The Death Ship (16 page)

They must not think that they can put one over on me telling me that one is the second and the other the donk. Not me, no siree. I had already sailed as a kitchen-boy when birds like these were still being chased by truant-officers. I know cinnamon when I get it in chocolate.

He didn’t understand me, for he went right on: “Go to the quarters afore, and get you a bunk.”

Shit! Does he speak seriously? This escaped convict, is he really to be the second engineer, and the other pickpocket the donk? I tottered to the foc’sle as though I’d been clubbed over the head.

On coming to the quarters I found a few men lazily stirring about in their bunks. They looked at me with sleepy eyes, showing not the slightest interest in me. I figured that a new sailor was looked at with less interest than a new can of paint.

I am positive that the
Yorikke
had seldom, if ever, left a port with a complete crew. A nasty story was told about her always being short of men. It was rumored, and I am sure the rumor was well founded, that the skipper had several times gone out of town to the gallows, where, in the silence of night, with the help of the bos’n, he carefully examined the hanged to find one in whom there was enough life left to let him say: “Yes, cap’n, sure I’ll sign on.” I don’t see any damn reason why I shouldn’t believe this rumor. Other things have happened on the
Yorikke
that were a hundred times worse.

I asked for a vacant bunk. With a movement of his head, crooking the corner of his upper lip, a man indicated lazily an upper bunk.

“Did someone kick off in it?” I asked.

The man nodded, crooked his upper lip again, and said: “The lower bunk is also for sale.”

So I took the lower. The man was no longer looking at me. I felt sure that if I asked him another question he would throw a knife at me, or at least his shoes.

The bunk was not only vacant, but also entirely free from any mattress, straw, sheet, blanket, or pillow. There was only dust and splinters and broken-off pieces of worm-eaten wood inside. The bunk was an example of how far an economical shipbuilder can go to save space without coming to the point where a labor-inspector would say: “Not enough space left for the crew.” Labor-inspectors are very lenient as regards the builder and the company. In this bunk there was hardly space enough to lay two tightly folded umbrellas close to each other. A sailor, provided he was very lean, could lie in it only sideways. To sleep on his back was out of the question. The
Yorikke
took good care never to let a sailor get so fat around his hips that he would find it impossible to lie sideways in his bunk. Since every sailor coming from his watch was so tired that he couldn’t even think of gin, it didn’t matter, anyhow.

The aisle or, better, the gangway between the bunks was so narrow that you could sit way back in your bunk and you would still have your knees pressed against the opposite bunk. It was impossible to dress, but as a matter of fact there was little dressing ever done by this crew, for they had nothing to dress with. Everybody kept the few rags he was clothed in on his body, working or sleeping. Whoever would undress on lying down would never find again what he used to call his pants or shirt or shoes.

Besides, there were no blankets, and your clothes served to keep you at least a little warm when you slept.

In each of the bunks opposite the one I had taken there were a few pieces of ragged sackcloth and shredded scraps of old canvas and such remains of pants, jackets, and shirts as, regardless of how hard one might try, could no longer be used as clothes. These rags served as the mattresses. For pillows some guys used pieces of wood; others had old discarded cordage and junk. Now I knew it was possible to sleep on cordage, and soon I learned to envy those who had it.

Whenever a man skipped in port and was left behind or whenever one fell overboard or died, the survivors fought for those rags and cordage harder than hungry vultures fight with hyenas over a carcass.

24

The
Yorikke
had no electric light, and no machinery for it. In her immaculate innocence she evidently did not know that such a thing as electric light even existed. By many means I could discover the exact age of the
Yorikke
. One of those means was the light used to illuminate the quarters of the crew.

This apparatus we called the kerosene lamp. Newcomers, not yet initiated, called it more crudely the petroleum lamp. It was a kind of small tin kettle, pretty well shattered. The burner, which could be screwed off, had had, at the time it was bought, the appearance of brass, perhaps even bronze. Even a four-year-old girl, however, knows that brass cannot rust, but iron can and does.

