“Haven’t the Poles now a merchant marine of their own?”
“They have. But what good does that to me?” Stanislav asked. “I have it from a first-class Polish authority that I am not a Pole, while the Germs, on the other hand, take me only as a Polish swine. There you are.”
44
Month after month passed. Before I knew it I had been on the Yorikke four months. And when I came aboard I had thought that I could not live on her for two days.
So I found one day that the Yorikke had actually become a ship on which I could live and even laugh. Occasionally we would have a great after-gale supper, sometimes one cup, frequently two cups, of gin. We would have raisin cake and cocoa cooked with canned milk. Sometimes, having picked out for the cook some extra-fine nut coal from the bunkers, he would hand us in return an extra pound of sugar or an extra can of sweetened milk. Whenever we made a port where the skipper did not mind giving us shore leave we were provided with some advance to go and lift a skirt or two, and after that to get well drenched. My mess-gear — that is, the tools to eat with had become complete. It was, of course, not a perfect unit, for one piece had once adorned a table in a tavern in Tripoli, another had come from a saloon in Smyrna, and another one from Tangier. I had even some surplus, in case one was nipped or got lost.
The filth in the quarters had become thicker, but I was now used to it. In this way the Yorikke once more proved an excellent teacher, making it quite clear that the saying: “All civilization is only a thin layer of varnish on the human animal” has a lot of truth in it. The bunk I slept in was not so hard as I had thought when I lay down in it the first day. I had made a pillow out of cleaning-rags swiped from the engine-hold. Bedbugs, yes, we had them. But they are found in all the elegant cities of the world, like New York, Boston, and Balti, and Chic also.
Looking at my fellow-sailors now and then, I could not imagine how it had ever been possible that, seeing them for the first time, I had thought them the dirtiest and the filthiest bunch of guys I had ever seen. They looked quite decent.
Everything became a bit cleaner and more endurable every day that passed. It is like this: You look every day at the same thing, and then you don’t see it any more.
No, sir, I have nothing against the Yorikke. She was a fine ship. Got finer every day. The crew was not at all so rude and sour as I had thought during the first month.
Stanislav was an intelligent guy, I might even say a real gent. He had knocked about the world a lot, he had seen many things and happenings, and he had gathered experiences such as I only wished every president of the U.S. could have had. The marvel about Stanislav was that he not only saw things but that he saw them clear, through and through, right to their very sources. Nobody could blindfold him with slogans or success yarns. From every experience he had had, from everything he had seen or heard of, he deduced a wisdom and a philosophy which was worth more to him and to his understanding of world, matter, and conditions than the finest and thickest book about philosophy written by a great prof and doc.
My two firemen, I learned, were not like automobile mechanics that understood only their trade, and outside of their trade knew nothing but how far a certain place is, how much gas they use per mile, and what chance you have to win a poker game against the boss who hires and fires. My firemen knew how to talk, because they had learned to think. The A.B.’s and the hands — after knowing them better I found that none of them were the ordinary kind of human bugs. No ordinary man ever came to ship on the Yorikke. Ordinary men have their birth-certificates and passports and pay-books in fine shape. They never make any trouble for a bureaucrat. There would be no such thing as the Most Glorious God’s Country if half of the pioneers and builders of the great nation could have produced passports and could have passed Ellis Island like the Prince of Wales. Ordinary people can never fall over the walls, because they never dare climb high enough to see what is beyond the walls. Therefore they can never ship on such a peach of a maiden as the Yorikke. Really good people believe what is told them, and they feel satisfied with the explanation. Therefore we can be at ease in Nicaragua, and cross the ocean to lick the Germans, and make the bankers the emperors of a republic.
It serves the guy right when he falls from the wall. Let him stay at home in the first place. Freedom? Okay with us. But it must be certified and stamped.
There came a time when the skipper held quite a bit of pay of mine. The question was where and when to sign off. My signing off would not have been recognized in any port. Since I had not brought aboard any paper, the skipper was not obliged to give me a pay-book. Without one, and without being able to prove that I was once born somewhere, the port authorities would have shipped me off on the next death can that put in.
There was left only one kind of signing off. That of the gladiators. Signing off on a reef and going to the fishes’ bellies. Still there might be some luck. A sailor without luck should not go sailing. So it might happen that I could reach the coast, somehow.
Shipwrecked sailor. Poor wretch. Folks living along the coast take pity on a shipwrecked sailor and take him in and feed him.
Then the consul hears that there is a shipwrecked sailor somewhere. He gets hold of him. He is not a bit interested in the man. He is interested alone in the report how, when, and where the ship was wrecked, and, if you can give an account of it, under what circumstances the ship was lost. “Now, my man, be careful what you say.” The report is of great importance, not to the world, but to the company that wants to collect. For if there is no report from an eyewitness the company may have to wait a couple of years to pull in the cash. After the report is made, sworn to, and signed, the shipwrecked sailor gets one pound and the news: “Sorry, since you cannot prove your citizenship, I can do nothing for you. Anyway, don’t you worry, an experienced man like you, you will soon get another ship. Quite a few ships put in here. Just hang around.”
