The Death Ship (21 page)

The dinner on Sunday consisted of boiled beef with mustard sauce, or corned beef and a slimy gravy, and sometimes cabbage, but mostly potatoes. Monday dinner was salt meat which no one ever ate, for it was only a sort of meat-crust soaked in salt. Tuesday we had dried salt fish, which was always stinking. Wednesday it was vegetables, and prunes swimming in a paste of potato-starch. This paste was called the pudding. Thursday the dinner was again salted meat which nobody could eat.

Supper was either one of the dinners or one of the breakfasts. Potatoes came with each meal. Potatoes were the backbone of all our eats. Half of the potatoes, however, were so bad that we could not eat them. Sometimes we had a cargo of fresh young potatoes, so-called spring potatoes. The cook stored up well from this cargo, and we had really excellent potatoes. But when we didn’t have such cargoes, the cheapest potatoes the skipper could buy were served for our food.

For blinds not only potatoes were taken in, but also bananas, pineapples (real pineapples of course, not moonshine), tomatoes, dates, figs, coconuts, sweet chestnuts. Only on account of such cargoes was it possible at all for us to survive the food which was served to us. Men who had been for five years soldiers in the last war can well imagine how much a human being can endure before breaking down in health and spirit. Yet a man who has sailed on the
Yorikke
will know for sure what and how much an individual can bear and still not go overboard.

Supper over, I had to wash the kettles in which the food had been brought in. Also I had to clean the dishes that had been used on the table, at least those which I had used in common with the fellows who had been kind enough to lend them to me.

I looked around and I began to feel sick. I could not live in this dirt. It seemed impossible. I made up my mind to clean the quarter.

After the men had eaten, they let themselves drop into their bunks as if they were dead. While they had been eating, hardly one word had been said. One could easily get the impression that hogs were eating from their trough. But this impression I lost entirely before I was one full week on the
Yorikke
. Then I could no longer make any comparison. The capacity to make comparisons or to recall my former existence had been killed. I was positive that any newcomer on the
Yorikke
who still had a light cover of civilization would have thought precisely the same of me when seeing me eating as I had thought of my fellow-sailors when I saw them for the first time.

“No soap supplied,” somebody yelled from his bunk. “And no scrubbers and brushes either. And for devil’s sake keep quiet now and leave the quarter as you found it. Hell, I want to sleep, bigud, I need it. Shut your grub-hold.”

I rushed to the chief’s cabin and knocked at the door.

“I want soap and something to scrub with. I want to clean up that shit in the foc’sle.”

“What do you think I am? You do not mean to suggest that I have to buy soap and scrubbers for the crew, do you? Nothing doing here. Go to the captain.”

“All right, sir. But now what about me? I haven’t got any soap to wash even my face. And I have to work in the stoke-hold, haven’t I?”

“You are not a kid-sailor, are you? Don’t look like it to me. You are an old salt. Ought to know better any decent sailor provides his own soap. Part of his outfit.”

“Maybe. News to me, sir. Fine soap of course. But not ordinary soap. Soap for the black gang has to be supplied by the company. It’s regulation. Also sweat towels. What sort of a bucket is this anyway? Every decent ship supplies mattresses, pillows, blankets, ordinary towels. And above all things plates, cups, spoons, knives, forks. We are no pigs.”

“Every man knows best what he is.”

“All these things are part of the equipment of the ship and are no part of the sailor’s outfit.”

“Not here. Not with us. And besides, if you don’t like it here, why the hell don’t you go where you came from?”

“You dirty chunk.”

“Out of my cabin and stay out. I shall report you to the skipper.”

“In iron, hey?”

“Not us. We are not that crazy. I need the drags badly. And I need you even more badly. No, not iron. It will cost you two months’ pay for subordination. We cannot afford iron or chains, see. And whipping neither. You cannot heave coal with a sore back.”

“You are a fine bunch,” I said. “So low you even steal the poor sailor’s pay.”

The chief grinned and said: “How come stealing your pay? I didn’t invite you to come here into my cabin and insult me.”

I could have socked him fine. But it would have cost me another two months’ wages, and I could never sign off as long as I would not have money coming.

