The Death Ship
“Horrible!” was all I could say.
Walking home to our good old Yorikke, I could not help thinking of this beautiful ship, with a crew on board that had faces as if they were seeing ghosts by day and by night.
Compared to that gilded Empress, the Yorikke was an honorable old lady with lavender sachets in her drawers. Yorikke did not pretend to anything she was not. She lived up to her looks. Honest to her lowest ribs and to the leaks in her bilge.
Now, what is this? I find myself falling in love with that old jane. All right, I cannot pass by you, Yorikke; I have to tell you I love you. Honest, baby, I love you. I have six black finger-nails, and four black and green-blue nails on my toes, which you, honey, gave me when necking you. Grate-bars have crushed some of my toes. And each finger-nail has its own painful story to tell. My chest, my back, my arms, my legs are covered with scars of burns and scorchings. Each scar, when it was being created, caused me pains which I shall surely never forget. But every outcry of pain was a love-cry for you, honey.
You are no hypocrite. Your heart does not bleed tears when you do not feel heart-aches deeply and truly. You do not dance on the water if you do not feel like being jolly and kicking chasers in the pants. Your heart never lies. It is fine and clean like polished gold. Never mind the rags, honey dear. When you laugh, your whole soul and all your body is laughing. And when you weep, sweety, then you weep so that even the reefs you pass feel like weeping with you.
I never want to leave you again, honey. I mean it. Not for all the rich and elegant buckets in the world. I love you, my gypsy of the sea!
THE THIRD BOOK
An old love-song
of an experienced sailor
There are so many ships on sea,
Some do come and some do flee;
Yet none can be so dreadful low
That none is found still further so.
46
I suppose this is a good rule: If you want to keep your wife, do not love her too much. She might get bored with you and run away with somebody who gives her a sound beating twice a week to keep her lively.
My sudden strong love for the Yorikke looked rather suspicious, I thought. But having heard right before a hair-raising story of a tough kidnapper, and carrying in one pocket a beautiful can of fine golden Danish butter and a can of milk in the other and a huge lump of rich banish cheese in my hand, it will be easily understood why I could fall so deeply in love with Yorikke and chuck that silken hussy.
Nevertheless, I felt strongly that there was something strange about my growing love for the ragged Yorikke. Something was going to go wrong. Maybe the ash-pipe was waiting for me, or the plank across the top of the stoke-hold, or the water-gauge of the boiler. So, with all my ardent love for her, I began to worry and to feel uneasy. Something was hanging in the air for me.
The quarters were stuffy. I could not stand them right now, after having seen the clean quarters of the fine Norske.
“Come on,” I said to Stanislav, “let’s go off again for a while. We’ll stroll along the docks and the water-board until it gets cooler. A fresh breeze is sure to come up soon, likely about nine. Then we go home and sleep on the poop, where it is coolest.”
“Right you are, Pippip,” Stanislav agreed. “It’s near impossible to sleep here now, or even sit around. One feels like getting dumb all over. We might give that little Dutch can a look. Sometimes you meet quite unexpectedly an old friend.”
“You don’t mean to say you are still hungry?” I asked, laughing.
“Not exactly. But I might get a cake of soap and perhaps. even a towel. Things which I really need, and I would sure welcome them.”
We hoofed leisurely on our way. It had by now become dark. The lamps of the port could be seen only dimly. No ship was busy taking in cargo or spitting it out. All the ships seemed to have gone to sleep.
“Say, that tobacco the Danes handed us isn’t so great when you look closer at it,” I said, puffing.
Hardly had I spoken, and I was just turning my head toward Stanislav, when I received a terrific blow on my block. I felt the blow quite clearly when it came down, yet I could not move myself. My legs at once became strangely thick and heavy, and I fell. There was about me a dreadful humming and roaring, the cause of which I could not figure out. Anyway, I was sure that I had not lost my consciousness; at least, I had the impression that I saw and heard everything that was going on around me. That is what I thought.