The ship puts in all right. Yes, sir. The sailor, hungry and sick of sleeping on bales of straw, on park benches, in gateways, in the furrows of cultivated land right near the last house in the town, hops on the ship just getting under weigh. He tumbles to the foc’sle, reads what is written over the entrance of the quarters, and knows where he is again. So he learns that the shipwreck was only an interruption, and, at best, a change in the name of the ship and in the language of the skipper. The fish have patience.
We were at anchor off Dakar. Dakar is a decent port. Nothing doing. Full of French gobs, French marines, French didonks, and French colonial blues, and a lot of French hoppies or dames. But we had no money to look them under. I won’t complain, anyhow, because the Arabian janes in Tunis and in Tripoli waiting to see us are just as good. It mustn’t always be French. They haven’t got any new tricks. The Arabian and Egyptian babies have, and that’s that.
Boiler-scaling. That comes right next to setting in fallen-out grate-bars. Boiler-scaling when the fire in that boiler was taken out only ten hours ago and the neighboring boiler is still under full steam. But that’s not all. Because it is done right near that section of the funny globe where you say: “Hey, you, look there, see that green painted fence, with an E on it? Know what that is? That is the Equator, or what the scientists call `the imaginary circle’ or the zero meridian.” But there is nothing imaginary about it, if you have to scale boilers there.
The imaginary circle. Don’t make me laugh out loud. In the first place this fence is white-hot. If you only so much as touch it, your whole arm, as far up as your shoulder, is gone, scorched off like nothing. Put the heavy poker against this fence, and the poker melts like lard. Doesn’t leave even a pinch of ashes. No, sir. If you put two thick bars of fine steel one against the other and you hold them on the fence, they get welded into one single piece so that you cannot even see the seam.
“You guys don’t know the full story as yet, you dumb-heads,” Stanislav said. “But let me tell you what once happened when I crossed the E with the Vaarsaa, which was a rather fine Dane hussy. It
happened about on Christmas eve, as far as I remember. Now, old Vaarsaa got so white-hot while crossing the E that you just could poke your finger or your pocket-knife through the iron hull, and wherever you poked, a hole was left. It was funny when spitting against the hull.
Now, it sure is not decent of a regular sailor to spit against the bulwark of the ship he is sailing on. Anyway, we did it for fun just to see what might happen. Tell you, wherever we spit against the gunwale the spit went clear through and another hole was left. The skipper, who was on the bridge, saw what we were doing and he yelled down: ‘T’hell with you damned devils, don’t you try to make a sieve out of my ship, or I put you all in irons.’ That’s what he said. Then he ordered: `Close all these holes immediately or, hell, I feed you to the sharks.’ There wasn’t much to it. We just rubbed with a piece of wood over the holes or with our elbows, and the holes closed like you would work with clay or with a fresh custard pie. You see, the hull had gone as soft as dough. The masts really made us quite a lot of trouble that day. They were good masts, all steel tube, see? But in spite of that we worked like young devils to prevent it, we could do nothing to keep those steel masts from bending over like candles you leave standing on a hot stove in the kitchen. We had to work fast to fix tackles high above the mast-tops and to hoist the masts and straighten them out while they were still soft. You see, it was like that, if we had waited until we had crossed the whole E they would have cooled off, and then there would be no chance to straighten them until we docked somewhere around a shipyard. But I tell you, you little birdies, one should never fool around with the E. It’s dangerous.”
“Now, who would ever do such a nasty thing?” I said. “But I wonder, Stanislav, how come that you, so smart a sailor, could ever ship on a can that had a skipper who would not take the slightest precaution when reaching the E. He must have been a queer miser. Sure, he wanted to save the tunnel expenses like the others who sail four weeks round Cape Horn to save the few pennies the American government charges for using the old Panama Canal. When we made the E on the Mabel Harrison, that was what you guys might call a regular ship, such as none of you has ever seen and never will, well, as I said, when we made the E we went right through the tunnel under the ocean, not minding a bit that old fussy Equator at all. Now, in this tunnel it is really cold; you would be surprised to find something so cold straight beneath the E. Not for a minute would you ever imagine that you are sailing straight under the E. It’s all well lighted up, almost like day.”
“Don’t you think that I don’t know that tunnel, you puppy,” Stanislav said. “We stayed out because the company did not want to pay the expenses. They charge quite a bit. I figure it must be close to a pound a register ton. Sure, they make truckloads of money with that tunnel. But since I have never been in this tunnel I, for the world, cannot make out how the hell they get down the ships the size, let’s say, of twelve thousand tons.”