“I just wanted to see clear,” I said. “I wanted to hear from you, from the chief, that we cannot have a cake of ordinary soap, and that we have to live here like hogs.”

“Tell all this to your grandmother,” he said; “maybe she’ll listen to that nonsense. But I do not like it at all. And now get out of here; and do not dare step in again until you are called. Out! You had better turn in. Your watch starts at eleven.”

“My watch starts at twelve. From twelve to four.”

“Who said so? Not here with us. And most certainly not with the coal-shovelers. You start at eleven and you heave ashes first until twelve. Understand?”

“Heaving ashes is overtime, of course?”

“Of course not. No overtime paid for clearing ashes. Not with us. It’s part of your regular work. That’s what you have signed on for.”

Which age was I living in? Among what sort of people had I fallen by accident? In ancient Rome and Greece even the slaves had certain rights.

My mind befogged, I staggered to the fore.

I leaned against the railing, trying to find myself back where I really was in the world.

There was the sea. That blue glorious sea which I loved better than I ever could think of loving a Jane. That wonder of a sea, in which to be drowned as an honorable sailor when doing my duty I would have felt to be the greatest honor that could be bestowed upon me. That sea, that capricious woman whom alone I felt truly married to, that wonderful woman who can smile so charmingly, can sing such bewitching cradlesongs, that can rage so furiously, that can show such a savage and alluring temperament, and then fall asleep so sweetly and so dreamily that one could do nothing better than just kiss her and kiss her over and over again.

It was that same sea on which thousands and thousands of decent and honest ships were sailing at this very time. And I, of all sane persons on earth and on sea, I had to ship on this can that was suffering from leprosy. A bucket that was sailing for no other reason but that the sea might have pity on her. Somehow, I felt that the sea would not take this tub, which had all the diseases known under heaven, for the simple reason that the sea did not wish to be infected with leprosy and pus. Not yet at least. She, the sea, still waited for the day when the
Yorikke
would have to be in some port far out of the way and when this old maid, for some reason or other, would then burst or explode or fall apart and so save the sea from being used as cemetery for this pest of the oceans.

So standing against the railing and looking up to the star-loaded sky above me, before me the whitish glimmering waves of the sea that lullingly splashed against the ship’s hull as the
Yorikke
furrowed her way, and thinking of my lost New Orleans and of my dear sunny Spain, a feeling I had never had before tried to get hold of me. I thought: What’s the use?

Make a clean short cut, old boy from Sconsin, chuck the coal-drag, and hop over; have done with that filth and dung. Make the hop and enter the good old sea while you’re still a clean Yank sailor, and before you get soiled all over and make the sea ashamed of you when you come to kiss her good-by. But then where is the salvation? It cannot be done that easily. Because there would be only another poor, overtired, ragged, starved, and tortured coal-drag who would have to go on double watch on account of your having kicked off. This fellow-drag of mine, left behind with a double watch, would make my last trip so unbearable that I could not stay below, and it might happen that I would have to come up again just to say: “Hey, brother-sailor, I am sorry, please forgive me. Won’t you forgive me, so that I may stay below?” Suppose he doesn’t. What then?

Damn it, damn it all, and devil and hell. Now, listen here, boy from Sconsin, that pest
Yorikke
cannot get you. Not you. And all the consuls neither. Chin up and get at it. Swallow the filth and digest it. Quickest way to get rid of it. Some day there will be soap and brushes again, and plenty of them. Be it New Orleans or Galveston or Los An. All the filth is only outside. Don’t let it go to your soul and spirit and your heart. Take the plunge head-first. That way you’ll feel the cold less. And now away from the railing and away from that beast that is after you. Kick him right in the pants. Sock it right in the swear-hold. Spit it out, and do it well. Spitting out the filth you feel in your throat is all you can do now. But make a good job of it. Now back into your bunk.

When I was back in the quarters, which were filled with thick kerosene smoke, I knew, and this time for certain, that I was on a death ship. But I also knew for certain that it would not be my death ship, no matter what might happen to her. I shall not help the
Yorikke
make insurance. I shall not be a gladiator on her. I spit right into your face, Imperator Cæsar Augustus. You have lost one of the slaves who greet you: “The moribund salute you, hail!” Save your soap and crash it down your wind-pipe. I do not need it any longer. But you shall not hear me whine again. I spit into your face. I spit at you and at your whole damn breed. Swallow that. I am ready now for battle.