This sensation did not last very long, it seemed to me. I came to again and rose and tried to walk off. On doing so, I ran against a wall which was iron. All about me it was dark, pitch-dark.
Now, where and what could this iron wall be? I moved to the left. The wall was still there. The same wall I encountered at the right. Also at my back. My head was still roaring and buzzing. I did not know what had happened and what it all was about. From so much thinking and figuring I became very tired. I lay down on the floor.
After some time, when I woke up again, I found the four walls still there. I could not stand up very well. I staggered and tumbled. Getting wider awake, I felt that I was not staggering at all, but that the whole floor was swaying.
“Damn the hell and all the devils,” I said. “Scram the whole outfit. Now I know where I am. On a bucket, and she is already well out on high sea. Jolly on our way to hell. The engine is knocking and stamping in regular time. Must be an hour or more since the can went under weigh.”
It was still dark about me.
With my fists and with my feet I began now to work the walls to see what would happen. Of one thing I was positively sure, I was not on the Yorikke, because on the Yorikke I knew every nook and corner, and that I might be in our chamber of horrors was out of the question, for I had had no quarrel with the skipper in regard to the pay for overtime, and the second would never lay me in. In the first place, he could not spare so good a drag as I had become during the last four months. Besides, he knew that he would land in the furnace the first hour I was out again and below in the stoke-hold.
For a long while nobody seemed to take notice of my bombing the walls or of my yelling, either. But then a ray of light fell into the box in which I was. The light widened, and I saw it came from above. It was a flash-light.
An ugly voice asked: “Finished your snore, you funking drunkard?”
“Looks like, buddy,” I answered. “Hey you, won’t you help me out of here?”
Having said this, I knew where I was and what had happened. Shanghaied. I am on the Empress of Madagascar, to be fed to the fishes and to help sailing-insurance.
“The ole man wan’s ‘a see ye,” the jailor said.
He let below a rope and I climbed up the shaft. Looked to me as if I was below as far down as the bilge.
“You are a pretty bunch of peach-sons,” I said the very moment I stepped into the cabin of the skipper.
“Beg pardon?” the skipper said, with quite a distinguished air.
“Shanghaiers. Man-pirates. Kidnappers. Baby-farmers. Filthy sons of beachcombers, that’s what you are, all of you,” I bellowed.
The skipper remained undisturbed. He lighted a cigarette and said: “I fancy, my good man, you are still intoxicated. We shall put you for ten minutes under an ice shower to get you sober and to teach you how to address the master of a British vessel. More respect, my good man, when you have the honor to stand in the cabin of a British captain.”
I looked into his face and said nothing more. One should not try to catch hissing bullets with bare hands. It does nobody any good, not even the pistol.
The skipper pressed a button.
Then he said: “Sit down.”
In came two men. Husky, bully, with horribly crumpled faces, and with the hands of gorillas, they looked like the animal-men roaming wild in mystery stories. The average woman meeting these two birds a quarter of a mile from an inhabited house would have fallen dead on seeing them.
“Is this the man?” the skipper asked.
“Yegh, t’as him all right,” one of the two said.
“What are you doing on board my ship?” the skipper asked me. He acted like a judge in an English criminal court; only the wig was missing. Before him there were papers on which he wrote as if he were at the same time his own court clerk. He asked again: “What are you doing here on my ship, and how did you come aboard?”
“That’s what I wish to know from you, sir, what I am doing here and how I came to be here.”
Now one of the mystery-story animals broke in: “‘Twas t’is way, sir captain, and shoo ‘twas t’at. We, my companero an’ meshelf, we wae shus like order cleanin’ ter hold namber eleven when wae fall on t’at man in she sleepin’ an’ much all drunk from whiskae.”
