The Death Ship (39 page)

But who is there who can say for sure what he will do on a given occasion, when no question is asked at all, but has to be answered by a quick move without time to think of what the consequences might be. The fireman might be right under it, and he cannot get away because he is entangled somehow or caught at the furnace door or blinded. Leave my fireman in the mud? Have him yell at me day and night for the rest of my life: “Pippip, for hell’s sake get me out, I am boiling to death. Pippip, come get me. I can’t see a thing, my eyes are scorched out. Pippip, quick, or it’s all over. Pip-pip-p-p.”

Just try that and live afterwards. Just try to save your own hide, and leave your fireman lying there whimpering. You hop at it and do it, even when you know that both of you won’t stay alive.

On second thought, maybe I would not go. My life is worth just as much to me as is the life of my fireman to him. My life might –

“Pippip, the devil, jump back, don’t look, port side and over, jump!”

My fireman howled so mightily that the noise of the engine seemed to be drowned away. Without turning my head or hesitating I jumped over to port and dropped on my knees, because I had tumbled over the poker against the wall. Simultaneously with my fall I heard a tremendous crash right behind me.

I saw the fireman get pale all over, so much so that even under the thick layer of soot and sweat on his face it seemed to be whitewashed. So I learned that even dead men still can get pale.

I stood up and rubbed my bruised shins and knees. Then I turned round to see what it was all about.

The ash-funnel had come down.

This funnel was a heavy tube made of thick sheet-iron, about three feet in diameter and about ten feet long. In, or, better, through it, the ash-cans were hoisted up on deck to be emptied into the sea. The funnel hung on four short chains against the ceiling of the stoke-hold. The lowest part of it was about eight feet above the floor of the stoke-hold. Perhaps the holes in which the chains were fastened had broken out or rusted away, or the chains had broken. Whatever the reason, the heavy sea we found ourselves in had hastened the break and so the funnel had come down. The weight of this funnel was a ton or so. Suppose someone is beneath it when it falls — he is severed in two, as if cut with a heavy knife, or only his head is cut off, or an arm or a leg or both, or he is cut deep into the shoulder. Who ever would have thought that this ash-funnel would come down? It had hung there since Queen Betsy had her first lover. Why couldn’t it stay another three hundred years in its place? But in these revolutionary times nothing is safe any longer; everybody and everything gets restless and wants to change positions and viewpoints. So the funnel drops.

“Yep, fire’m, this sure was a close jump over a razor-blade. Almost got me. I would have been well mashed up. Nothing would have remained for Judgment Day. Well, anyway, I wonder what these guys, sent out at Doomsday to collect all the dead and bring them before the Judge, are going to do with the sailors fallen overboard or shipped over the rail and eaten by the fishes bit by bit by thousands of fishes? I would like to see how they settle this affair of collecting all the sailors out of a hundred thousand millions of fish bowels.”

“That’s why sailors are out anyway,” the fireman said. “This is the reason why a sailor doesn’t care if he swears all the hells he wants to and spits at the seamen’s mission.”

This time there was no burial with a begrudged lump of coal at the feet, a disinterested tipping of the cap, and the funeral prayer. “Damn it, hell, now I am short again a coal-drag. Wonder when I ever can stay complete for a while.”

The water-gauge got its victim. The ash-funnel did not. I would like to know what will be next and who is next? Perhaps it will be that plank leading from the upper bunker to the landing above the stoke-hold. It already crackles rather suspiciously when you walk across. Or if it is not the plank it might be the — What’s the use of guessing? The finish will come some way, and likely it will be very different from what one figured.

Next port I’d better step out and skip. I knew, however, that there would be only another death ship after a little freedom. The deads have to go back to the graves, even though they may get at times a mouthful of fresh air to keep them healthy.

Stanislav’s and my thoughts must have been somehow in the air. Because when we were in port again, we could not make a move without being watched by the police. At the first attempt to go to the outskirts of the town or to show signs of skipping, the police would have pinched us and taken us back to the bucket. The skipper would have got a bill for the cost of catching two deserters from a foreign vessel. We, of course, would have to stand up for the bill from our pay. And again we would have to be on our knees before the old man to let us have a little advance for drinks.

