own ship that Sunday noon I found I had missed out on an invitation to eat roast beef aboard the Limey tied up alongside us. Al, Mush, Joe, Perry, Scotty — pretty much everybody had got in on it. Al with his smooth talk had arranged it, and the only one to talk to at our dinner table outside of Bird-neck, who hated Limeys, was the little Bos'n.

The little Bos'n was feeling good and felt like talking. After dinner, I asked him if he'd sit for a portrait. His face crinkled up in that catlike grin of his — he was embarrassed — but after a few minutes he said he'd be mighty proud to.

It was cold out on deck and we sat around in his dark varnished cabin and I made a drawing of him. He insisted on posing with that old dusty Ship's Officer's cap pulled forward shading his eyes.

After I'd been drawing a few minutes he talked, without moving his lips much. He told me he'd been worried about Mush and me hanging out with Perry. Not that Perry was bad. Just that he was the kind of sailor that makes mistakes and gets himself and everybody with him in trouble. He meant to warn us when he saw us going ashore back in Rio Santiago, but it was just as well, since we'd managed to stay out of any serious mess.

We looked like nice clean kids, he said, and he'd hate to see us go wrong — same as his own kid. Yeah, he had a kid — a nice kid back in the States. The kid boarded out while he was away at sea. Then he hunted around in his neat locker and got a photograph and handed it to me. It was a picture of a blond, curly-headed boy about four years old.

The little Bos'n talked quite a lot about the little boy, and somehow his talk shifted and he told me about the officer's cap he was wearing. It was tied up with his thinking about the kid.

He had been an officer. He'd shipped as a Second Mate aboard American ships for quite a spell and he had a First Mate's license too. Something had happened down in El Maria, Spain, one night, and he'd been broken — well, here he was starting over again as a Bos'n. That officer's cap he wore was to remind him to hold his temper. It (his temper) had got him into trouble before.

Then he shut up and didn't talk any more for quite a while. I overworked that drawing hoping he'd start up again. Finally, he went on.

There had been an emergency aboard that ship that night down in El Maria — he didn't say what the emergency was and I didn't ask — and he was the only deck officer aboard. He went aft to the fo'castle and ordered the crew to turn to. There were big guys in that crew — and he reckoned they resented being ordered around by a shorter man. In those days he said he was kind of cocky too. Well, a lot of the men had been ashore drinking and they were sleepy. They told him to go to hell. They said a lot of other things. He riled up (he used words like that) and ran to his cabin and got his gun. Then he came back and told those sailors they had to get dressed and go to work. They swore at him again and one big guy rolled out of his bunk and made for him, howling he'd break every bone in his skinny little body. Our little Bos'n pulled his gun and shot this big guy in the belly.

So they jailed him for killing this guy and broke him. He served a year and two months in that Spanish prison and he's disliked Spiks ever since.

When he got back to the States he found his wife had gone off with another man. She wasn't much good anyway — she had dumped their kid, just two years old then, in an orphanage. He divorced her — cost him a lot of money — and he got the kid.

Then he kept quiet and so did I, ruining that drawing completely with a muddy background and a lot of nonessential detail. It turned out pretty awful but he liked it and I gave it to him. He said he'd frame it and put it up in the cabin of a trim sloop he was saving to buy.

Yeah, he was gonna get a sloop and hire him a couple of native boys as his crew, and he was gonna get a contract to carry mail down around the thousands of islands that dot the Caribbean. He'd take his kid with him and he and the kid would sail those islands from then on. It's pretty down around the islands in the Caribbean.

Yep, he always wore that cap aboard a ship to remind him to keep his temper. That was the cap he wore that night down in El Maria, Spain.

That Sunday dinner aboard that Limey hadn't been so hot, and the gang came back to our ship wishing they'd eaten aboard with us. We had taken on some fresh meat in the last port and our dinner hadn't been too terrible — a beef stew, not chicken, that Sunday.

Sitting around on that empty ship those evenings the crew talked about women. It was curious the talk wasn't about the women near by in Rio Santiago, Buenos Aires, or Bahia Blanca, whom they'd recently seen for a couple of pesos a look, but about distant women. Women they didn't pay for. It was the memory of those dames they carried inside them and wanted to talk about.

Ladies, it seems the tender emotion of undying love must be free of tariff to be transported for any distances unsoured in the tattooed, curly-haired, seagoing chests. If you charge even two pesos, you're written off and forgotten as traveling expenses. Of course, there are exceptions. Some dames in some houses in Vladivostok, Rotterdam, Brooklyn, Seattle, Chungking, or Calcutta, were worth a lot more than the price paid, and gave more — so they were remembered in those fo'castle reminiscences.

The young Polack had a girl in Baltimore. Hey, you, artist — you're an artist, aintcha? — how'd you like to have this babe for a model, huh?

He showed me a snapshot proudly. Some doll, huh? She was — a big fat dame bulging out of a frilly dress. Not the kind of young, fat bulges that swell out and stick up on their own axis, but the fold-over and flop type of fat that usually comes with age, though I've seen it happen on sloppy young women too. She smirked back at us from that snapshot. A frizzy bob (the coiffure of the period) stuck out about nine inches on either side of her flabby mush. Yeah, some doll. That young Polack deserved better.

Joe talked about the Australian gal he'd almost married six times. Some six trips he'd made to Australia — each time he almost married the girl. He traveled light and never carried pictures with him…

And to go on with these case histories, take that guy Slim— the Georgia boy. We didn't see much of him those evenings in port. He had wandered off by himself up in Rio Santiago, and again in Ingeniero he spent all his free time in the houses and about every penny he could draw or borrow with the women.

He didn't go to the big popular places, but he hung around the small joints where they only had the older, maternal-looking women. Even when he was finally broke he didn't hang around with us much in port; he walked the streets of the town. He didn't have any girl any place. The only woman he'd talk about much was his mammy.

It seems to me the most pathetically romantic guy aboard that ship was the fat old Sailing Man. He'd shipped out on this stinking tub because of his old woman, he said. He didn't approve of oil burners. He was a sailing man and he grudgingly conceded a ship the right to bum coal, though his preference was a good vessel pushed by a clean wind. But filthy, black fuel oil — goddam, that's for donkey engines.

His sacrifice for his old woman went beyond that. He spent very little money ashore, though he'd chuckle with delight when someone offered him a cigarette or a cigar and he smoked them carefully, relishing every puff. He bought a cheap, strong tobacco for his regular fare.

The old fat Sailing Man didn't spend much money on liquor. He nursed one beer all night in the bars, and about women— when the crew had rushed off with a roar that first night in Rio Santiago, he had taken me aside and asked where did I think he could buy a "pertector" in that port — had Perry (who knew the port and palled with me) said there were any drugstores around and what was the Spanish word for it. He'd not like to bring something back to his old woman and make her sick.

A few of the guys who had been cheerful and lively out at sea didn't talk much or mix with the rest of us while the ship was in port. They were morose and just wanted to get out to sea again.

They seemed to lose stature when they were ashore. It seemed to me they were always uncomfortable and sort of self-conscious, and if they ever said anything they seemed to indicate they wanted to ship out again. Scotty to a lesser degree, Birdneck, the big Russian and that Maverick guy (who had toned down considerably) were like that. They waited and we all waited impatiently now for some cargo. When d'hell we gonna ship outta this lousy port?

We pumped Philip to get the dope. Wasn't there any talk up in the officers' mess about shoving off from this goddam steel pier we'd been tied to for almost three weeks? Everybody was sick of that dull coast.

One evening Philip came back aft with a big smile — Captain Brandt had said we'd ship out in just a few days with no cargo. While the rest of us felt pretty good about it. Mush — all of a sudden an expert seaman — jumped on the no-cargo phrase in Philip's report.

"What, no cargo?"

"No cargo."

"Ain't he takin' on any ballast or something—?"

That guy must have read a book.

"I don't know — he didn't say."

"G-a-w-d — no cargo and no ballast. Is the Old Man goin' crazy? An empty ship going up through the South Atlantic in September, in the hurricane season. Hell's bells, that ain't good."

Mush's under lip hung down on his chest. The old pink-eyed guy cheered up that book sailor with "Oh — don't worry so much. We don't hit the hurricane belt for quite a spell — up about Rio. Guess we'll pick up cargo before then, up the coast. They don't sail a ship — even one like this — very far empty. It costs too much."

That consoled Mush, and me too, though I hadn't expressed any qualms concerning Captain Brandt's seamanship. But this guy Mush had a perverse way of getting you to worry with him.

Now that that was settled we yipped it up and decided to have a celebration. I suggested it and I started to collect. I put the pressure on some of the guys who hadn't come through for that fo'castle party up in Rio Santiago — they had some money and I knew it. I didn't collect very much — enough to buy some wine. Philip got us some stuff from the locked icebox late that night.

It wasn't much of a party, and what took the edge off it for me was that guy, my pal Joe.

When I had hit him up he shook his head — all right, so I passed him up. The guy must be broke. I went ashore with Mush and we brought back a dozen bottles of vino. When we returned to the fo'castle we found our pal Joe all washed, shaved, and dressed up for a big night, with striped silk shirt, fancy armbands, et al. He stood there adjusting the knot of his tie in his locker-door mirror, reeking of hair tonic, shaving lotion, talc, and eau de cologne. Mush and I realized this guy wasn't getting dressed up for our sakes. We said as much. He grinned, gave us the wink, and said he was going up to Bahia Blanca. How? He winked again.

Why, it costs one peso fifty to go to the city, three pesos round trip. We could have bought a couple of more bottles for that money…

Our pal Joe had reneged!

T'hell with him. It was his money. He could do whatever he goddam well wanted to do with it, but goddam it, he was a member of the crew, and if he'd been holding out so he could go awenchin' when the rest of the crew couldn't even afford a whole bottle of wine a man— Where was his community spirit—? Why, goddam, he was positively anti-social, a selfish indecent throwback on human society, and he goddam well ought to have his A.B. papers revoked. .

Joe said nothing. By that time he was completely dressed. He carefully adjusted his stiff, straw hat with the proper Maurice Chevalier angle, tapped the top of it, gave us another wink, and swung out of the fo'castle door leaving us shouting at the wind.

T'hell with him. So we had the party without him.

25. Brassy, Gassy Officialdom

THERE WAS A FLASH OF BRASSY ARGENTINIAN OFFICIALDOM up on the Captain's deck in the late afternoon. Uniformed port officials — at least three of them with brief cases and large stapled documents clutched in their hands — golden watch-chained civilians, pompous black-suited Argentinians with more brief cases and more papers; and they fussed, frowned, coughed, counted noses, rattled their papers, stamped ours, shook hands with the Captain, and we shoved off.

As I stood in the lineup on the Captain's deck to be counted with the rest of the crew, just to be sure none of us had had a romantic urge and had stolen away to become a Gaucho or a tango dancer — or that we hadn't stepped off the road in Ingeniero White and been swallowed up by the mudflats and quagmires — I pondered on an intensely interesting aesthetic problem, i.e., the logic of certain plastic forms in relation to their functional necessity. Why the curious geometric setup which seems prevalent among all the Argentinian civilian officials that I had seen?

Why did they all swell through the torso, thorax and abdomen running together into one smooth tight round shape, and that riding above their thin close-fitted trouser legs — a puffy sphere on two inverted cones? They gave the effect of always rising on their toes, yet their bull-nosed shoes rested splayfooted on the deck. It couldn't only be the food and drink they absorbed. Maybe because of the tumultuous pressure of official business their food didn't digest properly (they all knit their brows and talked with a burpy sound) and gases were formed that swelled them out that way — and like any other gas-filled unit they tended to rise and pull away from their moorings.

Maybe they wore lead in their high-heeled, heavy-soled shoes which clattered with such metallic importance on the decks. Lead for ballast.

Yeah, ballast — that's what our ship needed. Why were there so many officials aboard anyway for our dinky empty ship? Perhaps Captain Brandt had planned it… It wouldn't be a bad idea to shanghai that bunch, using them as ballast till we hit our next port or the States. If we held on to them till we reached the States, that might not be a bad idea. There it might be arranged that a secondary clerk from the State Department could lead them around and give them a good look at our Nord Americano way of life and culture.

