Gangway! (13 page)

    He drank. "Unfortunately, however, Egalites consignment was a cargo of indentured servants billed to the Caribbean, whence she took rum to Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro I once again switched vessels, and found myself on a ship carrying coffee to the Azores. Surely, I felt, somewhere in the Lord's vast sea there must be a ship heading for the States. Unfortunately however, I did not encounter such, and then at last, in South America once again, I boarded an Argentine clipper, the
San Andreas
, which was bound for San Diego with a cargo of sandals and Sangria."

    He drank. "There were at that time approximately fourteen separate and distinct wars being carried on simultaneously throughout South America, with each nation participating in five or six alliances and two or three of the wars. Under those conditions it was not unnatural that privateers should be numerous and active, of course, and one constantly risked being accosted at sea by such ruffians-they were everywhere, always claiming ships for this or that country.

    "We succeeded in beating round the Horn in a savage maelstrom of wind, snow and hurtling ice, but in our voyage northward along the Pacific coast we were unfortunately discovered by a roaming man-of-war. It was a sad affair I can assure you. We were captured by Venezuelan freebooters. They, in turn, were taken by Chilean privateers. Next we were overwhelmed by elements of the Ecuadorian Navy. We then headed in toward shore but were ambushed by Colombian commandeers who, like the rest, took the ship as a prize of war."

    He drank. "There was more, of course; I touch only the surface. They all began to run together in my mind after a while, and one finds it most difficult to sort out the proper order of events. In one six-month period, never leaving the ship, I sailed under nine different flags."

    He drank. "Not being South American myself, and therefore not suspected of patriotic alliances or emotional ties with one side or another, I found that I was considered more trustworthy than most crew members. For that reason I rose rapidly through the ranks to the quarterdeck. In due course I had earned the position and rank of Third Mate, the post I still held when a party of Paraguayans in a stolen skiff rowed out to our ship one dark night and pirated the
San Andreas
from its then-possessors, who may have been Brazilians. Or Costa Ricans, I forget which. Paraguay, which is a landlocked nation as you know, had been at some considerable disadvantage in possessing no navy of its own. Therefore, the capture of the
San Andreas
was a victory of signal importance to that nation. The
San Andreas
became the whole of the Paraguayan Navy. As a matter of fact I suppose she still is."

    He drank. "Shortly thereafter, however, Paraguay lost its several wars. As a result our captain and his men were understandably reluctant to venture ashore anywhere on the South American coast, for fear of encountering hostile forces whose brutality was well known to us all. Therefore, we fled northward and, after many peregrinations and misadventures, we finally arrived at the Golden Gate, and found a berth for our weary ship here in San Francisco.

    "The captain and his crew at once deserted the ship and set out for the gold fields. I had been promoted Second Mate on the voyage up, and after a suitable interval alone on the ship I appointed myself Acting First Officer. Sometime after that, I assumed-not without some audacity, I'm sure-the temporary title of Captain."

    He drank. "And all the while I had in my mind the unhappy state my poor Daddy must be in, attempting to run the apothecary shop without my help."

    Gabe said, "You've been here three years you say?"

    "Yes. I keep myself alive by fishing off the windward side of the ship. But I appear to owe the city three years' worth of dock fees and, in fact, the harbormaster of late has made ominous statements about impounding the ship."

    "Your father must be pretty worried about you by now," Vangie said. "How long have you been away from Baltimore?"

    Captain Flagway drank. "Twenty-four years," he said. "But I suppose Daddy has made do with temporary help."

    Saying which, he passed out and slipped quietly to the floor.

    He awoke in the night, and they were all sitting around watching him. They smiled. Someone gave him a drink and he clutched it gratefully.

    Gabe said, "Feeling all right now?"

    "Just one more swallow… ump… yes, that'll do quite nicely, I'm sure." He beamed.

    "Looks to me like you could use a little money, captain."

    "Lord, yes. Why the dock fees alone are a terrible worry in my mind, sir."