“Well, well,” the skipper said. “No more questions needed. Everything is cleared up. You, my good man, wanted to stow away on a British vessel with the intention of being taken to England. I feel sure that you are not in a mood to deny this accusation. It is a very serious offense under the British law to stow away on a British vessel with the intention of entering illegally the British Isles. It will cost you no less than six months’ hard labor, perhaps even two years, and deportation. I have every right to throw you overboard, charging you with intending to blow up a British vessel in the Straits of Gibraltar and with finding explosives in your possession when arrested. Of course, as a good and law-abiding British captain, I would never do such a thing. A man like you ought to be hoisted up the mast fifty times until you’re well skinned, to remind you of the fact that a British ship is not made to help criminals run away from the police.”
What was there to say? If I had told him what I really thought of him and what I thought of the social standing of his mother, the mystery-story animals would have worked me for three hours. No longer, for I knew that my bones and my working ability were badly needed. But three hours in those gorilla hands would sure have been three very nasty hours for me, and, for the time being, I could not pay them back.
“You are not needed any more, leave us alone,” the skipper said to the huskies.
To me he said: “What are you?”
“Good deck-hand. Painting and brass-polishing, sir.”
“You are a stoker.”
“No, sir, I am not.”
“What is this? You do not mean to lie to a British captain, do you, my good man? I am informed that, yesterday afternoon, you came around and asked for a stoker’s berth, did you not?”
I did not answer. I only felt sorry that I had made the mistake of saying, the day before, that I was fireman. Had I said I was a deck-hand or a P.S., a plain sailor, they might have lost all interest in my carcass, and I would now be sitting snugly on my beloved Yorikke, scaling the second boiler or washing the engine-hold.
I could not wander far off with my thoughts because the skipper said: “Since you are a stoker, you may call yourself very lucky indeed. Two of my stokers have become sick. Tropical fever. You may earn your passage and your bread on my ship. Ten pounds a month, one shilling sixpence an hour overtime when on high sea. Of course, I have no right to sign you on, since you are a stowaway. Upon reaching England, I am sorry, but I shall have to deliver you to the authorities. I shall speak a word or two in your favor in court, provided you obey orders here and do your work well. You may get off with only six months, and of course you will be held for deportation. However, as long as you are here on my ship and you behave as I expect you to, you shall be treated precisely like every other member of the crew. No distinction will be made against you.”
I let him have the pleasure of being pleased with his sermon. What else could I do anyway? Nothing; no, sir.
“We may get along fine, provided you do not make any trouble here. If we do not, there will be no fresh water, but plenty of smoked herring. For this reason we would do best to tolerate one another and accept conditions as we find them. Your watch begins at twelve. Watches are six and six hours, because I have no more than two stokers, you included. The two extra hours of each watch will be paid as overtime, at one and six each hour. That will be all. Good morning.”
Ahoy, ship! There I was. Fireman on the Empress of Madagascar. Well on my way to the wall of my village church. I had no village church, since the last burned down in Chic during the great fire or still earlier. So even this bit of honor, finding my name next to that of the Empress of Madagascar on the wall of the church, was denied me.
I might become rich on this tub, for the pay was the up-to-date pay of the British firemen’s union. But then there was England with six months of hard labor and two years’ waiting for deportation day. The only trouble was that I would never get any pay in my hands. The fishes would get it. Suppose I should have the luck to get away from the reef; I would not get a bob, because I was not signed on. Since I was not signed on, I could not be called to testify in court as to the sinking. So I do not get any money from the insurance, or the board either. I have no proof that I was on the Empress. They might even put me in prison as an impostor claiming damages for the shipwreck.
Now, don’t you worry, old boy. We won’t make England. As to the ground, well, let’s have a look at the boats as the best and surest indication of the date.
The boats are ready. Provisions in, and sails, and fresh water. Even gin packed away to keep us jolly. Well, Empress, it looks to me the wedding will take place no later than the third day from now.