Look — our doors have air brakes on them. They don't smash against walls even if you're strong. Look — our Chinese restaurants understand English when you order chop suey. Look — we have heat on our trains, sometimes even too much. Look— our American money. It's hard to get but it doesn't fall apart when you get it. Look — there are other things to eat besides steak Caballero. Look — we have shops that display "habla Espanol" signs on them. Of course, you'll be gypped — that extra percentage is worth it for the linguistic convenience of protesting comprehensively. Why don't you try a few "habla English" signs on your gyp joints? Look — we have bars that are bars, not floozie traps. We call a floozie trap a floozie trap — etc., etc. I bet we do a lot for Pan-American relations (all this having been thought out up on the Captain's deck before P.A.R. became G.N.P. — Good Neighbor Policy).

Then having done that, if we haven't succeeded in completely deflating those puffed-up Argentinian officials, we could cut them loose from their moorings, these lead-filled shoes, and let them rise and float back home. If they didn't make it and landed somewhere else, it would do them good. If the representative from the Section of Cultural Relations of our State Department did succeed in impressing and deflating those guys down to normal they could be sent home aboard one of our warships with a handful of those informative brochures the Section of Cultural Relations has been mailing me ever since; I paid my own fare down to Washington to attend (a recent and I very special invitation) a conference on the Interchange of' Culture through the Contemporary Plastic Arts — or some such title — run by that section of the State Department, and I listened with three other sculptors and ten painters to a hundred and fifty museum directors, professors of fine arts, artt critics, etc., tell us that the best exchange of Contemporary Plastic Art and Culture would be:

(1) To send the South Americans a traveling exhibition of El Grecos, Murillos, Velasquez, Goyas, that our millionaires through their agents and dealers had swiped from the S.A.'s Spanish forebears — just to show them we owned the cream of their artistic output. N-a-a-a-h—

(2) A traveling exhibition of Puritan portraits, seventeen of which the museum director who presented that precious thought believed were available. (This was a conference on contemporary American art — remember?)

(3) An interchange of scholarships for fine arts professors to explain the work from lantern slides of our untraveled, unclothed, and underfed sculptors and painters

— and thus through a hundred and forty-seven more assorted museum directors, curators, art directors, art critics, scholars.

That conference ended as far as I was concerned with the longest drink of excellent Scotch and the shortest dab of soda I'd ever had — at a garden party given at a sumptuous estate in fashionable Georgetown. All the conference had been invited. At the resplendent open-air bar, as I bemoaned the fact with one of the other sculptors that none of the plastic artists present had been recognized by the chairman of the conference to state the contemporary artists' point of view, a footman had been pouring Scotch into the immense glass I held, waiting for me to say "when," and since I'd been busy bemoaning and couldn't figure out how he could get the Scotch back into his empty bottle, I asked for a dab of soda which he floated on top—"No ice, please" — and I wandered around those magnificent gardens sipping that quart of Scotch until it was dark, and I went home.

The brochures I received were a resume of that conference and could be handed out by these deflated but intellectually resuscitated Argentinian officials on the street comers of their main cities. .

Of course, I refer to the first series of brochures that were sent, not the later ones, which were sent after I had received a questionnaire listing thirty or forty subjects the State Department seems to think was taken up at their conference, and I was asked to check which of those I was interested in. I checked Art — and Scholarship Exchange — whereupon I received with some regularity the second series of brochures. They were headed for immediate release and told me that Dr. Yolda D'Costa Armaradillo, third assistant curator of medieval needlepoint of the San Del Amalga Museum, had arrived in the United States of North America (or had made his escape and was soon due to arrive) on an exchange Fine Arts Scholarship grant. Of course, I was always glad to hear that, but I couldn't understand what it had to do with me, and they never told what third assistant curator of medieval needlepoint from which museum they sent down there in trade for the Doctor— or did they send, say, two fourth assistant curators of seventeenth-century Castilian lace in exchange, to carry on the aims of the Conference on Contemporary Plastic Art?

So, it's the first series of brochures I suggest which should be passed out, and — who can tell? — our brothers and sisters in the Argentine might learn to love us for ourselves alone, and not for two pesos.

I waited at the end of the line going up to the Captain's deck with my seaman's passport to be checked out of Ingeniero White. I had dashed back to my cabin and got a clean pair of shorts on, just in case we were to have another physical checkup, and I'd intended to ask the doctor to look at my tonsils—en passant. They'd been troubling me lately. But the uniformed officials, after rolling through their long papers, finally found their reference to my earlier entry into Argentina — though when they asked me if I was "Luis Slopotzwiski" with a Spanish accent, no less, I just blinked — until Captain Brandt barked at me and I said I was, so they stamped my passport, and that's all. No physical checkup. Whatever we picked up in their country we could have free. One of our guys got plenty.

From all that ceremony up on the Captain's deck it was clear to the older guys in the crew that this was our last port in Argentina. They doubted whether we'd pick up any cargo — or ballast either — before we hit Montevideo, if we stopped there, or even further up the coast. Mush wasn't the only guy with a worried look when we got out beyond the smooth water of the harbor.

The wind was up and there was quite a heavy sea. Our empty hull bobbed dizzily on the point of every good-sized wave that came along. We'd plow ahead for a few minutes and then, lifted on the crest of one of those big babies, our propeller, clear of the water, churned helplessly in the air with the sound of a gigantic old-fashioned coffee grinder.

We went about our business glumly. The cargo booms had been lowered into their big collars while we were in port and the cables and other rigging stowed away. There was a little consolation in the contemplation the stuff hadn't been stowed away permanently and lay around as if there were plans to rig those booms again to take on cargo or maybe sand for ballast.

There was no question the crew was worried, not only Mush — with his lugubrious mug dragging on the deck with that "all is lost, Mother" expression. It seemed to me every time we rode high and our propeller whipped the air, of course, everybody's heart jumped up into his throat, and as we settled back into the water, we swallowed in unison. But Mush's heart must have bounded higher than that, because I'm sure I saw his popeyes pushed out into space until I could see the intricate red muscular structure that held his eyeballs in their sockets— a definite indication of palpitating pressure from within, and it wasn't only the wind that lifted his hat.

Then there was Perry, his eyes crossing and recrossing with rage as he was banged around on the heaving deck for the few minutes he did any work — the A.B.'s were back on watch, their regular stall.

He would mutter his bitter chant through a corner of his tight lips — on the lousy miserable asininity of the lousy brass-polishin' Mate, etc. — and "just wait till we hit port."

There was another audible contributor to our general misery — the fat Sailing Man who, now that we were out at sea, was his old, bellowing, sloppy self again. We day men had found the easiest and quickest way to move gear around that ship was to load, drape, and hang the various units (such as coils of cable, line, block and fall, etc.) on the old Sailing Man as he stood scowling and viciously cursing the Swede Mate. When he was all loaded down like a fat, double-trunked Christmas tree, he'd shuffle stiffly off with the rest of us holding up the loose ends so they wouldn't catch on the deck and throw him — our tangled ambulating Maypole, with a calliope attachment.

The officers standing on the upper decks heard him, but he was never ordered to pipe down. Maybe his loud-mouthed critical survey of their incompetence was just. I wasn't enough of a seaman to know, and their consciences wouldn't permit them to clamp down on him. But I didn't understand how they permitted his descriptive adjectives, participles and such attribute compliments!

Midships was worried too. Time and again we could see all three Mates (when two of them at least should have been off watch and asleep) up on the open bridge in consultation with Captain Brandt — and old One-Ton, the Chief Engineer, would be up there with them too, with his broken arm in a sling. I can't imagine how he made it. He had enough difficulty when he had two arms to help him negotiate those ladders. Maybe one of his ingenious black gang had rigged up an individual elevator in the form of an immense Bos'n's chair and hoisted him up through the fidley.

They stood up on that bridge and when the ship rolled they'd all not only have themselves to keep upright but they'd all make a wild scramble for One-Ton. His one puny good arm clinging to the rail wasn't enough to keep him from crashing up on that bridge deck.

They were very fussy about keeping things clean up there, and I'm sure it was not their solicitude for the Chief so much as that fussiness which impelled them. Blood doesn't wash out of a bleached deck like that very easily. They couldn't let him dirty up the place with shreds of his squashed blubber and bashed brains.

Evenings in the fo'castle were dreary. We couldn't sit around talking very comfortably since the roll of the ship kept knocking us about and tumbling the benches we sat on. Then again, back there when the noise of the propeller became again the big ominous coffee grinder and then the crash as our stem settled back in the water, we all wished we were someplace else.

Up forward in our own cabin it was not much better, but I was nearer to my own life jacket racked up over my bunk.

I had given myself a few private life-saving drills (to be used when saving my own life) while our ship lay calmly tied up to the security of that steel pier in Ingeniero — after Philip had brought us the no-cargo, no-ballast news.

The first drill was the Sunday afternoon after our bon voyage party, when we hadn't enough wine to get drunk and tried to make up for the lack of it by helling around telling stories. Those that I had told (I had quite a repertoire in those days) were received quietly with polite smiles. Subtlety didn't count in that bull session. The stuff that earned the roarin', helpless belly laughs was the obvious raw tripe that I had heard when I sat around under carbon street lamps some summer evenings a long time ago, listening with guilty delight to some older kids whose voices were changing hoarsely whisper the facts of life and recount those archaic vulgarities they had heard from their older brothers.

Joe hadn't come back to the ship that night. Sometime Sunday morning he'd climbed aboard and gone to sleep for a few hours. At noon he dressed and sought me out to invite me to go ashore and have dinner with him — his treat and he ordered the best.

We ate as good as you could get in that port — a fish soup, then steak Caballero again. Somehow, Joe had a rather thickish roll of pesos. Over a bottle of cognac after dinner Joe gave out with the dope on his night ashore. He said he'd figured — all right, this report that we ship out in a few days, but you can't really depend on that. We still might be tied up in port for a week — he missed by two days. If he sunk his last couple of pesos in that party, it would have been improvident. He would have exhausted his capital. So he invested in his best asset— himself — Mr. Joe.

He took a train up to Bahia Blanca, and hung around the cafes and streets, until he was picked up (plucked up, he said). Whoever it was had paid well and that accounted for his affluence. Joe's English was always a little twisted, so I couldn't make out if he said it was an old coozie or old posie had plucked him up. Anyway, Joe had money for the last five days in port, and since he was an open-handed guy, those of us who were honored with his friendship no longer spent our time ashore outside barrooms looking in — as we found Al and Mush doing when Joe and I had walked toward the ship — not as long as his roll lasted.

That afternoon he had grabbed those guys by the elbows and pushed them very willingly through the door of that shop. I had had enough from the lesser half of that cognac bottle and went back to the ship alone to lie around my bunk and read. I had brought along a couple of books which I kept tucked away — I wasn't sure what reaction the crew would have to my reading Emerson or Montaigne.

The words on the pages of Cotton's translation of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne jumped and ran together. I lay there staring at those life jackets. Two of them — one for Mush and the other for me — stuck into that rack above my head. I decided to try myself out. How quickly could I get dressed — just pulling on my dungarees, getting into my life jacket, grabbing the few things which I had with me which I considered of value— those three books, my portfolio of drawings, my toothbrush and my hat — and be ready to hit the deck, just in case something unforeseen happened?

Of course, my drill wasn't carried out under the best conditions, since there was not the element of an unpremeditated signal to start me off — a bell or something. I decided I'd read along in Montaigne until again I came to a passage where he quoted (and he was always quoting — what a memory or library that guy had) Diogenes Laertius — that would be the signal to begin my drill. Since I had no watch I began to count my movements. After the first or second time I pulled on my pants, grabbed my life belt — those life belts were made of bricks of cork sewn into a clumsy canvas vest, and one of them up in the rack had been kicked around, the canvas had rotted away in places, and the cork stuffing was crumbling and broken; the other one I chose for my own — I found I was doing pretty well.

I decided I could include a few more essentials in the stuff I grabbed, so I added my shoes and pea jacket.

About the fifth Cicero quote, in the essay "That the Relish of. Good and Evil Depends in a Large Measure upon the Opinion We Have of Them" (I had changed the signal to Cicero; Montaigne wasn't quoting Diogenes Laertius much in that essay).

I had gone through my drill, grabbed my pants, tied on my life belt, swung my portfolio under my arm, thrown my pea jacket over my shoulder, picked up my shoes with my toothbrush in one of them — a time-saving device — and put my hat on my head in seven quick counts. I was just climbing down from my bunk when the door of our cabin opened. There stood Mush. His popeyes gave me a strange look.