    "I was thinking more along the lines of a railroad ticket to Baltimore."

    A bright blue flame of hope burst up in Captain Flagway. "You don't really think that's possible!"

    "It isn't," Vangie said flatly. "But he thinks it is."

    The captain frowned. "I don't understand."

    "Ignore her," Gabe said. "It's only that what we have in mind is… well, maybe just a bit illegal."

    "Oh." The captain considered. "I've never done anything illegal," he said. "In fact, now that I think upon it, I've never done most legal things."

    "What we're going to steal is the…"

    "Oh, dear! Stealing?"

    Gabe smiled in an honest and forthright manner. "Well," he said, "maybe that wasn't exactly the right word, Captain. You couldn't really call it stealing, not the way you'd think of what stealing actually is. What we have in mind to do is take the gold from the United States Mint up on the hill there."

    Captain Flagway looked at him doubtfully. "That does sound like stealing," he said.

    "Well, now, just a minute, Captain," Gabe said. "Let's consider this. If I take money away from you, that leaves you in direct trouble. Broke maybe, possibly hungry, or even with bills to pay."

    "Like dock fees," the captain suggested.

    "That's a good example right there," Gabe agreed. "So if you take something from a man that that man needs, that's stealing. Would you say I was right in that?"

    "It does sound right to me," the captain said.

    "Well, you can't leave the Government broke and hungry," Gabe said. "It just can't be done. The Government isn't a man. Think about it for just a minute here. What is the Government, anyway?"

    Captain Flagway shook his head in honest bewilderment. "I haven't the faintest idea," he said.

    "Why, my friend," Gabe said, "the Government is your Government, my Government, Vangie's Government, Ittzy's Government, and Francis's Government-even Roscoe's Government. The Government is nothing more nor less than the combined will of all the citizens in the nation… of the people, by the people, for the people."

    "That's a nice phrase," the captain said. He nodded, smiling, pleased with it. "You do have a knack for the phrase," he said.

    Gabe frowned, thrown off the track for a second. Francis, leaning forward into the conversation, said, "Captain, where were you in, say, sixty-four?"

    The captain stroked his jaw, trying to remember. "Let me see," he said. "Sixty-four. That would have been Brazil, I believe, although I may be mistaken."

    Gabe said, "Francis, that's neither here nor there. The point, Captain, is that the Government is the people, and we're the people. We're citizens, so we're part of the Government."

    The captain nodded, seeing the wisdom in that. Beside him, the girl Vangie was giving Gabe looks of astounded admiration, and now she said, "Why, Gabe, I never knew you thought deep thoughts like that."

    "I'm thinking all the time," Gabe told her. Back to the captain again, he said, "Getting back to the Mint for a minute-if we take gold from the Government, it's just exactly the same thing as if we switched our own money from one trouser pocket to another, isn't it?"

    The captain frowned. He felt all at sea suddenly, though not in any familiar way. He said, "Is it?"

    "Of course, it is," Gabe said.

    Still trying to work his way through the logic-pretty much like chewing a twenty-cent steak-the captain nodded and said, "I guess I just never looked at it that way."

    "In fact," Gabe went on, "the newspapers are saying exactly the same thing. Have you been reading the papers?"

    "No, I… I'm afraid I don't…"

    "Well, I'll tell you," Gabe said. "The papers are saying that since this so-called financial panic started it's the policy of our Government to get more cash money into circulation. And that's just what we're out to do, my friend."

    Francis joined the conversation again. "Why, Gabe, you're right," he said. He sounded surprised and pleased, as though he hadn't expected to find himself in agreement with his friend, though why that should be the captain had no idea. "I do see what you mean," Francis said. "It's actually patriotic, isn't it? Circulating the money."

    The captain found himself nodding along with Francis. It seemed to him he could make out light at the end of the tunnel. "It is, isn't it?" he said. "Patriotic. In a way."

    "A darn funny way, if you ask me," Vangie said.