“That’s easier than you would ever think it is,” I explained. “There is a huge hole in the midst of the ocean. Now, the engineers have put through this hole a pipe — ‘s matter of fact, several pipes; I reckon about twenty or so — to hustle up the traffic. As soon as the ship reaches the entrance to the pipe she bends over a bit and goes in bow first, glides down on well-greased rails. Now, after a while of gliding this way, she finally reaches the bottom, which is a mighty tunnel. There the hands are all ready to get her on a carriage, which is drawn by heavy engines, all running on ten-inch rails. Some tunnels have no rails and carriages. There they have got water in and the ship goes along under her own steam. Here they charge a bit less, but it takes more time and it has happened that ships even sank and were a total loss. Now, when the ship has reached the end of the tunnel it is put in a sort of floating dry-dock and heaved up through the pipe until she comes out again to the open. Here the dry-dock is opened, and off she goes without any damage done by the E. If I had money, I tell you, I would buy only the shares of this company; they pay no less than twenty-two per cent per share. And you can have the shares rather cheap, because there are people who don’t believe in the company and in the Equator.”
“I never thought it would be that simple,” Stanislav said. “My idea was that they would put the ship in a kind of diver’s bell and then haul her down, drag her along the bottom, and heave her up again on the other side of the E.”
“Of course, they could have done the whole job that way as well,” I answered. “But, somehow, I think there must be a catch in why they haven’t done it. Sure, they could not do it for a pound per ton. Because I figure it must be more complicated working a whole ship with a diver’s bell. There would have been still another way to —”
“What for all hell’s sake is going on there?” The second had put his cone through the manhole and was yelling like a mad gorilla. “Is this a sewing-circle for an African mission or what? Are you paid for scaling that god-damned boiler or do you get your money for shabbering like drunken monkeys. We will never get the boiler scaled. Turn to it, the hell, you stinkbones.”
“Hey, you grandson of two peaches, you come in here,” I hollered so that the boiler drummed. “What did you say, stinkbones or what? Come in and scale your bitch of a boiler yourself, you thief. Wait until we are under weigh again, and then step in the stoke-hold; I swear we’ll roast you in the furnace.”
From the thick dust of the scale and from the infernal heat I was nearly mad. I would have killed him like a louse if he had come in.
“He won’t report you to the old man,” Stanislav said, “just as during the war an officer never reported you for having spit in his face. They needed you and could not afford to have you in the guard instead of in the trenches.”
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Well, you who said so, you have never scaled a boiler of the Yorikke right /lose to the Equator with the fire out only ten hours and the boiler next to it under full steam! It must be done. Boilers have to be scaled or they go up to heaven, taking along the whole crew and all that is left of the ship.
We were sitting inside that boiler as active members of a nudist camp. The walls of the boiler were so hot that we could not touch them with bare hands, nor could we kneel at the bottom without a thick layer of rags under us.
There wasn’t such a thing as goggles for boiler-scaling on the Yorikke. No goggles were known at Carthage, so why should the Yorikke have them? The dust of the scale sprang into your eyes and almost burned the light out of them. If you tried to rub it out it would only pierce so deeply into your eyelids and under them that you would have to pick the specks out with a pin or with a pocket-knife. You feel that you are going mad. You cannot stand it any more and you call on one of the other guys to get them out. He works with his dusty and clumsy hands about your eyes until he gets them clean, but your eyes swell under this torture and they stay swollen and bloodshot for a week.
Even suppose you had goggles, they would not do you any good. The dust darkens them to such an extent that you cannot see where you are.
The boiler inside has to be illuminated for you to see what you are doing, because it is as dark inside as it is in a coalmine. If you had electric light it would be easier. But on the Yorikke we had only the ancient lamps of old Carthage. Five minutes, no more, and the boiler was filled with black smoke so thick that we could cut it like a cake. And the smoke stood as if chained and gummed.
The drumming, hammering, and knocking against the hull inside seemed to crack open your head and mash your brain to powder.
Hardly ten minutes’ work and we had to come up and out to get air, exhausted each time like pearl-divers.
We would crawl out and dart under the air-funnel which reaches into the stoke-hold. The ocean breeze would strike our hot bodies, and then you feel as if a sword were thrust through your lungs. After fifteen seconds you feel like lying naked in a blizzard. To escape this terrific snowstorm, which in fact is only the soft breeze of the tropics, you hurry back into the hot boiler as if hunted, and go to w
ork harder than before with the hope that the harder you work, the quicker you will be out of the inferno.
Before ten minutes have elapsed, however, you have to crawl out again into that blizzard of Saskatchewan, because you feel you are surely going to die if you don’t have fresh air.
There is a moment where the nerves seem to burst. It happens when you feel that you have to go out that very second and you see your fellow-man squeezing slowly through the manhole. The boiler has only one manhole. The narrower it can be made, the better for the boiler. Only one man can crawl through at a time. The others have to wait until he is through and fully out. While he is squeezing himself through, which takes a certain time, the hole is entirely closed, and not one mouthful of air can come in. The two men still inside feel exactly like men in a sunken submarine. No difference.
It happened within these few seconds, when Stanislav was just out and I was next, that I looked back on hearing a bump, and I saw the fireman lifeless. With the last breath I had I cried: “Lavski, the fire’m has dropped out. If we don’t get him out quick he will choke to death in that poison smoke.”