"Where you goin'?"

I said, "No place. I was just reaching for a cigarette."

I calmly hung my hat up on its hook again, put my shoes back on the deck, stowed my portfolio away and climbed into my bunk again, and I picked up my book where I had left off.

"What you wearin' that life belt for?"

"Well, listen," I said, a bit impatiently — I hate to be talked to as I read, "this is my life belt. It's been chilly around here—"

Mush reached up and pulled the other life belt out of the rack. Over the edge of my book I could see him fingering the crumbling cork. He tried it on. Then he too lay down in his bunk, still wearing it.

We smoked quietly till suppertime. Neither of us talked about it but I guess he was thinking too that comes disaster — heaven forfend — we'd both go down squabbling over that one good life jacket.

26. Beachcomber's Heaven

SIX BANGING DAYS AND SIX BUMPY NIGHTS UP THAT COAST and we dropped anchor in the wide muddy mouth of the La Platte. I could almost hear that old S.S. Hermanita heave a deep sigh of relief along with her crew (from the engine room to the wheelhouse) as she floated in the gentle swell of those flat yellow waters.

For about two days we rode at anchor while Sparks jiggled his apparatus up in his shack, begging for cargo from the ship's agents ashore. As I've written before, that guy was the sort people wanted to stay away from. Maybe on his account — the way he worded his wireless cackle — the clerks in the Universal Tropical Line offices in Rio Santiago, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and all other ports within the reach of his radio key said to themselves: "Nuts, let's hold this load (of grain, meat or hides from the Argentine abattoirs or something else I'm sure they had stacked away in their warehouses) for the next boat. That S.S. Hermanita ain't the only tramp on the sea. That ship can't talk that way to us — who the hell they think they are? R.S.V.P., and make it snappy—"

So we didn't get any cargo. On the afternoon of the second day we flooded our lower holds with the dirty waters of the La Platte (that for ballast), dragged our anchor out of the muddy bottom, and steamed out again.

Sounds like a simple operation filling our hold with water. It was simple. It was dumb!

There were five holds aboard that ship — two large ones fore and two large ones aft and a smaller one midships. The large holds were three-storied, and the large, square opening of the hatch cut down through the center of each of them. Immense steel girders (called crossbeams) fitted into slots and stretched across the big square openings to keep the old hull from being pushed catty corner by the pressure of the water against her plates, I suppose. The three levels of the hold were floored with immense wood planks. Before we sucked up the La Platte and flooded that bottom level, we rigged our cargo booms again, and working the deck winch, we lifted those crossbeams out of their slots and lowered them to the bottom of our ship. There they were lashed to the big timbers that floored the bottom holds of the ship. The object of that was to keep those timbers down when the holds were flooded. Then we covered our hatches neatly, collared our booms again, stowed the rigging, hoisted our anchor, and steamed out — with enough of our ship held down by that water ballast to keep our propeller in the ocean where it belonged instead of foolishly fanning the surface.

Good — huh? We still could take on cargo up in Brazil in the upper two levels of the holds, or if the agents up around the Santos and Rio weren't antagonized by our ill-mannered Sparks, maybe we'd pump our ship dry again and fill up that bottom hold with coffee or something else that smelled good — not that it mattered to me. I was going to skip ship with the rest of them anyway when we hit Brazil.

We hadn't steamed out very far before we all knew every thing was not so neat and shipshape as it had looked in the calm waters of the La Platte. That first night out we hit a little weather. Those big steel crossbeams weren't big enough or< heavy enough to hold down the floor timbers. The water in the hold easily floated those huge planks and the steel crossbeams broke loose from their lashings and the whole tangled mass smashed and crashed around in the hold, threatening to ram out the rusty plates of our ship's hull and let the rest of the ocean in to play with those hell-raising timbers and rolling| steel girders.

Naturally, nothing was done about it through that dark night and nothing could be done about it the next morning — the pumps weren't working!

Their outlets were clogged from years of neglect. Scotty told us they'd been trying to work those pumps all through the night, trying to empty those holds again — but no go. The suction just clogged them even worse, until they were completely tight!

Now we were in a real mess, and everybody, even Joe and the old pink-eyed guy and a few of the others who had shrugged off our rocky passage up from Ingeniero, were bothered. Not only was the disastrous sea on the outside trying to smash into our hull; it was on the inside trying to bust out.

We uncovered our hatches and looked down into that roaring tangle of timbers, crossbeams, chains, swirling in our flooded holds. The sea was rougher inside the bowels of our ship than it was in the whole bloody ocean. We carried our own private storm with our own thunder. I'll bet that those La Platte waters had never been thrashed about like that before, and if we'd taken on any of the Argentinian fishes with that section of the ocean it must have been an incomprehensible catastrophe for them.

Every time the ship rolled even a little and that undisciplined mass banged up against the hull, everybody winced.

We saw old One-Ton (who everyone felt was primarily responsible) up on deck again conferring with the Captain and the Mates. There was only one thing to do, it seemed. We set up a pump on deck, dropped a big hose down into the hold, another from its outlet over the side, and we sucked up the waters from the hold and spewed them out over side. It was a slow process, and when there was only about six feet of water left in the hold we had to quit pumping. Those timbers and crossbeams cut our hose. It seems the big girders hadn't broken loose completely from the timbers they were lashed on at one end or the other. They rode the timbers with their loose ends scraping and kicking along the ship's bottom or hull.

Someone had to get down into the hold and swim around in that grinding whirlpool and straighten it out so our pumps could work again. The little Bos'n kicked his shoes off and, still completely dressed in his khaki pants, white shirt and old cap and all, he slid down a line and let himself drop.

He swam around down there quickly and efficiently doing his stuff, dodging those heavy timbers and threatening girders. We watched, expecting any moment he'd be smashed between those wild black timbers or crushed up against the hull, but he made out. After the girders were loosened and had sunk down to roll with a deep lazy sound on the ship's bottom, we dropped lines down and the Bos'n tied them to those timbers and we hoisted them up dripping wet to the deck. Finally they were all up and stacked in a sloppy pile on the deck. Then we pulled up the Bos'n, looking like a shivering cat that had been saved from a sewer.

I haven't often seen men do things that require courage; somehow I felt something should be said or done. Nothing happened. He went to his cabin, just changed his clothes and came back to the deck to supervise the pumping again.

The holds were emptied, and again we were a hollow shit bobbing along on the jagged surface of the open sea. It has been getting warmer as we shipped north and again we has been drifting in calm waters. Sparks was cackling on his radio; we were asking for cargo from Santos, Rio, or any place along the Brazilian coast.

The seething cauldron that we had rid ourselves of down the hold couldn't compare with the surreptitious turmoil that went on in the fo'castle as we waited for word — do we or don't we make at least one Brazilian port? The guys were packing their stuff ready to go on the beach, any place. .

Perry painted a drooling word picture of life as a beachcomber in Rio.

"Ya don't have to work or nothing. Look, ya see, Rio's a big harbor and it's beautiful — it's the most beautiful harbor in the world. Ask anybody." (A lot of the older guys nodded their heads to that.) "Jeezus, wait'll you see that big sugar loaf mountain coming up in back of the city — oh, boy, that's beautiful, ain't it?" he asked the nodders. They nodded and yapped — you bet — and he went on selling me Rio.

"There's a picture to paint. Wait'll you see that. An' them big palm trees along d'avenoos — great big palms—"

"What's about this no work angle?" I asked, not that I hoped to nullify the edicts — in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. I'd been thinking about my father's pushbutton and work's-only-for-dopes philosophy, and was naturally interested in any concept of a toil-free Valhalla.

"Sure, you don't have to work at all when you're on the beach in Rio. First, the climate's perfect. You sleep in the open, they got wonderful parks with big palm trees — ain't they got wonderful parks, ain't they?" (They who knew, agreed.) "Then, you can always get your grub and everything else — easy—"

"How?"

Perry was impatient with me and gave me a pained look as if it was perfectly obvious how to get everything else.

"Lissen — it's a big port, see, and the harbor's always full of ships from all over — see. There's always American ships and Limey ships in that port. Well, a ship comes in, you climb aboard. They're always glad to see a guy from home, they invite you to eat aboard — always room for one more, see— sure, they'll feed you—"

"Yeah—"

"Then, because you know the port, you show the boys around, take them to places where they don't get gypped, they take you along, buy you drinks and everything—"

"But — how long can you work that racket?"

"Forever. There's always new ships coming into a port like that. Ships are always shoving off and new ones always tying up. And the girls — ain't like down in Argentine. There's lots more girls, and they're prettier and they're independent, see. They don't all work for the houses. You might even pick one up — if she likes you — for nothing. Then you won't have to sleep in the park all the time if you don't want to, though the cops wouldn't bother you if you wanted to. They're not like the Argentine coppers, I can tell you…"

Well, that's one thing I knew Perry could tell me. Then there were the beautiful beaches near the city where you could swim all year round. The water was always warm — well, those were the main points. I was not convinced that beachcombing, sleeping in the parks, begging your grub from galley cooks, pimping for some independents, etc., etc., was the perfect Utopia. But I had another reason for skipping ship. About that time there was a grand upsurge in contemporary architecture down in Rio; a lot of the functionalists had built some fine new shapes down there, and there was a general liveliness about all the modern buildings throughout Brazil. I thought I might get a chance to work sculpture in some of the newer mediums, so I packed my stuff to skip with the rest of them as soon as wt tied up in Rio.

And if we didn't make that port — say, we picked up cargo from the big bone hill in Santos — still we could go ashore then and easily work our way back around to Rio — but what's the "bone hill in Santos"? According to Perry and Joe and the rest of the crew that had seen it there's a lot of bleached bone from all the slaughterhouses down that way piled up in one big pile within sight of the harbor at Santos. And it makes so big a hill you can see it from out at sea. It was higher than the tip of our mast by a good bit. It's cheap cargo — this bone— and it's taken up to the States for fertilizer. Wait'll you see it, I was told when Perry gave up hopes for our tying up in the beautiful harbor of Rio de Janeiro.

But we didn't see Santos and that big bone hill either. After a spell of idling out there, we weighed anchor and steamed out again sans cargo, sans ballast, sans hope — with our hatches yapping wide open to dry out our empty holds.

27. Bilges, Bilges!

WE HAD BEEN PUMPING OUT THE HOLD AS WE LAY THERE waiting for cargo, and there were only a few puddles left and a lot of slime on the exposed metal bottom of our ship when we followed the Swede Mate down the thin iron ladder and he introduced Mush and me to the bilges. Al, the fat Sailing Man, and the Bos'n trailing along knew what the bilges of a ship were — they had met them before.

For the uninitiated then, the bilges are the sewers. They run along the length of a ship from prow to stern and catch the drip, seepage, fuel oil, decayed cargo, collar buttons, filth and everything else that happens to slop over, roll away, or ooze down — like any other sewers — the only difference being bilge sewers — perhaps because of the sea water mixed throughout— smell worse.

The ship's pump outlets were in the bilges and they were to be cleared. We lifted a long narrow plate and uncovered one length of the narrow bilge. The ribs of the ship cut it up into a series of narrow compartments about four feet long. Each of these was full to the brim with a thick, black (a warm-colored black — there was brown in it) greasy portion of bilge soup— a poisonous greenish and yellowish-looking stuff floated on the surface in spots.

The Mate's shiny front collar button glistened in the soft light of the hold as he lifted his head and turned toward us.

"Dat's it. All right, you men, turn to — and start clearing those bilges."

We knelt down on the slimy metal plates of the hold and started bailing out that stinking mess with the small cans we'd all brought ddwn with us and poured them into a couple of larger pails. The opening to the bilge was only about ten inches wide. We couldn't dip the large pails into it.

The Mate watched us with his fists on his hips for a moment. Then he hollered, "What d'hell you going to do, take all year about it? Come on, come on, get down into those bilges. What d'hell you think this is — a tea par-rty—?"

Al and the Fat Man just grunted and got up off their knees and started to strip. They had known — that was the proper way to clean a bilge. They were just putting off the inevitable, but Mush and I didn't know and I protested.

"You mean get into that stinking—?"

"Yah, get into it. You can't empty them out kneeling down there praying they dry up. Get down in them."

So Mush and I stood up too. We stripped down to our shoes and we each picked one of those narrow tureens of bilge soup and we miserably eased ourselves down into the cold greasy black, green and yellow drek right up to our quivering chins!

