The Death Ship (30 page)

It was not alone Germany that was well represented in the holds. Stepmother England also was there, partly with Sheffield, partly with Manchester. Belgium, not minding her neutrality in the boxing match between the Moroccans and the French government, had contributed sugar-coated fruits. The English merchandise was labeled: Tinned Sheet Iron, Galvanized Corrugated Iron, Frying-pans. On seeing the sugarcoated fruits of Belgium, shipped from Liége, you became sure that those fruits were so indigestible that if you were to swallow only one you would never need any castor oil until all graves open again and the real name of the Unknown Soldier is headlined in the New York papers.

The Moroccans are quite right. They have my sympathy. Spain to the Spaniards, France to the French, China to the Chinese, Poland to the Poles. What did Wilson chase the American boys into the European war for? Wasn’t it for the simple reason that the Czechs should have the right to call their sausages in Czech instead of in the uncivilized Austrian lingo? We don’t want any Chinese in our God’s country, or other furreners either, to help us eat up our surplus wheat. Let them stay at home, where they belong. So I don’t see any reason why I should get sore at the Moroccans. And, just for Wilson, as a good Yank I have to ship on the
Yorikke
and get things cleared up for democracy and for the liberty of small nations.

I feel as though I am going to fall in love with that hussy
Yorikke
.

35

“I say, Stanislav, haven’t you got any pride left? I simply cannot understand how you can swallow all the time that marge. Ain’t you ashamed a bit?”

“What else could I do, Pippip?” Stanislav said. “Above all things I am sure hungry. You don’t suppose I should boil my rags and thicken the juice that comes out to have something on the bread, do you? I have nothing on the bread save that stinking margarine. You just get cracked up eating all the time that stale bread without something on it. I feel like concrete in my stomach sometimes.”

“Now, aren’t you just as dumb as I imagined? Man, don’t you know that we are shipping right now the finest German plum marmalade?”

“Yep, I know.”

“If you know, why don’t you loot a barrel or two?”

“That marmalade is no good for us.”

“Why not?” I asked innocently.

“Good only for the Moroccans and the Syrians, and, of course, for those who make it and those who sell it. The Frenchmen get all the time belly cramps whenever they eat it. Or let’s say when it is fired into them. Then they run so fast that they can catch up with their grandfather and overtake him at his funeral.”

This answer made me wonder: “Then you know what is inside?”

“What sort of an ass do you believe me?” He laughed. “The two gentlemen of Portugal were still in the skipper’s cabin when I was already through with my exploration. It would not be me, an old honest sailor, if seeing labels of Danish butter, or sardines, or corned beef, or chocolate, I didn’t right away investigate the possibilities of a bargain sale at the next port.”

“This time you are mistaken,” I said; “there is really marmalade inside.”

“There is always something inside. But this marmalade you cannot eat. Has got a horrible brass taste and a smell after black sulphur sugar. If you eat too much you may get belly poisoning. You may get green all over the face like the statue of a general. Last trip, before you were on, we had corned beef. It was genuine. Nothing inside. The finest stuff you can think of. Sometimes you are lucky. The skipper had to ship honest goods for a trip or two. He was sure he’d be brought up by French chasers. See? It was a thick layer. Going to Damascus. The Syrians were in dire need. They had some misunderstanding with the French governor as to the people they wished to trade with.”

“How were the stones beneath the thick layer?”

“The stones? You mean what was the true inside of the corned beef? Well, as I said, the layer was fine. For days I did not have to touch the galley vomit. Of course, if you went sufficiently deep into the corned beef you found excellent carbines. Made in U.S.A. Late model, had come out during the last weeks of the war and could not be sold, because the armistice came too soon before they could cash in on them. They had to sell them. You cannot have them wait until the next war and then be stuck with them. Next war they have got a better model. Tell you, when we had landed those corned-beef cans without any trouble and the skipper had got all the syrup he had expected, we got two cups with real cognac, roast beef, chicken, fresh vegetables, and canned English pudding. Yes, siree. Because. Well, because, you see, it was like that. A French chaser got us up. The officers came aboard. Spying about, asking the crew, spreading francs and cigarettes just like old junk, expecting some guy to spring a word or two. But they had to leave with a sour face, and they had to bow and salute to the skipper as though he was their admiral.”

