The Death Ship (46 page)

“Why, for all the funking sons, didn’t you tell me this before, Pippip? Of course, you are right.”

“I am not your legal adviser. Besides, you never asked me, and you are not paying for it either,” I said. “And look here, Stanislav, really you should be less ungrateful toward fate.”

“What do you mean by that, Pippip?”

“What I said. You are ungrateful, that’s what you are. You need a guy to tell you that. Destiny has made you half-partner of one of the latest issues of His Majesty’s merchant marine. She is a bit slow. I will admit that. But so are others which are less beautiful. If somebody makes you a gift of a fine turkey, you wouldn’t be so rude as to ask also for the cranberry sauce, would you? You are not only fifty-fifty on this most elegant British ship, you are also half-owner of a store the like of which you won’t find in many ports along the coasts of western Africa. Caviar, jam, jelly, golden butter, milk, tips of asparagus, spinach, plum pudding, ten different kinds of soups, meats, fish, fruits, all the crackers you need, biscuits, and then, the honey of all, ale, stout, real Scotch, three brands, cognac, French wine, Italian wine, Port wine, Malaga wine. Man, Stanislav, you do not deserve what destiny has dropped into your lap. You are rich, Stanislav, did you ever realize that? You are a ship-owner. We may form the company right now. I vote for you as president if you vote for me as the vice-pres, yes, siree. I mean it. Has the world ever seen an ungrateful guy like you? Owning an eight-thousand-register-ton ship and then still worrying about the running expenses. I guess I will go below and shake me up a cock. Just feel like.”

“That’s right.” Stanislav was again the jolly partner he had always been. “I am going with you and get drunk. Who knows, a can may hop along and pick us up, and for the rest of my life I would never forgive myself for leaving behind all these treasures without having even tasted them.”

So there now began a banquet which could not have been any better for the original owners of the
Empress
when it was newly born out of the shipyard. I think we got mighty soused. Whether we spent at this banquet one day or four I could never figure out. We got sober and drunk, and sober and drunk again. How many times this happened neither of us could tell.

Occasionally, to cool off our heads, we went up on deck and looked around for a passing ship. We never saw one. We felt sure none had seen us, or it would have come close to see what was up with our ship, standing on her head, with her buttocks high in the air.

“We are getting sour weather,” Stanislav said one afternoon.

He was right. It came up late in the evening. It was getting heavier and wilder every hour. Looked like one of the worst that came along those parts of western Africa.

We were sitting in the skipper’s cabin, which was lighted up by a swinging kerosene lamp.

Stanislav went restlessly to the windows and then back again to his seat.

“What’s the rag?” I asked. “You can’t do anything about this heavy sea coming up.”

He looked at me with a pretty worried face. He said after a while: “Tell you, Pippip, if this weather comes up the way I see it coming on, it is very likely the
Empress
slips off the reef, is thrown over, and goes down with this heavy water-filled bow of hers like gliding off the rails of a shipyard. Then we will have hardly any time to get out of her suck-water. I tell you we’d better look in time how to get off her before she takes us for a ride with no return ticket.”

He found about ten yards or so of rope, which he tied around his body to have it ready and with him all the time. I found in a drawer a ball of strong cord about as thick as an ordinary pencil.

“Let’s climb up on our deck,” Stanislav advised. “It’s better for us to sit there in the open than to stay inside. We would, be trapped here in this cabin the same minute she makes off, and then we would have no chance to get clear. Being in the open and free to move, there is always a chance of getting away in time.”

We came up, and there we were sitting again on the aft wall of the main-house. The gale had become so hard that we had to hold on to the rings and hooks we found in the wall.

Wilder and wilder the gale came up. Breakers powerful as trains at full speed crashed against the main-house. We expected any minute to see the bridge break off and be carried away. The breakers came higher and higher until every third breaker reached us and washed us all over. The skipper’s cabins and the mess-cabins were now flooded with water.