The ship's hull curved down along our backs and met up with a straight metal plate that made the inner side of the bilge. We couldn't stand upright. We'd rest our butts against the ship's hull, brace our knees against the plates, then we'd fill our little cans, bring it up past our nose (the narrow opening was just about wide enough for our head and the passage of the can), and fill the large pails with the filth. I marveled how the fat old Sailing Man could squeeze his belly down or up through the bilge opening.

Recently, I have reread Montaigne's essay "Of Smells" wherein he contends that "to smell though well, is to stink," and further on, after a passage on the profound barbarism of Scythian women, he reveals his belief that "all sorts of odors cleave to me and how apt my skin is to imbibe them," and that, if he but strokes his full mustachios with his glove or handkerchief, "the smell will not out a whole day."

In a way, though I lay no claims to any other similarity with the great Michel, I'm like that too, and I stank — for not only one day — and so did Al, Mush, and the old fat Sailing Man — to such a degree, that no one aboard that ship could stand any of us around, and we couldn't stand each other. Of course, we had more than merely stroked our mustachios with the scent of the bilge for only one day. We cleaned bilges for three weeks — every day except Sundays.

The A.B.'s on watch would stand around in their big hip boots waiting for us to fill those big pails with the putrid slop, and as they tried not to breathe, they'd tie a line to them only using their finger tips to make their fancy knots, and the Bos'n up on deck would pull the pails up through the open hatch and empty them over side, killing every fish in our wake, I'm sure, from Brazil to Staten Island. Watching those dripping filth buckets ride upwards toward the sparkling blue sky always seemed to dirty it up for me. It seemed it took a few minutes after their passage before that square blue shape looked clear and clean again.

We stank—

Every noon and evening for those three weeks in the bilges we pulled our glittering, slime-covered bodies out of our bilge and would climb the long, thin iron ladders up to the deck oozing big filth drops down on the guys on the lower rungs. Only once did the Fat Man get to that ladder before the rest of us bilge rats. He not only oozed; he spattered the stuff down in gobs. Up on deck a big metal drum of kerosene was set out near the hatch for our use. They didn't want us to stink any worse than we had to, and we swabbed ourselves down with wads of rope yarn. That cut most of the black grease away and left our bodies a streaky grayish color. Then we took our bucket baths and tried to scrub away our skins. No go — we still wore them and they stunk. We dressed and climbed up to lunch or supper…

Our entrance always created a stir in the mess. Everybody wanted out. There'd be calls for Flip to hurry up, or never mind — they didn't want any tapioca. That from the regular deck crew pained us, but not too much. They looked clean and sunny. But to have the goddam black gang cringe — that got us and it griped us so we could hardly swallow our food. Anyone coming to meals a bit late would stick his head in the door, see us, and then holler to Flip — they'd eat later. Even Flip, who used to greet our entry into his mess with a welcome grin — he enjoyed Mush's wisecracks, he could understand them — now carried a faintly lifted eyebrow and kept his nostrils taut as he stretched across the table to serve us our slops.

Yeah, Al, Mush, and I who had been the social lights of the ship were ostracized. We had gumbriosis, halitosis and all the other social handicaps — and our best friends told us so: we smelled. We were lepers.

Up on the poop one of those evenings Perry, from a good distance and on the windward side of the ship, gave us the low-down on the Maritime Law and its particular relation to us and our lives in the bilges. He gleefully whispered across to us:

"Oh boy, this time that goddam Swede Mate stuck his neck out. Oh boy, this time he done it good."

"Done what?" I asked grabbing at a straw. Perry's reasoning was always flimsy stuff.

"Why, he can't do that — he can't work deckhands down below the water line out at sea — it ain't legal. It says in the Maritime—" and Perry quoted a book, chapter, paragraph, and line to prove the Mate was breaking a law of the sea — the Maritime Workers Union or the Free Trade Inter-American Pact — I couldn't make out which.

"He's doing it, ain't he?"

"Yeah, he's doing it. But I'm telling you he can't get away with it."

"What about — in cases of emergency involving life and welfare of personnel, ship and cargo — how about that?" grumbled Mush.

Perry was stumped. So were we all. That guy Mush had a book — he'd been checking up on his rights. I never remembered seeing him reading anything, but he must have had a book.

After Perry had swallowed he rolled his tongue around in his cheek, screwed up his eyes, and studied the problem in a corner of the sky. Then he took off again.

"Emergency — that's it. There was no emergency. For a fact, he made the emergency. See what I mean?"

"No."

"Sure — lissen. I know those bilges ain't been cleaned for six years. I got that from the Second. Now" — Perry recrossed his legs, his arms, pointed a lumpy forefinger at us— "did he at any time order them bilges cleaned back in port when we was tied up and he had a right to? No. He kept us painting overside this lousy tub as if she was a lousy millionaire's yacht."

We all grunted a disgusted yeah to that. Although "lousy" in all its various forms — noun, verb, adjective or adverb — was used by everybody aboard, I never heard anyone get as much out of the word as Perry, comme ca:

"There y'are. The bilges were all full of crap. This louse floods the lousy holds that louses up the pumps and they won't work. See what I mean? The louser made the emergency by not ordering ya when he should have."

And that sea lawyer leaned back with a grin and swung his leg. The old Fat Guy took his pipe out of his mouth.

"Well, what'll we do — quit the bilges?"

"O-h naw — not that. Keep working 'em. You'll be playing right into his hands if ya quit. See — keep workin' 'em. Then if anything develops — say we ship a couple of waves down through the open hatch and say one of you get drowned or something — you'd have him, see. He wouldn't have a leg to stand on."

So we were back where we started, back in the bilges.

And so one stinky day oozed into the next and we worked the bilges — and our empty ship tiptoed up that strip of ocean. We were approaching the Equator again and getting deeper into the hurricane belt. The weather stayed good; as far as I was concerned, I didn't give a damn if a blow started. The monotony of bringing up filth past my nose day after day while I half sat and half crouched in that mess was beginning to get me.

It was not the smell so much any more; my olfactory nerves were blunted by the stench, and since then, the smell of some fresh flowers make me nauseous, my sense of smell may have taken an unnatural twist. A lot of perfumes I sniff get me sick, yet I like the tarry smell of a distant skunk on the evening air, the smell of stables and blacksmith shops (those particularly when the smith's burning the hoof of a horse with a white-hot iron shoe), docks at low tide, all babies — even when they're sour.

Soon the bilge smell was all over the ship; the drip of the big buckets on the deck as they were carried to be dumped over the side had spread that perfume until Al, Mush, and I were again received into the bosom of the crew's social circle. We no longer stank like strangers — we smelled like local boys.

There was a short period when we bilge rats were the envy of all the crew. That was for a few days just before, during, and after our ship crossed the Equator.

We were down in our nice cool bilge, not up topside in the sizzling sun or down in the stifling engine room. We each had our own individual cool mudbath. Only hippos in the sweltering jungle know such luxury. Some of the A.B.'s were painting the broiling decks; the Mate was sure bent on prettying up that ship. We for our part continued to fill the big pails and tie them to the lines that dangled from the hatch. Then we'd holler to the A.B. on watch to yank them up. Their faces looked miserably hot as they appeared over the rim of the hatch. We gave them the bird and climbed back into our nice cool bilge with some satisfaction.

The evening of that day we crossed the Equator we sat around on the ladder up to the messdeck waiting for Flip to holler supper. We weren't as tuckered out as the rest of the crew. We felt pretty good.

Scotty, who never stopped kidding around with us even when we first dipped into the bilge and our smell was new and unfamiliar, usually came along about that time of the evening to pass the time of day and console us. That evening he was late coming up from his engine room; when he did come up he stumbled out on deck and carefully sat down without a word.

That cherubic First Engineer had put Scotty to cleaning the inside of the boilers all through that day that we crossed the Equator. Scotty lost fifteen pounds that day at one clip, and since he was always a slender guy, he sat there hollow-eyed and unable to speak above a whisper — and everybody else shut up too. That guy stripped to the waist with his elbows resting on his blackened wet pants looked like a Christ — one of the mellowed, alabaster carvings the French did back in the thirteenth century. He had sweated out so much he was completely dried out, and the bones and tendons of his neck, torso and arms were clear and cleanly indicated. It took him almost a week to get normal again. Everybody cursed that goddam engineer for Scotty's sake. Later that evening I tried to make a drawing of the way I remembered Scotty looked. It didn't amount to much.

Joe didn't hang around with us so often — he was taking a cure. He was the only guy aboard that ship that had been burnt in Argentina. Another of his little, plump, brown-skinned pigeons that he'd found in one of the Bahia Blanca houses had given it to him. Joe wasn't resentful — she was still an awfully nice girl and a dose didn't worry him. He'd had it before, now and again. In fact, he said, this made the ninth he'd had, and he'd been cured of all of them — all except the first. I believe it was an inherited taste from his English father that was responsible for Joe's penchant for little, plump, brown-skinned pigeons, and not a nostalgic memory of his Island. It seems to me I remember reading some Elizabethan poets who sang the praise of their "nut-brown maidens."

Birdneck, who had gone through his cure just before he signed up in the States, had a case full of the latest medicines, injections, applications, pills, salves — a regular seagoing drugstore, he boasted — and he'd made us promise before we tied up in our first port in Argentina to come to see him if anything happened; he'd cure anything any member of the crew got — just let him know. He had laid out a section of his cabin like a pharmacy, and was ready to hospitalize anybody who needed him — friend or foe — including his roommate, the Maverick.

Joe was his first and only patient and he seemed to thrive under Birdneck's care. The cure included sun baths. Joe had plenty of time for them, though he'd not take them too seriously, for often, when we climbed out of the hatch at noon and as we stood around scrubbing ourselves down with swabs of kerosene from the big drum, Joe, sun bathing up on the poop-deck, would grab his towel from around his middle and do an interpretive dance a la Duncan to cheer us up.

There were many scientific theories advanced in our discussions on the poop — even on the proper cure for what chauvinistic Benny Cellini had said is called the French disease by the Italians and the Italian by the French, though since he'd written his imaginative journal, which should be taken with a grain of salt from one of his precious, pretty little salt cellars (museums, and collectors can fight about them — I won't; his stuff looks like gift shoppe specials to me), we know that the source of that infection is international.

One of the old guys had a complicated series of treatments he told about which included a vigorous massage with Sloan's liniment, and Philip made the fantastic claim he had effected a cure with the assistance of a kind-hearted, one-eyed blonde lady in Panama City.

28. The One-Man Mutiny

WHAT WE NEEDED DOWN IN THOSE BILGES WITH US WAS — a gypsy.

One of the teacup readers who tell the past, present and future from the wormy little fragments they find in teacups in those twenty-five cents for tea-and-cookies-including-your-for-tune shops that flourish around the big department stores in New York.

She (it would be a she gypsy, I imagine — one of those dingy, saggy-bosomed shes with stringy hair, who would have made no contribution to the smell — no one could) might have given us a hand in the bilge and helped us too with her expert opinion on the past history of our ship, reading from the bilge slime. That would have settled a lot of the arguments we had as we cleaned the bilge and discovered mementoes and fragments of the cargo she had carried.

None of us cared about the ship's future. As far as we were concerned she could blow up or be sunk after she came within a few miles of New York. Incidentally, that's what eventually did happen to that ship. She was sunk many years later with a lot of her sister ships — quickies which had been built during the First World War. I saw it in a newsreel.

There was a lot we archaeologists of the bilge had established for ourselves in our excavations, and all we needed was confirmation. We all had found specimens that indicated the ship had carried various grains, lumber, coffee, latex, hides, meat, and bone (from that Santos bone hill) up from South America; but what cargo did she carry down from the States during the six years recorded in the bilge slime? That we couldn't figure out, and for that we needed a gypsy.

Those big knobs and splinters of purple-blackened bone that we found in the bilges had caused most of the trouble with our pumps. The rest of the goo, the shreds of hide, decaying fibers of meat, latex, etc., would have been sucked through the outlets if they hadn't had those bones to cling to and jam our pumps.

Those damned lumps of bone broke up our shoes, too. The leather, softened by weeks of soaking, would scrape up against some of those splinters and open up. I used up two pairs of shoes in the bilges: an old pair, which I had used for plaster casting and had brought aboard, were dried up and cracked and didn't last more than a few days in the bilge; then a good pair of heavy work shoes fell to pieces after some two weeks. On the twenty-first day in the bilges, I regretfully climbed into my daily stint of drek wearing my last pair of shoes — my going-ashore shoes.