“And no one gave the skipper away for the francs and the cigarettes?” I asked.

“We? On the
Yorikke
? We took the francs and the cigarettes all right. But give away somebody? We are filthy. And we are dead. Gone beyond hell. We would take in a little purse or a pocket-book of somebody who is careless about it and might lose it anyway. when going along the street. We loot the holds and sell out at bargain prices. We would throw a hot bolt at the head of that second engineer when he comes bothering us about the steam and the bars. That’s all honest and clean. But squeal to the police and the customs guards and the arms-chasers? Not for a thousand pounds in cold cash, fine as it would be to have them. But, you see, what good would these thousand pounds or francs do to you? No good at all. What’s the use of having a thousand pounds in your pocket and lose all the honesty of a decent sailor? You cannot look at your own face any more for the rest of your life.”

We were lying before anchor off the coast of a small port in Portugal. The skipper felt that the
Yorikke
was suspected. He was sure that as soon as he should be in French waters he would be stopped and searched. So he took in honest cargo for the next two trips. The cargo was not worth much. But anyway it was cargo, and he could get hold of the most elegant clearance papers. The French would have to pay good money for having molested him and for making him reach his port twenty-four hours late. After two such searches, and after having made so much trouble for the French government and getting a payment of some ten or fifteen thousand francs in damages, he then could afford again a half a dozen trips that really paid, without any fear of being molested.

On such occasions, when the
Yorikke
lay about, waiting to take in cargo, we knocked off work at five in the afternoon and were free until seven in the morning. Since we were at anchor off the coast, we could not get ashore. The boatmen charged too much, and the skipper refused to give any advance, being afraid that we might not be aboard when the
Yorikke
was ready to go under weigh.

So we now had time to sit together quietly and peacefully and just tell our stories and exchange our opinions of life and the world.

There were as many nationalities represented on the
Yorikke
as there were men aboard. I have not found a single nation as yet which has no dead citizens somewhere on this earth — I mean such dead as still breathe the air, but that are dead for all eternity to their nation. Some nations have their death ships openly. These nations call their death ships the foreign legion. If he survives this death ship the legionnaire may have a new name and a new and legally established nationality with all the chances to come back to life again. Certain nations give citizenship to men who sail under their flags for three consecutive years. It was different with the
Yorikke
. The longer you shipped on the
Yorikke
, the farther away you sailed from any possibility of winning or regaining any citizenship. Even the Chinese or the Swahilians would not have taken you in, regardless of how many applications you might make and how many truckloads of papers you might fill in.

The
Yorikke
was a nation all by herself. She had her own language, her own established morals and customs, her own tradition.

In Algiers I once met a man who claimed to be a hundred and sixty years old. He was a Syrian, from Beirut. He looked like forty, and at the same time like two hundred. He told me that he had so far been on the
Yorikke
twenty-three times. The skipper knew him; and he admitted that he could vouch for the fact that this Syrian had shipped on the
Yorikke
at least four times. The Syrian, having invited me to a cup of coffee in a Turkish coffee-house, told me that he had shipped first on the
Yorikke
when he was rather young, as a kitchen-boy. I asked him what the
Yorikke
shipped in those times. He said that while he was kitchen-boy she was used as a transport ship for Napoleon, to transport his soldiers to Egypt. It was before he made himself emperor. Then, of course, as the Syrian told me, the
Yorikke
carried only sails and had no steam-engine. Which, by the way, proved that the Syrian was entirely correct in his story. He could not have known what the
Yorikke
looked like in those days if he had not been on her.