    Gabe leaned toward the captain. "Then you're in?"

    "Well " Suddenly the captain had a familiar feeling. It was as though he was being crimped again-without the rough hands and the burlap sack, but just as effectively being whisked away into somebody else's plans. Trying to be cautious, he said, "I don't really know. I mean, what would it involve? I couldn't hit anyone on the head, you know, or anything like that."

    "No, no," Gabe said, "you wouldn't have to."

    "Not hold a gun," the captain went on, "or stab anybody."

    Francis and Vangie both looked a trifle green. Gabe, patting the air in a calming manner, said, "No no, not at all. Definitely not."

    "I couldn't strangle anybody with my bare hands," the captain explained earnestly. "Or cut them apart with an ax, or bury them in wet cement, or drown them in the sewer, or…"

    Francis and Vangie kept leaning farther and farther away, out of the conversation. Gabe too was looking green by now, and his voice was somewhat loud and shrill when he said, "Nothing like that. I promise you, Captain. You don't have to go on; I understand the kind of thing you're talking about. It won't be anything like that at all."

    "Well, that's good," the captain said.

    Ittzy said, "We just want your boat."

    "That's fine," the captain said. He felt great relief. "Then I wouldn't have to throttle anybody or…"

    "Just the boat!" Gabe said, fast and loud. Then he lowered his voice again. "Just the boat. To make our getaway in."

    "Very good," the captain said, nodding. Then he stopped nodding and frowned. "But I have no crew."

    "We'll take care of that part," Gabe said.

    Vangie gave him an odd look, one the captain couldn't quite fathom. "We will?" she asked.

    Gabe ignored her. To the captain he said, "The question is, will that boat of yours… I mean, I don't want to say anything against her, but she is sort of…"

    "A rotting old tub?" Captain Flagway asked.

    "Well, yeah. Now," Gabe said, "I figure a million dollars in gold…"

    The captain blinked. "A million dollars?"

    "… should weigh in at about two and a half ton. Will the
San Andreas
carry that much weight?"

    The captain considered the question, then shook his head. "To be absolutely truthful with you," he said, "I really don't know."

    "The thing is," Gabe said, "we wouldn't want it to sink with all that gold on board."

    "I can see that," the captain said.

    Gabe scowled, frowning toward the middle distance. "If there was only some way to test it," he said. "Get two and a half ton of something else on board ahead of time, and see if she kept on floating."

    "That would be very good," the captain said.

    "Hmmmmmm," Gabe said.

    Francis said, "Old cock, I might have a small suggestion."

    

    

    Ittzy sat in a chair in the center of a big square that was roped off to keep the people from crowding too close to him.

    It was on the afterdeck of the
San Andreas
. People were swarming aboard to stare at him. Ittzy stared right back. He was getting sick and tired of all this. With the money they were going to get out of the Mint he'd never have to put up with this kind of attention again.

    They had come down to the waterfront in the morning and met Captain Flagway at the dock. Flagway had the physiognomy of a bassett hound anyhow and this morning his eyes were bloodshot and he walked around very carefully balancing his head on top of his neck as if it were about to fall off. Ittzy had never been drunk enough to get hung over and he didn't want to try, judging by the examples he'd seen in the past fifteen years in San Francisco.

    When they had arrived at the ship in the cold morning light Gabe had looked at it again and made a sickly face and remarked, "You know I get the feeling the only thing keeping that tub on top of the water is some sandbar it's sitting on. I mean, for God's sake look at it, it's got barnacles growing on top of the barnacles."

    Francis had said, "Oh, I don't know, old cock, she doesn't look all that dismal to me."

    Vangie had said, "I still don't understand this idea of yours."

    "My dear, it's simplicity itself. The problem being how do we get two and a half tons aboard the
San Andreas
to test her, without breaking our dear old backs."

    "But how does putting Ittzy in a chair on the deck solve that problem?"

    "By inducing two and a half tons of human flesh to walk on board the ship, my dear Vangie."