I was sore that morning. Hell, there was no profit in that job — three pair of shoes in three weeks. We had cleaned up the two holds back aft, number five and number four. The number three hold midships was a small one and I don't remember working it. And on that twenty-first morning we were almost finished with number two up forward. We were only three days away from New York and I was sore.

Here I'd traveled sixty-five hundred miles and got nowheres. Nothing had happened, I'd seen nothing, there'd been no shipwrecks or blood-curdling adventures to tell about to the Turk, Fish or Mish or any of the other guys whose studios I hung around in New York. I'd have nothing to talk about. Where have you been through the summer — the Catskills? No — I've been no place just six thousand five hundred miles away — that's all — and that's all I'd have to say. I might get a book about some salty seafaring yarns and augment my conversation a bit with a few plagiarisms, but most of those guys had library cards too.

Why, I wasn't even tanned. That three weeks in the bilges had bleached all four of us into a sickly, greenish-white color. I had my whiskers, but they too had developed a greenish cast and weren't the nice blond they'd promised to sprout. I was low.

There hadn't been anything interesting up on deck in the evenings outside of a few consoling accidents to the Mate's plans for painting up the ship and making it beautiful, like the sudden quick squalls that washed away the nice gray paint he personally had applied to some sections of the ship. Then there was that pleasant overflow of black fuel oil all over the freshly red-painted officers' deck the night before at suppertime. We all stopped eating the better to hear the Mate roar — in English, Swedish, and German. It's too bad he didn't know Russian. That's a fine strong language for blowing your top.

Talking with my brethren of the bilge about the misery of the Mate didn't ease me any. Along about mid-morning the Bos'n climbed down to visit with us for a minute. He had been painting up on the deck helping to repair the damage done by the fuel oil and he was all smeared with red paint. He told us to buck up — he'd inspected the last hold up forward toward the prow, the number one hold, and it was almost completely dry; we'd be through with bilges right soon, he said.

That news cheered the old fat Sailing Man so, he stuck his dirty face up out of his bilge and gave out with a bellowing chanty. He had a good voice — there was volume to it — and since I didn't know any of the old chanties he sang I never could tell if he was off key or if they should be sung the way he sang them. I found out later he sang them right and now I wish I'd paid more attention to his renditions. Mush and Al shouted him down with one of their Forward for Good Old Illinois Prep school songs, and after they'd succeeded in shushing the old guy, we all joined in singing Hinky Dinky Parley-Voo, improvising a bit to make the Mate the villain of the piece. The Polack guy, dressed in his dry hip boots, who was the A.B. on watch down in the hold to tie on the big pails, added his voice to the chorus and didn't help much.

The acoustics in that empty hold were good, and we sang some more with more attention to close harmony. We were doing a pretty good job on There Was an Indian Maid (or is that called Red Wing?) in its original version, when the Mate leaned over the open hatch and shouted down at us. That fuel-oil accident still rankled in him, I guess. He was crabbier than ever. He kept shouting at us until one by one we quit singing and listened to him howl.

"Shut up, down there. Shut up and get to work."

That ruffled the Fat Guy. He wiggled his gut out of his bilge and stood up in it as he bellowed back at the Mate.

"What d'hell you think we're doing down here — think we're playing baseball?"

"Well, shut up and get to work—"

"A-urr. Go t'hell," came from the Fat Guy. Guess it was loud enough to carry up to the hatch, but his more interesting i mumble as he glowered and bent to his bilge wasn't.

"An' you — you feller with the glasses" (you'd think that I damn Scandihoovian would have known my name by that time) "you quit that goddamned singing and stop that smoking." I had just lit a cigarette during his exchange with the Fat Guy. Everybody else was smoking, and that goddam Swede picks me for a special admonition; that boiled me.

"Like hell I will. What the hell — who d'hell — I'll goddam well sing and smoke as much as I goddam well wanta— The hell you say—"

>

He shouted and waggled his finger at me from up there but I was shouting and too mad to hear anything. I scrambled out of my bilge and standing on the bottom of that ship dressed in a smear of bilge goo and my last pair of shoes I screamed up at that Mate for quite a spell — giving better than I took. I was fighting for my inalienable right to sing and smoke as I worked, but somehow my argument seemed to center on the three pair of shoes I'd ruined for the lousy forty dollars a month I was getting, while the A.B.'s — with their fine fancy hip boots stood around getting sixty-five dollars a month — and I wound up:

"Put your fancy A.B.'s in the bilges with their fancy hip boots, and then I'll get back to work the bilge, and not till then."

The Mate exploded up there against the blue sky.

"You— You— Get back in that bilge and get to work."

"You put your A.B.'s in—"

I indicated the Polack in his big boots. I guess he understood it was not personal; he was just a symbol and he served willingly. He grinned at me and gave me the wink.

"You get back to work, or I'll come down."

"I don't give a goddam what you do. I ain't going back in that bilge—"

The Mate glowered down at me with his mouth clamped shut. Even from that distance I could see the veins swelling out on the sides of his neck. Then he swung his leg over the top rung of that thin iron ladder and started down.

Nobody said a word. Al, Mush, and the Fat Guy, who had made up a low-voiced chorus of attaboys, you tell 'em, kid, to my fiery accolade, had shut up. The only sound in that big empty hold was the regular scrape of the Mate's feet on the iron rungs. The sun was almost overhead. One blazing ray shot down through the hatch and played on his white shirt as he climbed down that long, thin ladder. I'd never noticed how straight it was before. It was a pretty lengthy strip of thin iron to be so straight. The guys in the bilges stayed where they were. None of them moved; only their eyes followed the Mate's shirt down.

Dramatic — huh? That's what I thought.

When the Mate reached the bottom of the ladder he came at me with his head lowered, his eyes tough under the visor of his cap. He stood in front of me with his fists on his hips for a moment as he eyed me, softening me up. Then he pointed stiffly toward the bilge and in a low tense voice he said:

"Get back in that bilge."

"I told you what I think about that. You put your A.B.'s in there with their—"

"Sh-u-t up," he shouted. "Are you going to turn to — or ain't you?"

"NO — I ain't."

"Very well then— You come up to the bridge — at once— right now—"

And he turned and climbed back up the long ladder. I looked over at my buddies in the bilges. They all looked as if this was very serious. Mush had that worried pop in his eyes again. Al and the Fat Guy stared up after the Mate, then back at me, and gave me a somber sympathetic shake of the head and said nothing.

I climbed the ladder. When I reached the deck I saw the Mate was already halfway up the ladder to the Captain's deck. So the bastard's going to put a flea in the Captain's ear before I can have my say— We'll see about that. I scrubbed myself down quickly in the drum of kerosene, ran back aft and took my bucket bath, dashed forward again to get clean dungarees— you couldn't carry any bilge or deck filth up on the bridge — and since my last pair of shoes was covered with bilge scum I raced up to the bridge barefooted.

The Mate had already done his stuff, and he stood there in the wheelhouse with his hands clasped behind his back giving me the evil eye. Perry was at the wheel. He had a box seat to this drama and by the quivering of his leg I could see he felt it.

Captain Brandt stuck his head out the chartroom door.

"Come in here, boy."

"Yes, sir."

"H-m-m, close that door."

I did and stood there waiting while he turned his back and shuffled over to a desk chair and sat down. His coat fell open; he was wearing no shirt and his vest dangled open too. That was the first time I'd ever been in the chartroom. It looked like a small architectural drafting room with charts, tables, and a couple of stools. It felt clean, bright and modern — a nice place to work.

The Captain wiped his glasses on a fresh handkerchief and he set them on his nose deliberately. Then he leaned back looking over them and said, slowly:

"Boy! — the Mate tells me you refuse to turn to."

"No, sir — that's not it, not exactly. You see, I—"

His eyebrows already high went higher. His cap rode with them.

"H-m-m— No?"

"No, sir, what I mean— I—"

He looked lost. "No — well — he tells me you refuse to clean bilges."

"Yes, sir. You see I — we've been down in the bilges for the past three weeks. I ruined all the work shoes I have on the bones and stuff. Then this morning, I had to wear my good ones. Well — I told the Mate—"

Captain Brandt lifted a heavy hand from where it rested on the chart table and waved it slowly, shutting me off.

"Boy, did you or didn't you tell the Mate you wouldn't turn to?"

"Well — yes. You see — the thing is—"

"H-m-m — if you don't go to work when the Mate orders you to, it's mutiny—"

"Look, Captain Brandt, all I'm trying to say, I told the Mate it's unfair with the A.B.'s getting the wages they do and us only getting what we do, and them and their hip boots — I mean since I broke up all my shoes in the bilges — and the Mates, the A.B.'s. I mean — well, I suggested I believe it's no more than right — since they got hip boots — that if they worked the bilges too, I thought—"

Captain Brandt heard me out. His head lifted and bent back on his stringy neck, looking very much the alert, world-weary old turtle. I got my argument straightened out — I wasn't mad any more and it sounded hollow to me. He just closed his eyes, shook his head, and again said:

"H-m-m, if you don't go to work when the Mate orders you— it's mutiny."

I had talked my head off. I'd shot my bolt. Nuts! And he still "mutineed" me. That boiled me up again.

"All right — then let it be Mutiny!"

Those two out in the wheelhouse must have heard me.

The Captain appeared to take it calmly. His eyebrows lifted just a little and for the first time during our interview he had a little trouble with his upper plate; his jaw must have dropped a fraction, but it's hard to tell with those wattled jowls running in to a loose-skinned neck.

"H-m-m — well — that puts another light on the matter. H-m-m — it's mutiny. Well — I guess we'll have to find the irons—"

And he slowly rose from his chair and fumbled in all his pockets till he found some keys up in his vest; then he shuffled over and fitted one of them into the lowest drawer of a desk in the corner. With a grunt he bent over and peered into it.

"H-m-m — yep — guess these'll do."

He reached in and lifted out a large pair of rusty shackles. They were the rustiest, crummiest pieces of metal up on that bright-polished bridge. Holding them with both hands he shuffled back to me. There was a little difficulty getting the crusted locks to unlatch, but they finally creaked open. They couldn't have been used much and they needed oil.

"Well now, let's see—"

He held them spread open toward me. I put my wrists into them and he bent the hinged curves back in their locks — a little puff of dust spouted from each of them. They dangled loose on my wrist. My hands are small and in those days I was always ashamed of them; they were smaller than the hands of the girls I played patty-cake with. I always maneuvered to avoid any hand-holding sessions at the movies or concerts — I got a better grip… Up there in the chartroom was the first time (the only time) I was happy to have delicate, damn near effeminate hands.

As Captain Brandt sucked his teeth and looked on, I brought my fingers together, bent my wrists, and gently let those corroded bracelets fall off on to his clean, chartroom table. They landed with a little clunk and sent flecks of rust over his white papers.

The Captain blinked, looked at the shackles, then turned his expressionless eyes on me. He straightened out and sucked his teeth again.

"H-m-m — well — looks as if we'll have to find another pair." He shuffled back to the desk that held his torture equipment. There he found another pair, smaller ones, and we went through the same process. I could have, by bringing my thumbs down into the palms of my hands, dropped that pair too, but I didn't think he had any more. For his sake, as well as for my own, I kept my fingers spread to keep them on. So — I was put in irons!

The Captain opened the door for me and we went out into the wheelhouse. The Second Mate (it was his watch) had come in off the open bridge. I heard him mutter to Perry: "Hey, you — keep your eye on the course." Captain Brandt motioned to the Swede Mate. "H-m-m now — let's take him forward to the brig—" Without another word we climbed down from the bridge and made for the prow, they on either side of me. There was a narrow, crooked-shaped compartment, the chain locker, that Joe had once told me, as we hosed down and stowed the anchor chains, was used as a brig on most ships. It was stuck in the prow — very dark and damp; there was one porthole set high in it. As we silently walked forward in the bright sun, I hoped that wasn't Captain Brandt's idea of a brig. That would be unpleasant. None of the crew was working on the forward deck and I was happy Perry had been up in the wheelhouse to report the incident fairly in the fo'castle.