“If this weather lasts all night through,” Stanislav said, “there will be nothing left of the bridge and fore part of the main-house by the morning. Looks like the sea is quite ready to carry off the whole house on midship. We’d better work before that happens, Pippip. Let’s climb up on the aft wall of the stem-house, where the rudder machinery is. Seems the safest place. But good-by, lordly eats and kingly drinks. The rudder-house has not enough left-overs to feed even a young mouse.”

“All right with me, Stanislav, let’s go and make the rudder-house.”

“There is still the probability that, supposing the weather calms down, part of the main-castle will stay. The house does not go off with just one blow. It breaks off piece by piece. We may just still wait an hour before we try to climb up. Here we have a hold, but while climbing we are at the mercy of the breakers; if they whip us at the wrong time, we are all washed off.”

So we hung on waiting for our chance to start to climb.

Three gigantic waves, each of them seemingly ten times as heavy as any of those that had licked the
Empress
so far, whipped against the wreck with such a roar that we thought the end of the world was close.

The third of these gigantic breakers caused the
Empress
to rock heavily. She still stood firmly upon the reef, but we had the feeling that she had broken loose, or that one of the rocks between which she had been squeezed had cracked. She trembled as never before. We no longer were sure that she was standing upon the rocks like a tower.

The sea seemed to know that the end of the
Empress
was near and that nothing could save her now from her fate. Dark thick clouds were tossed above us like so many torn rags. The storm seemed to grow into a greater rage so as not to be laughed at by the thundering and roaring waves.

Through these rags of clouds we could see, for a few seconds, the shining stars that, in spite of all the uproar, called down upon us the eternal promise: “We are the Peace and the Rest!” Yet between these words of promise we could see another meaning: “Within the flames of never ceasing creation and restlessness, there we are enveloped; do not long for us if you are in want of peace and rest; we cannot give you anything which you do not find within yourself!”

“Stanislav,” I hollered, “the breakers are coming on again. There she goes. The
Empress
is dragging off.”

I saw, in the dim light of the stars, the first breaker closing in on the
Empress
like a huge dark monster.

Then it fell upon us. We felt its hundreds of wet claws trying to tear us away from our hold.

With all our strength we held on. But the
Empress
was lifted high up — standing for a while, it appeared to us, at the very peak of the bow then she made a half-turn and stood quivering and trembling as though in terrible fright or in pitiful pain.

The second breaker leaped at us even more strongly, and we lost our breath under it. I felt that I had been thrown into the sea, but I still had iron rings in my hands, and so I knew that I was still on the ship.

The
Empress
now moaned like a human being dying of horrible wounds. She turned around slightly. High up at her stern she staggered and began to lean over toward port side. We heard her hull cracking and heard hatches or masts breaking away. No longer did she stand upright with her stern straight up toward the clouds. Again she quivered all over. To see the death of a young woman who does not want to die cannot be more painful than watching the
Empress
resist so bravely the onrushing end. Strange it was that although my own end was as close as hers, I felt like a dying soldier on the battle-field who forgets his own death when he sees how painfully his buddy is making off to glory.

Suddenly, almost without knowing it, I roared: “Stanislav, ahoy!”

I did not know for sure if he had yelled also. I think he must have done so, but I heard nothing.

The third breaker came on. It was the heaviest and most powerful of all. It came entirely conscious of its victory.

The
Empress
seemed to have become indifferent already. She showed no reaction any longer. It was as though she had died of fright.

The third breaker roared and thundered and raged. Yet it was a useless comedy. The
Empress
was dead. She did not tremble when this last breaker caught her, nor did she rock or waver. She lay down ever so gently. The little waves which run after the outgoing breaker like so many little tails caressed and kissed the
Empress
when she fell onto her knees and glided smoothly down into her last berth.

Another breaker rushed on like a hustling undertaker. The
Empress
was softly lifted up once more, she was whirled around in a half-turn, and without cracking or knocking her hull upon the rocks, she was laid on her side, and with a last gargle, ghostly against the uproar of the sea, she was buried.

Before she disappeared entirely, I heard Stanislav holler: “Jump off and swim, Pippip, swim for your life or you will be caught in the wash down. Get away from her.”

