The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  The fish would still not bite, and the black sausage from the Dutch got smaller and smaller. Perhaps that part of the ocean hasn’t got any fish left.

  While I was hanging around in Barcelona, one day sailors told me that there were many American ships in Marseille that were short of hands, because lots of them had jumped to stay in France and study the French girls. The crew of a freighter stowed me away, and I landed in Marseille all right. Like all tales about fine jobs that were just waiting for somebody to take them and make your own price it was the bunk. Nothing in it. Not a single Yank in, not even a rummer with a faked flag.

  I didn’t have a centime. Late in the evening I stepped into a saloon in which there were many sailors. I thought I might meet somebody willing to spring a supper.

  A waitress, a pretty young girl, came up and gave me a menu. She asked me what I wanted to have. I said I had no money and I was just looking around to find a friend. She asked me who I was and I said: “Boche sailor.”

  She asked me to sit down, and she added: “I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  Again I told her about my not having any cash.

  “That’s all right,” she answered. “Don’t you worry, you will have plenty of money soon.”

  Now I got seriously worried. I felt sure that there was a trap somewhere or that they needed a guy to frame for someone else. I tried to wind myself out. Before I could do it, however, the waitress was back at the table with soup, fish, meat, and a bottle of wine. Seeing this in front of me, I forgot all about traps and frame-ups.

  After having eaten, and drunk the red wine, and a second bottle was put on the table for me, the girl, all at once, cried out: “Messieurs, here is a stranded German sailor who cannot pay for his supper; won’t you help him out?”

  I felt lousy hearing this. But it was too late now to skip. I expected that very second to be beaten up and my bones broken into bits.

  I was wrong. Nothing of the sort happened.

  All the men in the saloon, sailors and longshoremen, turned around to look me over. One of them stood up, came over to my table, clinked glasses, and said: “Here’s to your luck, sailor.” He did not say Boche.

  The girl passed a plate around, and when she brought it to my table, there was enough on it to pay for my supper and the two bottles of wine, and something was still left for breakfast the next morning.

  When closing-time came, the girl asked me if I had a place to sleep. I said I had not. Then she said: “You may come with me for the night; I will put you up.”

  She had only one bed in her little room. I wanted to lie down on the floor, the way they do it in the movies, to show the girl that I was a gentleman. The girl, however, did not seem to like it very much. She said: “Don’t make me ashamed of you. What do you think I brought you here for? You will have to pay for the night. And pay rather well or I shall be sorry in the morning that I believed you to be a good sailor.”

  What else could I do? I had to do what she ordered.

  “Do you think,” she said when the light was switched off, “that I got you a good supper just for your belly’s sake? No, my boy. You will have to pay for the supper also. I don’t want you to catch cold on the floor, and, besides, I am afraid of burglars, and of mice, too.”

  In the morning she said: “Leave quietly. If the landlady sees you, she’s liable to raise my rent, thinking that I make a little money on the side. Come again whenever you can, sailor. Always pleased to meet you, and supper will always be ready for you.”

  I would have liked to tell her right then that she was wrong in thinking that a Boche was a good payer. Anyway, I am sure some fine day she will find out, because quite a few American buckets put in at Marseille port, and there are lots of guys on them who like to pay well.

  The same day I hopped another freighter and went back to Barcelona.

  19

  Have I sailed many ships, sir? I should say I have. And I have seen thousands of ships. Even the great unbeliever Saint Tom would believe that. But, migud, I have never seen a ship like that one.

  The whole thing was a huge joke. Looking at it, one wouldn’t believe that it could ever keep above the water. One would readily believe, though, that it might be an excellent means of transportation over the Sahara Desert. Yes, sir. A team of camels could pull her fine along the sand.

  Her shape was neither modern nor pre-Roman. To try to place her in any period of shipbuilding was futile. She did not fit in any age I could think of. In no marine-museum anywhere in the world had I ever seen a model like that one.

  On her hull was her name: Yorikke. The letters were so thin and so washed-off that I got the impression that she was ashamed to let anybody know her true name. Yorikke. Now, what language could that be? Almost any language. It sounded Nordic. Perhaps she was a hang-over from the old Vikings, hidden for centuries in a lonely bay somewhere in Iceland.

  I don’t know why, but that ship got me like a spell. I couldn’t get away from it; no, sir. I stopped fishing, and I went over to look at the stern. According to international agreements, the name of her home port should have been painted there clearly.