There were two other cabins besides the one occupied by Mush and me up under the prow deck. All their portholes opened out and looked back on the forward deck. We had the center one; on one side was Chips' store — the one on the other side was always kept locked. While the Mate was getting the key to that locked cabin from Chips, I asked the Captain — since we stood in front of our own cabin — could I pick up some cigarettes from my locker. He nodded. I grabbed my cigarettes and a book and by the time I was out in the passage again the Mate had unlocked the brig and was telling Chips he'd keep that key hereafter.

With a jerk of his head the Mate indicated — get the hell in there, you lousy little bastard. He didn't say anything — his blue eyes told me so. Isn't there a song with that line in it — a love song?

The Captain and the Mate followed me into the brig.

The sun poured through its open porthole. It was a nice, bright cabin with southern exposure; since our ship was headed due north I'd have sunshine all the way. My jailers looked around the cabin, even inspecting the overhead — I suppose to be sure there were no beams for me to hang from were I to become despondent. Then the Captain nodded to the Mate and they left me there alone.

I heard the big brass key lock me in.

With them gone the cabin looked roomier. Well, this was more like it. Within the hour I had mutinied, been put in irons, and thrown in the brig.

Now in the privacy of my own cheerful dungeon I slipped my right hand out of the shackles and lit up a cigarette. That cabin, before it had been consecrated by my presence and became the Bastille of the S.S. Hermanita, had served as a spare storeroom — it still did. There were a stack of unopened cans of paint piled up under the porthole. There were some new hawsers coiled up on the floor — they had a nice clean smell to them. A few tied-up bundles of shiny new chipping hammers and metal marling spikes lay on a box, and, best of all, three inviting large rolls of tarpaulin — good, clean canvas. Evidently they'd never been used before.

I arranged those three mattress-like tarpaulin bundles into a fine day bed, picked up my book, slipped my hand back into its dangling shackle, and settled down to suffer my duress vile in comfort.

29. In the Brig Alone I Sit

YES, THIS WAS MORE LIKE IT.

This was something to tell the Turk, Fish, and Mish about— and even old man McQuarrie — when they asked where have you been, Slobodkin? I'd just toss it off — just about six thousand five hundred miles away. On a cruise, huh? No, no, not exactly. Anything happen? Anything interesting? No, not much — nothing exciting — No-o, I just mutinied, that's all. A one-man mutiny; then I was put in irons and thrown in the brig!

And that would settle that. I might never have to travel again. I'm a homebody and I've always felt Diogenes could get all the excitement anybody needed just sitting in his barrel — as long as there were no restraints put on his flights of fancy.

As a creative artist — which I hope to be — I don't feel it's necessary to go hunting the least important of the elements which make up the thousands required for a first-rate piece of work — subject matter. The overemphasis placed on this element (a tendency prevalent more with the literati than with other creative workers) produces the same effect on the whole as any irritated disproportionate growth in a living organism, and results in a cancerous distortion that crowds out and eventually kills the commendable qualities of the work — for me, at least.

Subjects will come — and if they don't they can be found in your own back yard by looking out the window. I disagree with Ruskin's contention that in order to paint a flower you must go out into the garden and feel like one. Although in principle, I too believe you must feel and live within the subject to project it properly, you needn't go out into the garden. At most, just look out the window — that's quite enough.

With this argument I make no suggestion that an artist must hold himself aloof or remove himself from life. On the contrary, I contend what happens within his intimate environment provides more living subject matter and substance than he can digest and express through his medium were he to live to the age of Methusaleh. I just condemn the necessity of swinging off on a long safari through the trackless jungle to study the flash of a tiger's eye, when you can get a much cooler study of your problem (if you have to have a tiger) in the Bronx Zoo with a bag of peanuts; and if you can't get there because of rain or something, imagine, feel, or sense a tiger's eye — in your own back yard or your barrel.

I am prepared to argue with dissenters who maintain that the subject must be studied in its own environment to get the truth — the real juice of its emotional growth — my eye.

There have been marvelous heavens and hells painted and written about with completely convincing angels and demons by artists who never traveled further away from their mother's natal bed than the equivalent distance to Montauk Point, Long Island. Would you dispute and investigate their rendition of the demons — provide proof then — What hell do you know? I've seen paintings and read accounts of official artists who worked on the scenes of momentous battles, recorded on-the-spot interpretations of earthquakes, tornados, holocausts, and other natural catastrophes and phenomena, and I've seen the drawings of lovers as they dallied and scribbled their passionate concept of their love's charms. They're all of one piece— trite, dry, and lifeless.

Of the latter — Renoir's luscious female nudes painted with a brush tied to his hand when he had reached a cool eighty establishes the fact that a love adventure isn't necessary to bear passionate fruit — it's a cool, reasoned aesthetic logic that produced his burning canvases. And it was the same cool logic that carved the heart-rending crucifixions and pietas of the early Gothic — not religious fervor.

War, pestilence, starvation, violent struggle, and like subject matter need not necessarily be endured before an artist interprets his aesthetic reaction or expression in his chosen medium, or for argument's sake — any more than this, this sitting on a couple of bundles of tarpaulin locked (though loosely) in irons in the brig aboard that tub the S.S. Hermanita. And besides that, I was getting a headache.

The sun beating down on that iron deck overhead and shooting the glare of its full rays through the porthole — my flaunted southern exposure — had baked that cabin hot; that, along with the fumes of paint from one of those leaky cans, mixed with what had been a sweet smell of hemp from the hawser, was building up one of those skull splitters I sometimes get. Then, too, since I'd fought for the liberty of smoking and singing, I had chain-smoked myself groggy. I didn't sing. Anyone out on deck would have thought I'd gone stir-nutty from that half-hour of solitary confinement if I let out with a few ringing solos. And I didn't feel like singing. My head was throbbing.

The book I'd grabbed from my locker was Emerson's Essays — Second Series. I hadn't intended to take that; it was the First Series which included the cool bloodless dissertation named, with simple dignity, "Heroism," I wanted to read as I sat in chains bowed down but unbroken. Perhaps the profundities that Plato put into the mouth of Socrates in the Apology would have been more fitting. Incidentally, it's not commonly known — and since my readers are a rare and uncommon people I'll tell it: Socrates was also a sculptor, or rather a stone carver, in the studio of Phidias and was fired for shooting off his mouth; and he, too, was in and out of clink a few times before that final nightcap of hemlock — I had precedent. But I'd none of the Dialogues; I had shipped out with only Emerson and Montaigne.

I'd bought those books for ninety cents from one of those lower Fourth Avenue bookstalls — fifty cents for the two Emersons and forty for the Montaigne. I seldom buy books. I usually borrow them, but these were a bargain — particularly that fat Montaigne, even though it was cheaply bound and printed in tiny type — it was a collection of his life's work. A wealth of profundities for forty cents.

My bed of tarpaulin developed lumps. I sat on the paint cans looking out the porthole. There was no one out on the open bridge, and no one on the forward deck. I waited for somebody to come along so I could ask them to get that First Series of Emerson for me. It was cooler sitting there, and as the sun beat down on my hands, I figured out a little project to while away the three days I might spend in the brig before we docked.

I'd let the sun tan my hands and forearms. Then when I was released, which I surely would be by then, if not sooner, I'd have the evidence of this injustice done me stamped on my wrists. Then when Captain Brandt and his damned Swede Mate (and old One-Ton too — he couldn't deny his indirect responsibility) tried to pass this off, I'd push back my cuffs exposing the untanned dead-white rings on my wrists and say, "Gentlemen, can you explain these?"

But I don't imagine they'd have the effrontery to let this l'affaire Slobodkin reach that stage. I'd not be surprised if they came crawling before the day was out with some song and dance — one of those now-listen-feller type of cringing apologies. The cabin was getting hot. My head ached worse. All right, I'd forget it, but I'd stick to my guns. I'd be a damn fool having suffered and bled (spiritually, that is) for something, to be swayed by a dinner in the officers' mess — which naturally would accompany their overtures and a few properly conciliatory phrases. I'd fought for and I'd demand a written statement guaranteeing me and all the members of the crew — they were my buddies, the sort of guys that would back me up, and it was for them too I'd been martyred, for mine was not a puny self-interest — the liberty to smoke and sing any place, and under any circumstances, aboard this tub, the S.S. Hermanita.

So after the Captain and his cohorts had made some arrangement to compensate me for the damage done my good shoes—

My shoes! — I'd forgotten about them. Hell, those shoes were out on that broiling deck alongside the kerosene drum. The sun would burn them to a crisp and curl them up so I'd land in New York barefoot.

I frantically stuck my head out the porthole.

Where is everybody—?

It must have been dinnertime. I had heard Chips in his store whistling the march he played on his concertina — over and over again — till I felt it in my back teeth, but his whistling had died some time back. He must have gone off to eat.

Mush's yellow coconut of a head appeared out of the darkness of the shelter deck and he came up the deck with eyes down and a purposeful tread. Anyone up on the bridge could see this young deckhand was seriously going about his own business. As he neared my porthole I hissed at him.

"P-sss, say, Mu-ssh, ya s-see my shoe-s—?"

That guy Mush must have heard me. His stride broke, but he kept coming right along, his head bent, eyes to the hot deck.

"Mus-s-sh," I tried again a little louder, but that guy had turned deaf, dumb and blind; as far as he was concerned I was a sound in the rigging. He swung into the door under the prow deck without giving me a flicker of recognition. Well, how d'you like that? My buddy—

I heard him in our cabin next door clanking open a locker door. I hoped it was his own. Then after a while the sound of his slamming it shut — then silence. After an endless minute, I heard a gentle rap on the door of my brig.

"Hey, Lou. Listen, Lou—"

It was my pal, Mush, whispering through the keyhole.

"Lou — listen, Lou— The Mate said I should keep away from the prisoner—"

"The prisoner?"

"Yeah — you — the prisoner. I'm sorry, Lou—"

And I could hear him as he started getting up out of his crouch at the keyhole.

"Wait a second. Mush—"

"I can't, Lou—"

I talked fast.

"Mush, wait — all I wanted — would you do me a favor? I left my good shoes up near that number two hatch — they're my last shoes — would you throw 'em in my locker? And there's a book in my locker — see — a red one, Emerson's Essays, First Series. That's all — just get it and toss it in my porthole, will ya—?"

He was still for a few seconds. Then his voice came through again.

"Jeezus, Lou — I'm sorry — I can't. The Mate said keep away from the prisoner."

"For Christ sake. Mush — hey, MUSH—"

But he was gone. I stuck my head out the porthole — he had just climbed out on deck. With long, walk-don't-run strides Mush hurried away from me, my porthole, and his conscience. I blistered his back with my expletives, until he escaped into the cool shadows of the shelter deck.

I sat down again on my tarpaulin feeling a little dizzy — the shouting, the smoking, the heat, my headache and all. No question about it, I was on a spot. There was no use trying to rationalize my way out of this one.

If this guy, my pal Mush, my shipmate, my chief witness, was backing down, terrorized by that Swede Mate — and I still didn't trust Al's short upper lip and the old fat Sailing Man— why, if Mush indicated the hands-off policy of this crew, I sure was on a spot — and it was a very black one.

It all had been so obviously simple. They wouldn't have dared bring charges against me. Why, if the crew stuck with me — and this thing reached the law courts — the Captain, the Mate, and the Chief Engineer would have been blackballed off the open sea, and they couldn't have got a berth on a garbage scow.

Captain Brandt would never have lived down the stigma— his fifty years of excellent seamanship blotted out with this one blunder, flooding the holds the way he did, aided and abetted by those two canawlers, the Mate and the Chief Engineer.

Why, the crew couldn't do that to me. Not after what I'd done for them. When I stood up to the Mate it wasn't for myself alone — it was for all of them. When I fought for the right to smoke and sing, it wasn't only for my right I was fighting — it was the right of all of us. And when the Mate howled me down it wasn't only at me he directed his blasphemy — I just happened to be nearest. And finally when they put me in irons and threw me into the brig, it wasn't only I that had suffered that indignity — they all were being handcuffed (at least two more of them would have easily fit into that first pair of shackles). It wasn't that I had developed a Messiah complex; by an accident of Fate I was chosen to serve all and I did — cheerfully, almost joyously. But here I just ask this guy Mush to just do a little thing for me — get my shoes and that volume of Emerson—

Emerson — there's a fine one to have with you when you're locked up for fighting intolerance, man's inhumanity to man. Thoreau was more my kind of a guy. He, too, was locked up and was privileged to serve his fellow man with martyrdom— something about water taxes or something — and where was this guy Waldo Emerson then? On the outside looking in, according to accounts I've read. What do you there within that prison? said Waldo. What do you there without? replied Henry. (They were both well-bred, profoundly educated men of the period— naturally, their English was perfect.) He gave Abe Lincoln enough trouble with his poisonous pen too, when Abe was putting up his fight to free the slaves. Yeah, Waldo wrote that Abe was a big vulgar jackanapes or something equally Back Bay. Maybe he'd have thought I was a short, crude, bean pot — with just as little reason.