The rust that had accumulated during the last five hundred years had destroyed the burner. Yet out of a habit acquired in long service, the burner still kept its original form, like a ghost. Each newcomer was warned not to touch the burner  too hard when filling up the lamp, because the ghost might dematerialize, and no burner would be left.

The glass chimney of the lamp was only a short stump, always thickly blackened by smoke. By order of the bos’n the lamp had to be cleaned every day. So every morning the question was fired: “Whose turn is it, damn, to clean the lamp?” I never heard anyone yell: “It’s me,” nor anyone say: “Your turn, Spainy.” The “you,” whoever it might have been, would have fought with words and fists to win a decision that it was not his turn. The lamp was never cleaned.

It was the same lamp, as could be seen from its antique shape, that had been used by the seven virgins when they went out into the night to guard their virtue. The wick had not been changed since the time it was made, by cutting off a piece of the woolen underwear of one of the virgins. One could not expect that a lamp used by virgins to guard their virginity would light up the quarters of the crew of the
Yorikke
sufficiently so that we could see each other.

The kerosene used in the lamp was called diamond oil. It was called so in the books which the skipper presented to the company when collecting his expenses. But I had seen the skipper’s cabin-boy go into the engine-hold when the engineer was called out by the skipper. The boy scratched up all the dropped oil and grease from the engine, brought it to the skipper, and the skipper mixed it with gas to make the diamond used in our lamp.

I asked upon arriving on the
Yorikke
: “Where is the mattress for my bunk?”

“Not supplied here. Must have your own.”

“Pillows?”

“Not supplied.”

“Blankets?”

“Not supplied.”

“What is supplied here, then?” I finally asked.

“Work,” a man answered calmly.

I was really surprised to see that the company supplied at least the ship; and by no means would I have been perplexed if the company had demanded that the sailor bring his own ship along.

When I hopped on the ship, I had on me a pair of still decent-looking pants, a hat, a jacket, and one pair of shoes. I was considered the richest guy aboard, for the bird that owned the evening dress wasn’t so well off as I had thought when I first saw him. The pants were cut short right under his knees, and the elegant-looking coat with its long forked tail was busted in the back, Yet the front had looked grand.

After being on the
Yorikke
for a couple of weeks, I learned that those guys who had the least to call their own were liked best by the skipper and the mate. The skipper always looked with grim eyes at a man returning from shore leave with something new on his back. On the other hand, he never minded a bit seeing a man return so drunk that he had to be carried aboard. He tipped mugs who had helped the sailor find his ship; and many times he willingly paid the tavern debts for one of his own men. Yet never would he have paid a dollar in advance to a man if he knew that the man was going to buy himself a new shirt.

The quarter I was in had two compartments, which were separated by a thick wooden wall against which, on either side, were fixed two bunks. Two bunks, the upper and the lower, of my compartment were fixed against the gangway wall; the other two were fastened on that same wooden wall. The other compartment had two bunks on the wall and two on the hull of the ship. Thus what was built for four men served for eight.

Regulations demand that the crew must not eat their meals in the room in which they bunk. They must eat in the crew’s mess. There was no such mess for the crew on the
Yorikke
, for the simple reason that when the
Yorikke
was built, all labor in Egypt, Greece, and Persia was still done by slaves, and to demand a special dining-room for them would have meant, in the Persian language, criminal syndicalism for which being thrown to the lions was considered a very lenient punishment. Now, there are a few ports in the world where, occasionally, labor-inspectors come aboard to see if communists, who are always yelling that crews are treated like animals, are liars or racketeers. These labor-inspectors are mild-mannered with the shipping companies; they have a very sympathetic understanding of the companies’ worries. These inspectors usually feel delighted to have the skipper throw sand in their eyes. The company that owned the
Yorikke
used for sand the strange fixing of a mess-room for the crew.