I asked him how come he had shipped so often on the
Yorikke
. He told me that the
Yorikke
had always been his guardian angel, and that he would never forget the good service she had often rendered him. For, poor man, he was always in trouble with his wives. Each time, of course, it was another wife. He had consumed about nineteen, which accounts for the times he shipped on the
Yorikke
, taking into consideration that during the first trips he was still too young to be able to consume a healthy wife. It so happened that whenever he had a wife who was a real nag, he had no money to get rid of her. So he just waited for the
Yorikke
to come in port and off he went. When he returned he found his wife otherwise provided for, and he was free again for the next issue. The next issue, after the proper time had passed, proved a worse nag than the former. So he again had to make use of the
Yorikke
as an effective divorce lawyer.

I thought that now, since he had become rather old, he would no longer be in need of consuming wives, and that might be the reason why he had not been seen on the
Yorikke
for quite a while. But he said that this was only my mistake, not his, because he now had a new wife oftener than before. I said to him that very likely the women of Algiers were not the nagging type. He answered that in this I was mistaken again, and that he suspected that I had had no experience with women at all. He said he had to admit that the women of Algiers were a lot worse even than those of Damascus and Beirut. But the case is simpler dealt with in Algiers than in Syria. In Algiers, whenever he thinks that his wife is nagging too much, he has her put in jail, because these fine people of Algiers are of the opinion that a nagging wife cannot be considered sane, and besides it is a law with these people that the nagging of a wife is a criminal offense. So my Syrian said: “Now you will understand why I no longer need the
Yorikke
. Algiers is heaven for me. And if I had ever been in Algiers during my early youth I would never have been on the
Yorikke
when she was in the midst of the battle of Abukir. There it happened that the middle finger of my left hand was shot off by some silly English gunner.” This finger was really missing. Therefore I do not see any reason why I should not believe his story. He finished his story by saying that if, and may Allah prevent it, the people of Algiers should ever change their humane law in regard to nags, he would see no other way out than to start again shipping on the
Yorikke
, even as drag.

I made up my mind that if I could get away from the
Yorikke
I would live in Algiers, where there are people who have their hearts in the right spot. And no alimony either. Gee, what a man with the true working spirit could achieve in such a place!

With so many different nationalities aboard, it would have been impossible to sail the
Yorikke
unless a language had been found that was understood by the whole crew. From that Syrian, who of all living people I have ever met knew the
Yorikke
longest and best, I had learned that the universal language used on the
Yorikke
had been usually the language most widely known at the time on the seven seas. When the
Yorikke
was still a virgin maiden the language spoken by her crew was Babylonian; later it changed to Persian, then to Phoenician. Then came a time when the Yorikkian language was a mixture of Phoenician, Egyptian, Nubian, Latin, and Gaul. After the Roman Empire was destroyed by the Jews, through the means of a renegade puffed-up religious movement, with Bolshevik ideas in it, the language on the
Yorikke
was a mixture of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabian, and Hebrew. This lasted until after the Spanish Armada was knocked out. Then French influence became more dominant in the lingo of the
Yorikke
. At Abukir the
Yorikke
was on the side of the French, and old man Nelson took her as a prize. He sold her to a cotton-dealer and shipping agent in Liverpool, who in turn sold her to English pirates who worked the Spanish Main, then already in its declining glory. Anyway, from that time on until today the lingo of the
Yorikke
was English. At least that was the name the language was given, to distinguish it from any other language known under the moon.

Only the skipper spoke English that was without flaws. A prof of Oxford could not have spoken it any better. But the lingo spoken by the rest was such that Chinese pidgin English would be considered elegant compared with the Yorikkian English. A newcomer, even a limey, a cockney, or a Pat, would have quite a lot of trouble during the first two weeks before he could pick up sufficient Yorikkian to make himself understood and to understand what was told him.