So, Nuts to him, too. And I flung that copy of Emerson's Essays — Second Series which didn't contain the dissertation on "Heroism" out the porthole. It landed on the hatch with a bang.

The Mate had just come out of the officers' mess and stood on the upper deck picking his teeth when that book landed out on the hatch and lay there with its leaves fluttering in the sun; he squinted toward my porthole and turned abruptly and went back into the passage.

What for? To get a cat-o'-nine-tails I bet. Anything could happen aboard this lousy tramp.

There hadn't been much talk that I could remember about mutiny. It seems I recall just a vague reference — something about six years in Federal prison (or was it sixteen?) for mutiny on the high seas. Somehow the crew had avoided that subject in the thousand and one discussions we'd had on everything.

As far as I was concerned, mutiny was something with blood and cutlasses in it — the next thing to piracy. And who could have known that a harmless dispute about a pair of cheap shoes would degenerate into mutiny — irons and brigs, and now, maybe cat-o'-nine-tails?

But it hadn't — not yet. The Mate came out on the upper deck holding a covered tray, and he juggled it down the ladder and up the forward deck toward me.

It was dinnertime… I was getting room service!

30. Freedom of the Seas

THE BRASS KEY RATTLED IN THE LOCK and the mate's arm shoved open my door just far enough to set his burden down on the deck. He whipped off the clean napkin.

"There's your dinner."

The unveiling had revealed two warped slices of white bread and a heavy China pitcher arranged (with no attempt at pattern) on a large tin pie plate. The pitcher was half full of water — that's all. That was my dinner — no salt, pepper, or condiments of any kind.

The Mate watched me out of a corner of his eye to see how I'd take it. This was a moment for decision. The plastic arts train the reflexes to react quickly. Doing water colors, for example, with the trigger judgment the work develops — such as controlling an overflowing cerulean sky to keep it from dripping down over the horizon and gumming up a well-indicated chrome yellow barn so that it becomes an unpleasant brown one — has prepared me to make capital of accidents of Fate and recognize and grasp immediately the unpremeditated contributions such discords may add to a plastic expression or to reject them. Shall I permit a bit of momentary exuberance— obviously hatched by ennui — which had been responsible for that little unpleasantness and those harsh words early in the day to ruin completely the cordial relation that has always existed between the Mate and me?

Should a paltry three pairs of shoes, a dispute on musical values, and his probable concern for my health (I was still a growing boy and one knows what nicotine does to rabbits) destroy that gracious esteem we have had for one another? And finally, was it fair to the Mate with all the things he had on his mind, obviously piled up like an inverted pyramid necessitated by its infinitesimal breadth, to reduce him to the level of a bread-and-water-serving bus boy?

And as the Mate stood there waiting for me to settle down to sample the main course and tell him if the bread was dry enough, or would I prefer it more sec, since I couldn't depend upon the true-blue of my mangy shipmates, with a quick swirl of my mental brush I blotted up that dripping cerulean and extricated myself from this mixture of brown I was getting into.

"I'm willing to turn to."

"Huh — what you said?"

"All right — I'll go back to work."

"Now? Wait, I'll have to call the Skipper."

And he locked me up again and skipped oil to call the Skipper.

I nibbled on one of those slices of old bread. I don't like that kind of bread even when it's young, and there are a hundred million Americans like me. Yet that cartel responsible for those soft, brick-shaped, rubbery white loaves of that kind of bread, in spite of the moans of the millions — health authorities and stomach specialists — keep turning them out by the billions, sealing their indigestible tasty goodness in unpleasant, stamped, waxed paper — influencing such innocents as our Filipino Chef in the belief we relish them more than Marie Antoinette's cakes and we delight to ruin our stomachs with it even out at sea. Our Chef counterfeited that bread as well as he could, and the soggy loaves he created were a fair facsimile. The texture was accurate, but the corners just a mite too sharp. They had all the qualities of those I refuse to buy in grocery stores, preferring the crusty rye bread of my forebears.

I gave up gnawing that slice of the staff of life — decidedly the lowest slice of its rubber tip — and tried the liquid accompaniment to my dinner. That water was warm and had a taste to it. The Chef couldn't be blamed for that — it might have been the sun.

The porthole framed the Mate talking to Captain Brandt up on the officers' deck. They seemed in no hurry to come forward. I might have been impatient; I'd slipped out of my handcuffs right after the Mate had locked me in again. No use wearing them now. I'd decided that the he-who-fights-and-runs-away theory might be applied to fights for a principle as well as ordinary brawls — a strategic withdrawal with spiritual reservations, of course.

Captain Brandt nodded his head once or twice as the Mate talked, and gestured toward me in the prow. The Captain was trying to button his coat over his pot belly, but it kept busting open, and after a number of tries he settled for only the two over the pot — compromise seemed to be the order of the day— and he shuffled down the ladder to the forward deck followed by his Mate. That buttoned coat suggested this was going to be an official visit. Maybe he was going to make a short speech welcoming me back into the free world of meek seamen who turned to and jumped in and out of bilges like trained poodles at the bark of Swede First Mates.

I lit a cigarette, sat down and waited for them. They wouldn't find me breathlessly hanging around the door for my release. I'd make some concessions. All right, I'd quit singing and I would clean bilges — there was a certain fascination to the work. Speculation on the ingredients of the muck held a scientific interest for me, and I'd missed the gentle rhythm of dipping my can in the schmutz and swinging it past my nose that idle morning. But smoking I'd not give up.

I could claim I had to smoke as a health measure — I didn't want to grow any more. Any insurance statistician will tell you short men have a better chance at longevity than the tall. That's not only because they make smaller targets and don't stick up from ramparts or bleachers like their taller brothers — obvious victims for a stray slug or a foul ball, or whose mere presence in a barroom always inspires some cocky bantam to pick an argument. Most heavyweight prizefighters on their nights out spend their time ducking wild swings from little expert accountants on a binge, who know they won't be smacked in return. Not all tall guys are so adept at ducking the flying bottles. They haven't the training. But because of the easier and more functional layout of the intestinal coils and vital organs in the squat trunks of short men, they die only from the more cheerful diseases brought on by overindulgence, such as high blood pressure, gout, and cyrrhosis of the liver, instead of the sharper afflictions which cut down the tall, narrow-torso'd men (at the ratio of 3 to 2 according to the statisticians), whose crowded vitals develop congestion of the intestines, elongation of the pancreas, and auto-intoxication.

The insurance statistics might be affected by the fact that short men more easily fall victim to the insistent sales talks of insurance salesmen. Being short they can't run as fast as the long-legged, and the statisticians have more of them on their books. The big fellows trailed down and hooked by the clawing insurance agents must have been pretty sorry specimens to begin with and died off quick. So our insurance companies paid off before they had a chance to bleed them properly with their complicated financial chicanery — and started this campaign to encourage the breeding of short, stocky men (in the manner of the modern oven-sized turkey) who live long, pay up every penny with compound interest on their life endowment with special feature policies, and place their advertisements on the flaps of match holders — where I read this argument in favor of smoking — I'm just quoting.

De Quincey's thesis on the spiritual solace of tobacco wouldn't rate with the Captain or the Swede Mate and it served no practical purpose. Besides that, he was a Limey. The insurance company's argument was better.

Under cover of returning that slice of bread I retrieved my irons, which I'd left on the tin pie plate, when the Mate let Captain Brandt into the brig. He had snapped the door open so quickly I was caught with my shackles down, and felt naked around the wrist. My Swedish gaoler stood in the doorway to forestall any prison break from his chain gang. The Captain was sad-eyed. I couldn't tell whether it was his concern over my lack of appetite as his eyes passed over my untouched dinner tray — remember my health and life were his responsibility — or his understandable chagrin at my Houdiniism: when anyone puts anyone else in irons he naturally expects him to stay there. He waited until I'd fumbled my way back into the handcuffs before he spoke.

"Boy — h-m-m — the Mate tells me you've changed your mind."

"Yes, sir." The Captain looked at me, then the Mate, and back to me again.

"H-m-m-m — and the Mate tells me you're willing to turn to again."

I nodded. The old buzzard gave me a long look, then turned his back and said to the Mate:

"Well — I dunno — h-m-m. Dunno as how we want him to. . What do you think, Mr. Mate?"

And that scurvy Scandihoovian scum of a Mate shook his head.

"I dunno either."

They both turned and looked down at me sitting there in chains on the tarpaulin, and they shook their heads together. I bit a few strands off the corner of my mustache — it had grown long enough to curl around my mouth and be bitten on such occasions when I might have been gnawing at tenpenny nails. Those two seagoing pythons had me in their scaly coils and they were twisting.

I felt the bitter gall rising as I looked at their cold-blooded fisheyes. Mine were smarting and I turned to blink at the shattered light of the porthole.

They went on twisting.

"That young feller worked all right," said the Mate, "on port work and on our voyage down, but since then—"

"H-m-m — yes — well, maybe if we give him another chance—"

I swung my head around again and brightened up. The Captain gave me a nod but the Mate kept his neck stiff and before he let go he gave one parting twist. He screwed up his eye and growled:

"And remember, young feller, there's them bilges yet — to be cleaned."

As if I didn't know that number one hold was dry and could be polished off with a whiskbroom and a dustpan. I O.K.'d the cleaning bilges clause of our peace pact, too, and the Mate dug up the keys to my handcuffs, unlatched their creaky locks, and my wrist went out the main entrance of their rusty confines.

Comrades, I had nothing to lose but my chains — so I lost.

They marched me back to midships and we climbed the ladder to the messdeck. The first one to welcome me back to the land (or sea) of living freemen after my two-hour imprisonment complete with irons, bread-and-water, et al., was old One-Ton, the Chief Engineer.

He was smoking his after-dinner cigar as he stood there, resting his big stomach up on the rail. That orangutang face of his slowly broke into a big grin; he lifted his good arm, took the cigar out of his mouth and gave me a short, slow salute with it.

"Hi — the Prisoner of Zenda—" and his soft belly rolled off the rail with the convulsions of laughter and coughs he brought on himself with that witticism. I felt there was no malice in his crack and grinned back at him.

He might have meant the Count of Monte Cristo, but I couldn't be sure, never having seen him read anything but the cheap pulp magazines I've mentioned earlier. By not too great a stretch of the imagination there could have been some parallel drawn between Dumas' hero and the figure I presented as I climbed up on the messdeck. I never read the book, but in the movie version I'd seen Edward Dantes had been played by a pompous young English actor whose scattered whiskers during the first few reels were not unlike mine — he too needed a haircut and was barefooted. The point of departure in our resemblance was my glasses — perhaps the Prisoner of Zenda had bad eyes too. I never got around to that book, either.

The Mate led me to the crew mess and told Flip to dig up some dinner for me. The old guy was glad to see me back and free again, and he served me with a cheerful chuckle. I didn't have much chance to talk to Al or the fat Sailing Man (Mush was off my list) as we swept out the number one bilges. The Mate sat up on the comer of the open hatch most of the afternoon — to quell my spirit, I suppose, if mutiny should once more well up from my depths of despair, or if I felt like singing again.

It was not until that evening up on the poop that I realized Mush, alone, was the only guy aboard who was scared to back me up. The crew was with me to a man. Though they admired and credited me with plenty of guts, they were disappointed I'd given in so soon. They had been working on plans to saw through the wooden bulkhead that separated the brig from our cabin. Chips was coming through with a saw from his stores. Philip was cacheing food from the officers' mess to feed me proper. Perry was going to give me the lowdown on my legal rights, and Joe, who was the most disappointed of all, had planned to direct my campaign on how to break the Mate. He shook his head and wished I'd held out till that evening at least and he'd have had a chance to tell me how to run a mutiny. He had had lots of experience.