28

I could not sleep. The smoke from the kerosene lamp of the seven virgins became thicker every minute, and it filled the quarter with a heavy cloud. Breathing became difficult and I felt a piercing pain in my lungs. I had no blanket, and, since the nights at sea can be very cold, I was freezing.

Just when I had fallen into a light sleep, I was shaken up and somebody dragged me by force more than half-way out of my bunk.

“Up now. Eleven. Don’t fall asleep again. I can’t come again. At ten to twelve you go get up your fireman and bring him his coffee.”

“Don’t know him. Don’t know where he bunks.”

“Get going. I’ll show you.”

I sprang up, and I was shown the bunk of my fireman, which was in the opposite quarter, at the port side.

“Hop on it. Go right away to the winch at the ash-pipe. We’ve got a hell of a load of ashes to heave.”

The man that had called me had come like a phantom, and like a phantom he disappeared. I had not seen his face.

The quarter was dark, for the virgins’ lamp gave no light. It just glimmered along.

When I came to the gangway at port side, where the ash-tube led down into the stoke-hold, Stanislav was waiting. He held an open wick-lamp which he hung up on some hook near the ash-tube.

Stanislav was the coal-drag of the watch now on duty. He tried to explain to me how to handle the winch, a sort of a windlass, which was used to heave up the heavy ash-cans from the stoke-hold.

“Now look here, Stanislav, I don’t understand anything at all here,” I said to him. “I thought I was an old salt. Yet never have I seen a bucket like this one here on which the coal-drags have to work extra watches. Why and what for?”

“You tell me. What do I know?” he said. “I am not a baby myself. Believe me, I have shipped on a good many washbasins. On any decent tub the fireman has to help, his drag clear the ashes, so that every watch is just for itself. But here the fireman never gets a rest for a minute. The drag even has to help him stoke. Or the steam comes down to a hundred twenty just like that. Everything is busted and broken. Steam doesn’t stay. See? Pipes are leaking. Furnaces rotten, see? On other ships of this size there are two firemen and a drag, or at least one fireman and a half besides the drag. Here the fireman cannot leave the fire alone for one minute. Anyway, I think by now you know where you are, my angel sailor.”

“Bet your sweet little sailor life, I am not going to become an angel on this kettle.”

“Going to skip next port, hey?” he asked. “Doesn’t work well. You will learn this pretty soon. Just make yourself comfortable, feel at home, you know. Get acquainted with the boats, I mean the life-boats. Take a good look at the one you would like to choose on a proper occasion. Talk it over with the cook. He is the grandfather on this bucket here. Warm up with him. He can be of great help to you, if you know how to take him. He doesn’t know anything about cooking. But a swell guy. He has two life-jackets stowed away.”

“Why? Are there no jackets or vests for us?”

“Seen any?”

“Didn’t look.”

“Better don’t take anything for granted here. There isn’t even a life-ring aboard. Of course, against the mid-castle you see four gilded rings, pretty to look at. Take my advice, don’t touch any of them. If you stick your head through one of them you would be by far safer with your head stuck through the hole of a millstone. With a millstone you have a chance that a miracle might happen. But with these gilded rings around you, even your mother would say, it serves you right, boy, you ought to know better.”

“How can that lousy dog do such a thing, leave us without life-vests or jackets? So used to see them in the quarter that I didn’t notice that there were none.”

Stanislav laughed: “You never shipped a box like this one. That’s why.
Yorikke
is already my fourth death tub. In these days, I mean since the war is over, you can pick tubs like this one here at random. Never before seen that many.”

“Hey Lavski!” the fireman yelled from below.

“What’s up, fireman?” Stanislav cried through the ash-tube.

“Are you devils heaving ashes or are you not or you want me to come up and sock you in the grub-hold, hey?” the fireman answered.

“Shut up, down there. I have to teach the new drag how to work the ash-winch. Has never seen one in his life,” Stanislav explained.