I have to glance about the stoke-hold to see how I can get out easiest and quickest when the rush breaks in. At the first dim crackling my hearing-flap catches, I shall be up and out so fast that even the devil running after an escaped Presbyterian preacher will get yellow with envy.
47
The quarters are clean and new, reeking with fresh paint and a washing with chloride of lime. Mattresses in the bunks, yet no pillows, no blankets, no sheets. The Empress is not quite so rich as she wishes to appear from the outside. It doesn’t take me long to know where the pillows and blankets have gone to.
The skipper is smarter than one might have expected. Why send the pillows, blankets, and all such things down to feed the fishes while there is still a market for them?
Most of the dishes are gone also. But enough is left for me to eat like a human being. The meal is brought into the mess by an Italian boy who chatters in a friendly way. The grub is excellent, beyond any criticism. Though I would have thought a last dinner ought to be better. At least it was better at the French fort where I was to be shot as a spy or something.
No rum ever, I am told. The skipper is bone dry and does not give out rum. Being on a ship on which no rum is handed out makes me feel as if I’m sitting in a mission and looking at the silly Bible phrases. How can you walk straight from bow to stern without having some rum laid down in your belly to hold you on your feet?
The mess-boy is calling all hands off duty for lunch.
Two heavy Negroes come in. The drags. Then the fireman comes in. He walks rather heavily and quite swanky.
Now, I have seen that face before. Somewhere. Don’t know right now where. Seems to me I must have been once on the same can with him. Wonder who he is.
His face is swollen. Both eyes blackened and blood-shot. A bandage on his head.
“Stanislav, you?”
“Pippip, you too?”
“The same, you see. Caught and caged, and perfect. Looks like we’re again in the same stoke-hold,” I said to him.
“You got the better of it, Pippip. I took them up. Had a damned fine row with them. Blacked them up and broke them half a dozen fingers. Sure. There is a palm-sized hole in the head of one of them. I got up right after I had the first blow upon my bone. You were lying flat and full out. You got a mighty buzzer under your cap. When I saw you dropping, I bent down the same instant, see. So that blow meant for me in full came on only sidewise. I got up and oared them as they sure never before had been taken. Four they were. But don’t you think for a minute that they are still four. Each is only one quarter for permanent use. Want
to see them? Go to the port-side bunks. They are still cooling off and plastering all over. I lasted to the last round. But then someone, the fifth, who came in later, got me from behind. I did not know that he belonged. I thought he was rather coming to get me out and give me a hand. So I got a damned hard one on the bean.”
“What was the story the skipper told you?” I asked while we were eating.
“Me? There came in two guys telling the skipper that I had been drunk ashore and that in a fight I had stabbed and killed a man, and then I had run aboard the Empress to hide and stow away because the police was after me for slaying an innocent citizen of the port.”
“Almost what I was told I had done.”
“Now,” Stanislav said, “on the Yorikke we have lost our pay for so many months. Here we will never get a bent penny.”
“Won’t last long,” I said. “Hardly four days. He cannot take her to a better cemetery than the one he is over right now. And be sure it will happen when both you and I are on watch. We two are in boat four. I saw the list in the gangway. The firemen of the watch from twelve to four go into boat four.”
“Yep, I know it, I have seen it,” Stanislav admitted.
“Got a look at the stoke-hold? How to get out?” I asked.
“Twelve fires. Four firemen. The other two are Negroes. I guess from Kamerun or thereabouts. Speaking a bit English, and quite a bit German. All the drags are also Negroes. Only the petties are white.”
“They, of course, will be in the right boat at the right time, especially if they are limeys.”
“Telling me. Those men sitting there and eating like dogs, those are the drags of our watch.” Stanislav pointed to the two bulky Negroes at the table gulping down their food without any other interest as to what we were saying or doing. Pitiful poor devils they were.
At twelve at night we went below to start our watch. The earlier watches had been served by the donkey, with the help of the Negro drags.