One time — on one of those long voyages he'd made to Australia — he and two other guys had mutineed. They were all big fellows and on that crowded little freighter there wasn't any room for a brig. The Mate had shackled the three big mutineers to the metal rails that ran along their bunks in the fo'castle. They sat around and smoked or slept quietly through the day and came that first night they began getting in their licks. The First Mate is the police department aboard a ship and he is the keeper of the keys — of the brig, shackles, etc. Comes trouble, his responsibility as a jailer is added to his regular duties — his watch on the bridge from four in the morning to eight and from four in the afternoon to eight in the evening.

About one o'clock in the morning, while the Mate was sleeping fast so he could roll out for his early morning turn to, one of the mutineers raised his voice and shouted into the darkness for the man on watch.

"What's the matter?"

"Get the Mate, will ya? I gotta go to the can. I'm all cramped up."

So the man on watch roused the Mate who climbs down, unlocks the big bellyacher, leads him to the can, and stands around blinking sleepily until the guy has done his stuff, slowly. The Mate leads him back to his bunk, locks him up again to the iron rail, and goes off to get some more sleep, he hopes. About four bells (two o'clock) mutineer number two howls for the man on watch— Get the Mate, etc., etc. The sleepy Mate suggests maybe either number three or number one feel certain needs.

"What the hell you wake us up for? We were sleeping, weren't we?"

Come half an hour or so after the harassed Mate has climbed back up to his cabin — and mutineer number three goes through the same formula. Why didn't he come along when number two had bellyached?

"Jeezus, Mate, I didn't feel like it then. Can't help it if I didn't feel like it."

By the time the Mate stumbled up to the bridge at four in the morning, he was a very tired guy.

That mutiny lasted three hectic days and three sleepless nights for the Mate, until he broke down with a "now-listen-fellers."

The mutineers blamed their unpredictable bowels on the bread and water diet and general intestinal lassitude on their enforced inactivity. And the mutiny was broken — the mutineers broke it and almost ruined the Mate. He skipped ship in Sydney, Australia.

Naturally, my one-man mutiny could not be managed the same way. I'd be damned if I'd stay awake three nights running to harass this Mate, and besides, he was a shrewd Swede; I was sure he'd have unearthed a chamber pot and put it in my brig. Joe shook his head. It was too bad I'd given in before he had a chance to talk with me. He was sure he could have figured an angle and instructed me on the proper way to carry on a one-man mutiny.

31. The Boneyard

LIKE A GANG OF BEAUTICIANS WE ROUGED THE UPPER DECKS, golden-buffed the masts and booms, french-grayed the trim, whitened the superstructure, and blackened the main deck with glistening fish oil. Like a gang of beauticians? More like a gang of morticians, for she was an empty, dead ship, though none of us knew that until we dropped anchor in the boneyard along the Jersey coast. And the S.S. Hermanita looked prettier as she lay in her grave than she ever did in life.

The Mate was desperate those last three days. He had every hand he could commandeer swinging brushes and paint buckets. The crew knew that since this was his first hitch with the Universal Tropical Line he wanted to make a good impression on the home office with a beautifully painted, clean ship. They did what they could to bitch it up for him in their quiet way. Steady hands developed palsy as they wiggled the lines of her trim, gaping holidays were left up on the mast, and the Bos'n's chair was rigged again to patch up. Red deck paint slopped over on the clean gray bulkhead, white spattered the buff, black fish oil blurred white paintwork. Everything had to be gone over again and a few times more.

Up on the boat deck where we day men were painting the white lifeboats with more white — adding another coat to the crust that already covered the unworkable davits and the rest of the gear — we could see the crew spotted all over the ship with their little pails and brushes, like a bunch of busy little gnomes on an old Hammacher and Schlemmer advertisement. I'll bet that the Mate had missed us day men when we were lost down in the bilges. He couldn't get the work out of his A.B.'s he'd get out of us. I don't know what deal he'd arranged with Joe, Slim, the Polack, and Perry to get those guys out on deck smearing paint for him. It was the Third Mate's watch and that gang were off. He might have stood watch for them, as he was doing that afternoon for the Third Mate, taking the wheel himself while those guys slept peacefully through the night. The Third Mate was out with a bucket and brush too; so was the Bos'n.

The red-headed Second grumped around up on the boat deck with us. He wasn't working — he was supervising. He was jumpy as a cat as he paced that deck. It seems that as the navigator, through the weather charts and stuff that was available to him, he knew better than anyone aboard, except the Captain I suppose, that our ship riding blithely through the hurricane belt with her empty hull just kissing the crest of the waves was as safe as a kid's torn paper boat in a whirlpool comes the first bit of a blow — and he worried.

If I'd have known what I know now, from reading the newspapers in recent years about the hurricanes that swept the Atlantic seaboard and bashed almost everybody's summer cottage to bits from Florida to Maine — to say nothing of completely ruining their gardens — or if the Second had confided in me and shown me those ominous potentialities on his charts, I might have worried with him. But I was blissfully ignorant of the horror that could happen to a gaily painted ship like ours, and she did look pretty in an abstract way, with the varied patches of paint spotting her from stem to stern. So I thought, as I dipped my brush and again got down to dab at the bottom of the lifeboat I was working on.

As far as I was concerned it was a fine bright day; the water was a wonderful blue-green, and that ship felt solid enough for me as she bobbed and sailed over the bounding main — over the bounding main — B-A-M!

"Choke off your goddam whistling, you goddam Jonah!"

I made a wild grab at a line that dribbled off that lifeboat and saved myself from going over side into the wonderful blue-green sea with its millions of bounding waves. It seems I had with my natural exuberance not only been thinking of the bounding main — I'd been whistling the tune, high and shrill. And that bloody red-headed Mate had kicked me in the tail and darn near sent me out to join the fishes. I'd been blowing for a breeze — piping up a blow or whistling up a squall — I can't remember which, but it was one of those three. A silly superstition, prevalent among the illiterate seafarers. And as I righted myself and my spilt paint bucket, I sneered up at that sputtering purple-faced red-head. I said, calmly:

"Yeah — and you a college man."

"Pipe down, you — you—" and he went off into a scream of hysterical epithets which would take up a couple of paragraphs — on my genealogy, person, and intellect. I've not recorded them for this text, since there was neither truth nor fancy in any of his mouthings.

Perry, the old Sailing Man, and a few others said later the Second had a right to do as he did — and they looked at me accusingly when a few lumpy dark clouds appeared on the horizon a couple of days later. They brought us a quick gush of rain that lasted for half an hour; then the sun came out again and stayed as long through the day as it rightfully should, until we dropped anchor early one morning alongside the most beautiful green hill I've ever seen.

The guys said that was Staten Island — we were in the Channel that separates that Island from the Jersey shore. It is strange. I never saw that hill before or since — and I've lived on Staten Island, I've visited it time and again (some of my wife's friends), and I've been there on business. Perhaps it can only be seen from the deck of a patched-up little freighter with clean bilges and an empty hull, fresh back from the muddy coast of Argentina and its Nord-American-hating people who lived there in those days.

We lay in quarantine a while and then were towed to a dock on the Jersey side. Some of the old guys said, pointing out a string of battered ships riding at anchor, that that was the bone-yard — the grave of many a good ship. The ships were tied uji along that coast, stripped of their valuables, and their empty dead hulks lay there until somebody decided when or where they are to be sunk or sold for scrap. The old guys shivered a little and didn't talk much in the presence of the dead ships.

That was where the S.S. Hermanita anchored after her last voyage and died.

It wasn't until the next day that we lined up in the officers' mess, received our discharge papers, and were paid off. Everyone in the deck crew was packed up and ready to get away from that ship hours before the Purser laid out his books on a table and the Mate and Captain sat on either side during the payoff.

As we stood around I talked with the guys I'd hung around with. I wrote down their names on a long strip of paper. They were a good bunch and I hoped to hear and see them again sometime. For some reason their names surprised me as I read them over, waiting in the line-up at the payoff table. Their names made them strangers to me. A guy I had known as Bird-neck had a long Slovak surname — and stranger yet, his first names were Stanislaw Vladimar. Perry was elegantly Castillian; Joe as British as a Yorkshire pudding. I put that slip into my pocket to step up and sign for my pay and get my discharge papers. But I must have put it in the pocket with the hole in it — it disappeared along with that green hill and all that crew. I never saw any of them again — after everybody shook hands with everybody else and promised to look everybody up sometime.

With an enigmatic smirk Captain Brandt handed me my discharge papers. I didn't look at them until I was out on the deck and alone. Then it struck me right between the eyes — what goes on here? My rating, on the little square on that printed form reserved for conduct, was marked — very good! What the hell is this—?

Did my mutiny count for nothing?

I had no official record of my one-man mutiny — the brig, my irons, living on bread and water. I had nothing to talk about. Were they trying to gag me or cover up their sewer-puddle seamanship? Did that old sea turtle have some underhanded, crooked scheme to undermine my character — by word of mouth or something — or did he plan to keep the Log which must contain an entry of my mutiny until the proper occasion arose and then flash it when it would do the most harm?

After I'd regained my composure I faced the problem squarely and decided prompt action was necessary.

It was not that I distrusted Captain Brandt, but what if he presented only his side of the story and did not explain the pourquoi of my mutiny. I felt, since I'd met Captain Flint, the Port Captain, socially, he might say something to that man who helped organize the Havana Shipping Board. He, in turn, might speak to Mr. Grub — and so down the line or up. I'd be ruined socially and it might affect my career as a sculptor, if I were to get a reputation for being an uncooperative maverick.

With that thought in mind I hastily found a phone booth as soon as I left the dock to call Captain Flint. I'd explain what happened as sympathetically as I could, concerning my little mutiny — and not speak harshly, though firmly, about old Captain Brandt (if he put me in a bad light), the Swede Mate and the fumbling Chief Engineer — and, perhaps, make a few suggestions on how that sort of thing could be avoided in the future. I cheerfully dropped a nickel in the slot and hummed a bit of a tango I'd remembered from one of the bordellos in Rio Santiago.

I finally got through to Port Captain Flint.

"Hello, is this Captain Flint?"

"Yes," barked the old sea dog.

"This is Louis Slobodkin, Captain Flint. Remember me? I'm that artist who shipped out on the S.S. Hermanita. Remember, Captain Flint?"

"Yes, what do you want?" The bark had become a growl.

"I just called to let you know I'm back, Captain Flint, and…"

Well! I've heard volcanic outbursts when the Chief Engineer roared across at that ship alongside when we were propped up in drydock and then again when Perry blasted the Mate down in Rio Santiago, and when the red-headed Second let me have it for almost losing our tow line, and time and again when the Swede Mate sounded off with his thunder at the overflowing fuel oil, again at me when I mutinied, and on many other occasions with good cause.

But any of them and all of them, in chorus, were mute and timid compared to that blast of heroic blasphemy that almost split my ear drum. And with a last titanic bellow, he slammed his receiver with such a crash it set my booth a-tremble and its door flapping like the loose end of a tarpaulin in a gale.

I never did get over my side of the story, and I can't tell, after all these years, to what degree my social and professional position has been impaired by misrepresentation. So, to clear my position, and because a sweet dame with a nice round neck (who went off and married a guy who collects bugs in the New Hebrides) said over her teacup somebody ought to put me in a book sometime, and nobody did after all these years — and because of a virgin cat — this book has been written.

End of book

Content

Louis Slobodkin
FO'CASTLE WALTZ

Raison d'Etre

1. Deck Boy on a Trolley

2. The "Hermanita"

3. Moving-Picture Sailor

4. Rots!

5. Sailors Without Watches

6. Soogie Moogie

7. Sailors' Music

8. Portraits on the Hatch

9. Hymns and Chicken

10. Father Neptune's Torture Brigade

11. The Truth About Columbus

12. The Magnificent Mustachios

13. Thirty-Two Bridegrooms

14. The Epicureans

15. Violet Goat's Milk

16. I Buy a Sombrero

17. Joe, the Maestro

18. Eight Thousand Miles for Stravinski

19. Fo'castle Waltz

20. Two Sad Stories

21. The Classic Belly Laugh

22. Pink Shrimps and Sweet Caporals

23. The Polack from Baltimore

24. Girls Sailors Remember

25. Brassy, Gassy Officialdom

26. Beachcomber's Heaven

27. Bilges, Bilges!

28. The One-Man Mutiny

29. In the Brig Alone I Sit

30. Freedom of the Seas

31. The Boneyard