  Apparently she did not want to betray her birthplace. So you’re like me, I thought, without a proper birth-certificate. Bedfellows, hey? Of course, there was something painted on the stern. But, I am sure, only a well-trained archaeologist could have deciphered what those spots meant.

  There was a flag, of course, flying above the stern. The flag, however, was so pale, so flimsy, so shredded, that it might have represented any flag of any country in the world. It looked as if it had been flown from the battle-ships of all the fleets that had partaken in sea-battles for the last five thousand years.

  I was interested in the color of the hull. I couldn’t make it out. It looked as if it had been snow-white when the ship was still in her baby-shoes. That, however, must have been some time before old man Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees with his wife Sarah. I could see that at least two hundred new layers of paint had been put on top of the original white. As a result there were as many different colors painted on her hull as are known to exist. Those layers of paint made her appear twice her true size.

  No owner of the Yorikke had ever permitted all her paint to be taken off and an entirely new coat put on. Every patch of paint that was still good had been preserved so as to make the painting as inexpensive as possible. So there were a hundred square feet of sky-blue next to a hundred square feet of canary-yellow.

  When I saw her first, I almost dropped my fishing-line in my excitement at seeing that monstrosity of the sea.

  Often an individual may be recognized as insane by his outward appearance. The more deranged his mind is, the more awkward or strange his way of dressing will be, provided he is left to do as he likes.

  There was something wrong with the Yorikke. To call her a sane ship or a normal vessel would have been an insult to all the other ships that sailed the seven seas. Her appearance agreed perfectly with her mind, her soul, her spirit, and her behavior. Only an insane ship could look like that. It was not alone her coat that made her look crazy. Everything on and about the bucket harmonized with her appearance.

  Her masts were like branches reaching out from a fantastic tree in North Dakota in November. Her funnel was crooked and bent like a corkscrew. I couldn’t figure out exactly how her bridge was connected with the rest of her.

  As I sat on the pier, looking at this old maiden Yorikke, I laughed and laughed. I let loose such thundering laughter that Yorikke became frightened. She trembled all over and began to glide backwards along the bulks. She didn’t want to go out into the open water. She was, obviously, afraid, knowing perhaps that she might never come back. She grazed and scratched along the heavy timbers of the pier, making a squeaking, piercing noise. Seeing her struggling so hard against the orders of her skipper, I began to pity her. It was like dragging old Aunt Lucinda, who had never been away from her native town, Jetmore, Kansas, into a bathing-suit and out upon a divin
g-board thirty feet above the level of the ocean. I felt real sympathy for the frightened Yorikke, who had to leave the calm, smooth water of the sheltered port and be driven out into the merciless world to fight against gales and typhoons and all the grim elements under heaven.

  None of her men had mercy on her. They were working like hell to get her going on her way, indifferent to her unwillingness and her shrieking. I heard the crew running about. I heard their shouting and their hustling. The windlasses were rattling and clanging. I knew they were giving that old girl the works and were beating her up to get her to do her best before the eyes of so many seafaring people staring from other ships.

  What could an old defenseless Jane like her do against the rough fists of so many rum-soaked guys? Scratch and squeal and squeak she might, and bite, but it won’t do her any good. She simply has to snap out of it and get it over and make off.

  She was always that way. Once safe in the open sea, she would start running like a young devil let loose for the first time from her grandmother’s apron-strings. I found out later that she ran so fast only to get back that much quicker to a snug port, in which she could rest and dream of the days long ago when no one had to hustle to make as many trips as possible for the sake of the company’s turnover.

  She couldn’t be blamed for her behavior. She had begun to get heavy feet; she was no longer as young and springy as she was when she stood by to guard Cleopatra’s banquets for Anthony. Were it not for the many thick coats of paint on her hull, she would have frozen to death in the cold ocean, for her blood was no longer as hot as it was five thousand years ago.

  20

  There are people who seriously believe that they know something about ships, sailors, and oceans, simply because they’ve crossed on passenger ships a couple of dozen times. But a passenger really learns nothing and sees nothing about ships, salt water, or the crew. I might just as well include among the ignorant the ship’s officers and stewards. Ships’ officers are merely bureaucrats with a claim for an old-age pension, and the stewards are just waiters.

  The skipper is in command of the ship. All right. But he does not know the ship. No, sir, believe me. The guy that sits on the dromedary and tells the driver where to go doesn’t know the dromedary. The driver alone knows the animal and he alone understands it. It is he to whom the animal speaks and it is he who speaks to the poor beast. Only he knows the worries, the pains, and the joys of the dromedary.

