The Death Ship (42 page)

They can’t miss it any more. If you wish to have your own sweet name on a plate in your church, if you have any, just go and sign on. It looks rather distinguished to have right by your own name such an elegant name as the
Empress of Madagascar
. Sounds a lot better than having gone down with an ordinary
Caroline
, or
Clementina Pumpstay
, or
Landshit
.
Empress of Madagascar
, boy, that looks like something great and swell, almost as if you had been her handy boy-friend.”

“Why should she try to make insurance cash?” Stanislav asked.

“Simple, honey, like making Swiss cheese around holes.”

“She can hardly be out of her diapers three years,” I figured.

“Now you got that straight and perfect; I see you can be trusted. Exactly, almost to the day, she is three years old.

She was built for East Asia and South American trade to beat the Germans, who are undermining rates again. She was to make sixteen knots at least. The gent who constructed her tried out, it appears, a new model, a new stream line, see, to raise her speed, but with less fuel expenses. As it happened, when she made the virgin hop she could reach four knots only, with asthma. With such a speed any clipper would beat her and she herself couldn’t bring in even the pay for the crew, to say nothing of all the other expenses and a profit for  the owners. With four knots she was scrap iron. Not even that.”

“She could be rebuilt.”

“Of course she could. You are a wise guy. But the owners thought of this before you came along and they did rebuild her. Rebuilt her not once, but twice. Each time she came out worse. She has to have the wind at the hams to make four knots now. So she cannot live, and she cannot die honorably. The owners cannot afford to sink her. It would break them. So nothing is left but to cash insurance.”

“And you think it will be on her next trip?”

“It has to be. She has tried to cash in twice already within less than three weeks. But she is so bully well that she did not even crack a leak. The first time she went upon a sandbank. Pretty like a swan she was sitting. I am sure in Glasgow they already celebrated the insurance with champagne. But bad weather came up and with it high water, which embraced the lady and whipped her off fine, off into twenty fathoms, where her old man could not do anything better than steam her off on her way. The second time she tried the game was last week, when we were already lying here. She was sitting smoothly between reefs. Well done by the skipper. He is a smart guy and knows how to navigate a can on a two-inch stripe. Wireless station, of course, was smashed up at the right time, so that the old man had an excuse for not using it. But he had to set flags to keep face and to bake proper witness cakes for evidence. He had tough luck again. Just when he had ordered to lower away the boats, a French coast guard popped up. What that skipper must have cursed when he saw the coast coming! Sure, he had the log already charmed up, and now he had to work the rubber to make it blank again for another fill-in. He had gone between the reefs at low water. The coast sent him, calling by wireless, three tugs. As soon as high water came in again, the tugs got the lady out like on oiled roller-skates.”

“And what is she to do now?” I asked.

“Desperation. She has to take her last chance. If she reaches home safely, the Board of Underwriters will sure make an investigation. They will demand a change of skipper. A new skipper has to be worked up by the owners before he is reliable and trustworthy. It may happen that the underwriters back out of her, once she’s home again. Then it will be too late for her to make good for her owners. So you see she has to do it on her trip out of here or she can never make it. Around this coast here she must go at it, because it is the safest part, free from the interference of ships rushing in too quick. Here it is silent. Farther north there is too much traffic; besides, there she cannot go off too far from the route, as she easily can do here without arousing suspicion.”

I wondered: “Why is she hanging here such a long time?”

“No firemen.”

“Silly,” I said. “I just passed by her and asked for a chance, saying I am fire’m.”

“Got papers?”

“Don’t ask herring.”

“Without papers she cannot take you. She is English. Rules. Taking in dead ones would look suspicious under these conditions. The investigation might build up a case against her for taking on men without papers who may be inexperienced. She must have good men with clean papers. The firemen were smart. They burnt themselves well enough to be taken to the hospital. Care of the British consul. They know why. Because they are the worst off when she cracks up. The water rushes into the stoke-hold, breaking in the hatchways and gangways, and so they are caught like rats in a trap and cannot get out. They are scorched to death, or drowned, or blown into rags when the furnaces get the cold shower and gun off. The firemen don’t have to sign on again, once off. They make time in the hospital until the dame puts out of port.”

“How is that bucket to get out without firemen?” I asked. “Don’t you worry, sonny. They are ready for kidnapping, or for shanghaiing, if you like that expression any better.”

“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.”