We tried it again at Beirut. We were in a tavern, waiting for the
Yorikke
to sail and leave us to our fate. But quite unexpectedly, when we felt sure the
Yorikke
had put out and was under weigh, in stepped two guys: “Sailors, aren’t you from the
Yorikke
?” We did not say yes or no. We said nothing. But these birds did not wait for an answer. They only said: “Your ship has hoisted the P flag already and is about up and down. You are not going to miss your berth, gentlemen? May we show you the way back? If you do not mind, gentlemen, we are very much pleased to accompany you to your ship.”

After we had sadly climbed up the gangway these friendly fellows stood at the wharf waiting until the
Yorikke
was steaming so far off that we could hardly have made it swimming. I say there are really fine folks in some ports, bringing the sailors back to their ships and bidding them farewell as long as they can see the last cloud of smoke.

After all, Stanislav was right: “No way ever to get off again, once on. If you really make it and have luck in skipping the can, they catch you within a day or two and take you straight to another death tub. What else can they do with you? They have to get you out somehow. Can’t deport you. You haven’t got a country to be deported to.”

“But, Lavski, how can they make me sign on? They cannot do that.”

“Yea? Can’t they? You should see how they can. The skipper, always in need of hands, even pays them a pound or two for bringing you in. He swears that he has signed you on by hand-shake in a tavern, and that he has given you two bobbies advance. A skipper, such a fine man, is always right; the sailor is always drunken and of course always wrong. You have never seen the skipper; neither has he seen you. But he needs you and claims you as a deserter. And don’t you try the court. That’s the curtains for you. The skipper swears and the birds that got a pound from the happy old man swear, and what of you then? Committing perjury? They fine you ten pounds, and leave you in care of the skipper. Then you work half a year without any advance just for the ten pounds fine the skipper had to pay.”

I stood aghast listening to this horrid tale of modern slavery. Those foolish white-slavery acts protect a woman, or claim to do so. Why not a sailor? He cannot wait for the Lord to protect him.

So I said: “Lavski, so help me and bless my lost soul, there must be some justice in this world.”

“There is justice in this world. Heaps of it. But not for sailors, and not for working-men making trouble. Justice is for the people who can afford to have it. We are not these people. Everybody knows well you cannot go to a consul. If you could, you would not be on a
Yorikke
. So whenever you come in port on a
Yorikke
, every child knows what you are and who you are. If you could go to the consul, then of course they would have no chance. But your consul is not for you. You cannot pay the fee, and you cannot rattle a hundred-dollar bill among the papers on his desk and forget it there.”

“Where is your Danish sailor’s pay-book?” I asked.

“Now, look here, you sap. Sometimes I earnestly believe you haven’t got any brains at all. A question like that! If I still had that Danish scrap I would not be here. No sooner did I have that beautiful passport from Hamburg than I sold the Danish pay-book for ten dollars American money. For the bird that bought it, it was worth a hundred. He had to get out of Hamburg by all means. You see, I was so sure that I could depend on that beautiful passport. It was just perfect. Reliable like a jane  that has got three kids from you and is so ugly that you can’t be seen with her in the daytime without feeling sick.”

“Why didn’t you try your luck with that passport elsewhere, after the Dutch consul had said he couldn’t sign you on?”

“Did I try, Pippip? I should say I sure did. I would be the last one not to have on full run such a brilliant front page. I got a Swede. The skipper had no time to take me to the consul, because he was already on his way to put out. When he asked me for my papers I produced my elegant passport. He fingered it, gazed surprised, and said: ‘Sorry, sonny, nothing doing. I can’t get you off my chest again. Can’t make it’.”

“The Germans would have taken you in,” I said; “they could not refuse you with that German passport.”