It was not quite so easy to swim as Stanislav had suggested, for I had received a good knock on my arm by a broken mast or something that had broken loose.

I nevertheless swam with all my strength. A wave had caught me, and it threw me far enough out of the wash so that I could make off the sinking
Empress
without being in danger of being caught by her eddy.

“Pippip, ahoy!” I heard Stanislav yelling. “Where are you? Are you clear?”

“I am. Come up here!” I hollered back. “Come on here! I have got plenty room for you. No, here! Here, ahoy. Here I am. Hold on. Here, here, come on. Ahoy, hoiho!”

I had to holler some time before Stanislav could make out in which direction to swim to reach me.

After a long while he came close. He reached me. I lent him a hand and he climbed up where I was hanging on.

50

“Like to know what’s this we are sitting on,” Stanislav asked. “I don’t know myself. I was thrown upon it,” I said. “I couldn’t even tell exactly how it happened. I figure it must be a wooden wall from one department of the bridge. Perhaps from the chart-room. Here are some iron rings set in with bolts and brass handles.”

“I didn’t have time to look at the bridge cabins closely,” Stanislav said, “or else I would know where this wall comes from. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what it is and where it comes from. Lucky that there are still some parts on some cans that are still made of wood. Otherwise we should not be here.”

I agreed. “Makes me think of the old story-books in which you can always see a sailor or a cabin-boy embracing a mast floating upon the high waves. Nothing doing in times like ours. Masts also are now made of steel. Just try to embrace a broken-off mast of a sunken ship today and see where you’ll head at high speed. If you ever see another picture like that in a book or in the movies, just cry out loud that the book-maker or the movie-director is a cheater. Sock him if you can get him.”

“My, you have got a nerve to talk such silly nonsense right now under the conditions we are in.” Stanislav seemed to be sore at me.

“What do you expect me to do? Mourn about a bucket that went off under our feet? Sing hymns? Say my evening prayer kneeling before the bed? Or cry like mother’s baby who has put his fingers in the hot gravy? Hell, who knows where we shall meet within an hour or so? It’s now maybe my last chance to tell you what I think about steel tube masts. And, mark my words, that sure is something which ought not to be forgotten, because it is very important indeed. Masts are no longer of real use to make a good story.”

Morning was still far away. The night was heavy and dark. The waves were high. We were thrown up and down. Hardly a star could be seen. It was cold. The sea was, on the other hand, lukewarm, as it is in the tropics.

“We are lucky, damn it. Clear off and safe like that,” Stanislav said.

“To the devil you go with your whining. Beseeching all the guys down at the bottom. You are a luck-killer. Waking up the whole safari to come up and get us. I wonder where you were raised. Unbelievers of heaven and hell. I say hell, that’s what I say. And damned we are, all of us. No getting away from the outfit. Shit in the goldfish. If you are sitting pretty, don’t yell about it. Knock wood. Oh, why did I ever in all my life put up with a blasphemous sailor like you? I don’t understand the Germans at all, why they could ever take a guy like you for a gob. No wonder they could not make Skagen and had to go home. Well, they were saved only by leaving you to the Danes.”

“Won’t you shut up and let us think a bit to make sure what we are doing?” Stanislav broke in.

“Think? Think? What do you want to think about? Tell me that. Sitting on a broken-off wooden wall in mid-ocean, and at midnight, and you want to think. I only wish I could get a separation so I wouldn’t have to see you any more. It makes me sick. Thinking.”

“What else can we do right now? If we fall asleep we are finished.”

How the world changes. For months and months we had to worry and be troubled about papers and identification cards. Then we had to worry about rats the size of huge cats. After this, or at the same time, we had to sweat and to bleed about dropped grate-bars. And now, all of a sudden, it does not matter any longer if there are passports in the world or if the world can go on without them. What does it matter if grate-bars fall out or not on the
Yorikke
? Sailor’s identification cards or not. Whatever a being may own is of no importance, of no concern at all. It is gone and useless. All we have is our breath. I shall fight for it with teeth and nails. I won’t give up and I won’t give in. Not yet. Not to the ground port.