The wooden wall which divided the sleeping-quarter into two did not reach from one end of the place to the other. It ended two feet beyond the bunks, where it was fixed against an iron post. From this post on, in the direction of the bow, there was a little space left. Into this space a long rough table and two benches were set up. So there you had the required mess-room. To be sure, it was still in the same room as the bunks, but it gave the impression that the mess-room was apart. You had only to use your imagination a little. Of course, there was no wall dividing the two bunk-spaces from the mess-space, and since there was no wall, there could be no doors. But since a sailor with a head could imagine a wall with a door in it, any labor-inspector with a head could also imagine it. So everybody was satisfied, and the report for the
Yorikke
was always okay.

In a corner, right by the crude dining-table, there stood an old bucket, which was always leaking. This weather-beaten bucket was the wash-basin, bathing-tub, shower-bath, and scrubbing-pail, all in one. It served, moreover, for lots of other purposes, one of which was to catch a couple of pounds of the insides of drunken sailors returning from shore leave, provided it was reached in time.

Crowded into the space called the mess-room were four closets. These closets were supposed to serve as wardrobes for the crew. Had it not been for the filthy rags (and torn-up sacks that hung inside, these closets might have been called empty. Eight men lived in this quarter, yet there were only four closets. Still the shipbuilder had overestimated the chances of the crew owning something. Because at present there was nothing worth guarding in any of the closets.

By special order of the skipper the quarters had to be swept every day. Usually it was done by one who had remained stuck in the mud unable to get his foot out, or by one who had lost a needle or a button that he could not spare. Once a week the quarters were flooded with salt water. This we called scrubbing the foc’sle. No soap, no brushes were supplied. The skipper probably sent in bills for soap and brooms and brushes, but we never saw them.

The crew did not even have soap with which to wash their shirts. Soap was a rare and precious thing on the
Yorikke
, which was additional evidence that the
Yorikke
had not yet entered the stage where civilization begins. Happy the man who carried in his pocket a little piece of soap with which to wash his face when he became ashamed of himself. Nobody ever dared let even the smallest piece of soap lie around. It could be as tiny as a pinhead, yet someone would find it and hide it like a diamond. This appreciation of soap indicated that the crew were not savages and that they still kept slightly in touch with civilization.

The filth on the floor and the walls was so thick and so hardened that only an ax could break it off. I would have liked to try it — not out of any sentiment about cleanliness, which was wholly lost on the
Yorikke
, but for scientific reasons. I felt sure and to this very day I still feel the same way that if I had broken open the crusted filth and mud, layer by layer, I would have found Phoenician coins and medals near the bottom. I still feel excited when I speculate on what I might have found if I had gone still deeper. There is a great possibility that I might have found the bitten-off finger-nails of the great-grandfather of the Java man, so very essential to science for determining whether the cave-man had heard of Henry Ford and if early bank mathematicians had had sufficient intelligence to figure out exactly how much money old Rockefeller makes while he cleans his dark goggles.

Leaving the quarters, one had to pass a very dark and unbelievably narrow corridor or gangway. In the opposite wall was a door leading to quarters similar to ours in shape and arrangement, but ten times worse as regards filth and dirt. I would have sworn away my soul that nothing on earth could be filthier than the quarter I was in, but when I saw the opposite quarter I said: “This is the worst.”

One end of the gangway led to the deck, the other to a kind of pitfall. Near the end of the gangway, not quite at the pitfall, there were two very small rooms, one at each side. These small rooms served as quarters for the petty officers, the bos’n, the carpenter, the donkey-man, and another man who had something to say aboard ship. There was a mystery about his position. Sometimes he helped the donkey, another time he lent the carpenter a hand, and sometimes he acted like a second bos’n, chasing the deck-hands about the aft while the bos’n was chasing them about the fore. Had we still lived in the days before the revolution, I would have thought him the whipper, the chainer, the hangman. He looked like a bos’n escaped from a captured pirate-ship.