“Tell you the truth, Pippip, I did. I got a fine Germ. The pay was dirty low. Yet I thought, well, to begin with, let’s stick for a few trips. But when the mate looked at my passport, he bellowed right out: `We don’t take stinking Polacks. Out of here, this is a decent German ship.’ Then I got a third-rater Germ. But I could not stand it. Workers, and all those what is called `proletarians of the world unite,’ they are more patriotic than the kaiser’s generals ever could be, and more narrow-minded than a Methodist preacher’s wife. I hardly ever heard anything else but: ‘Polacks out.’ ‘Won’t you swallow the rest of Silesia also, Polack?’ ‘Even pigs of the German peasants stink less than a Polack.’ ‘Where is that Polack swine of ours?’ They never said it directly to me, right in my face. But I heard it all around, whenever I came in sight. I was often near going over the rail. I sure can stand a lot, but this I could not. So I went to the skipper after the first trip back home in Hamburg. He was fine. He said: ‘I know, Koslovski, how it is, and how you feel. I am sorry. I can do nothing about it. You are a most reliable man. Sorry to let you go. But I understand you are going mad or you will kill a couple of the rest. Either wouldn’t do any of us any good. I think it is best for you to go and look for a ship which is not German. You sure will find one.’

“Great guys, these fellow-sailors, and sure they are talking all the time about communism and internationalism and eternal brotherhood of the working-class and whatnot. Bunk.” I said.

“Now, don’t take it this way, Pippip,” Stanislav excused them still. “They are educated that way. They can’t help it. Was the same with them when war broke out. Karl Marx on their book-shelf, and the guns over their shoulders, marching against the workers of France and Russia. There will still have to pass five hundred years before they won’t fall any longer for worn-out slogans. You see, that’s why I like it on the
Yorikke
. Here nobody pushes down your throat your nationality. Because nobody has any to play. And don’t you think the Russians are so much different. They are as jazzy about their Bolshevik Russia as are the hurrah nationalists of Germany. The Bolshevists shut their doors against hungry workers from the outside as close as do the American labor unions. Dog eats dog, and any devil is a devil for another. I rather go down to the bottom with that sweet old
Yorikke
than eat and live on a Germ ship. I don’t want a Germ for a Christmas present, if you ask me.”

“Haven’t the Poles now a merchant marine of their own?”

“They have. But what good does that to me?” Stanislav asked. “I have it from a first-class Polish authority that I am not a Pole, while the Germs, on the other hand, take me only as a Polish swine. There you are.”

44

Month after month passed. Before I knew it I had been on the
Yorikke
four months. And when I came aboard I had thought that I could not live on her for two days.

So I found one day that the
Yorikke
had actually become a ship on which I could live and even laugh. Occasionally we would have a great after-gale supper, sometimes one cup, frequently two cups, of gin. We would have raisin cake and cocoa cooked with canned milk. Sometimes, having picked out for the cook some extra-fine nut coal from the bunkers, he would hand us in return an extra pound of sugar or an extra can of sweetened milk. Whenever we made a port where the skipper did not mind giving us shore leave we were provided with some advance to go and lift a skirt or two, and after that to get well drenched. My mess-gear — that is, the tools to eat with had become complete. It was, of course, not a perfect unit, for one piece had once adorned a table in a tavern in Tripoli, another had come from a saloon in Smyrna, and another one from Tangier. I had even some surplus, in case one was nipped or got lost.

The filth in the quarters had become thicker, but I was now used to it. In this way the
Yorikke
once more proved an excellent teacher, making it quite clear that the saying: “All civilization is only a thin layer of varnish on the human animal” has a lot of truth in it. The bunk I slept in was not so hard as I had thought when I lay down in it the first day. I had made a pillow out of cleaning-rags swiped from the engine-hold. Bedbugs, yes, we had them. But they are found in all the elegant cities of the world, like New York, Boston, and Balti, and Chic also.

Looking at my fellow-sailors now and then, I could not imagine how it had ever been possible that, seeing them for the first time, I had thought them the dirtiest and the filthiest bunch of guys I had ever seen. They looked quite decent.

Everything became a bit cleaner and more endurable every day that passed. It is like this: You look every day at the same thing, and then you don’t see it any more.

No, sir, I have nothing against the
Yorikke
. She was a fine ship. Got finer every day. The crew was not at all so rude and sour as I had thought during the first month.