  The same holds true of a ship. The skipper in command always wants to do something the ship can’t do and doesn’t want to do. The ship hates him, just as all commanders are hated by those they kick around. When a commander is loved, or thinks he is, it is only because everybody under his command is clever enough to know that they can get along with the old man best by complying with his whims and caprices. Always consider your boss crazy, and you will always be right and stand in good with him.

  The ship loves the crew. The crew are the only true comrades a ship has at sea. They polish the ship, they wash it, they stroke it, they caress it, they kiss it — and they mean it, because they are not hypocrites where their ship is concerned. The skipper has a home, sometimes a country home or an estate, and he has a family, a pretty wife, and lots of worries about his family. Some sailors too have wives and kids. They seldom make good sailors. They look at the ship just as a factory-worker looks at the plant he works in to make a living. The good sailors, the true sailors, the born sailors, have no other home in the world than their ship. It may be this ship or that one, but home is always a ship.

  And the ship knows perfectly well that she couldn’t move an inch without the crew. A ship can run without a skipper and officers. I have seen ships do it. But I have not yet heard of a ship that went along with only a skipper aboard.

  The ship speaks to the crew, never to the skipper or to the officers. To the crew the ship tells wonderful stories and spins yarns of all sorts. The ship in turn likes to listen to the tales told by the crew. When old salts start to spin, all the rattling and crackling of a windjammer ceases. The ship gets quiet so as not to lose a single word of the story. All the sea-stories I know have been told to me by ships, not by people, and the stories written by pensioned skippers are the bunk. I have seen ships chuckling on Sunday afternoons, when the crew was sitting on deck telling stories of the seven seas and cracking jokes about skippers and mates and chiefs. I have seen ships cry and weep when stories were told of brave sailors who had gone to the bottom after having saved a child or another fellow. And I once heard a ship sob bitterly when it knew it would go down to its last place on the next trip. It was that ship that sobbed so heart-breakingly and that never came home again that was listed four months later at Lloyd’s as “lost in unknown waters.”

  The ship is always on the side of the crew and never takes the part of the skipper. Why? The skipper doesn’t work for the ship, nor does he care for it; he works and cares for the company that pays him. Often the men don’t even know which company the ship they are on belongs to; no, sir. They don’t bother with such details. They are interested in the ship, and in the food the ship gives them.

  Suppose the crew mutinies the ship immediately joins them, and the skipper does not know what to do with the bucket. It’s a fact; strange perhaps, but so it is. I knew a ship that went out with a crew of strike-breakers. She was still in sight of the coast, less than twelve miles off, when she went down, just to drown that gang. She did it so unexpectedly that not a single man was saved. Yes, sir.

  Looking again at that old dame Yorikke, I could not understand how she could have a complete crew going out of sunny Spain, the land of the free and the happy. To go with that ship rather than stay behind in such a great country was beyond my comprehension. There was a secret hidden somewhere. Perhaps she was but it could not be. Not here, so close to civilization. A death ship leaving a civilized port with clean papers? Well, it’s out now. A death ship.

  Why didn’t I notice it at the first glance? But, still, there is something about her that makes it not altogether definite that she’s that sort of tramp. The bucket begins to interest me. I simply can’t stop looking at her, if only to find out what the mystery is in back of her.

  Finally she seemed to give in and make up her mind to go voluntarily. Thus I learned that she had personality. Her skipper didn’t know it. He was a fool. Yorikke was more intelligent by far than her captain. She was, I could see now, like an excellent and experienced thoroughbred horse, the kind that has to be left alone if it is to show its best qualities. A skipper has only to present a stamped certificate, indicating that he has passed an examination, and there he is in command of a ship as delicate and as individualistic in character as the Yorikke! Another proof of the fact that a skipper doesn’t know his ship; no, sir. Anyway, what does a skipper do all day long? Only worry where and how he can cut down expenses for the company — usually by cutting down the rations for the crew, which puts something in his own pocket, too.

  The skipper tried to force Yorikke against the tide and wind. An old lady, with the experience of five thousand years, should not be forced. If you try it, she is likely to go off her track and bust right into a heavy flood-breaker. If she goes wrong, the pilot isn’t to blame. The pilot is only supposed to know the waters of the port in which he is commissioned. He is not supposed to know the ship. That’s the skipper’s business I could tell now what sort the skipper was who chased that dame around.

  She scratched off hard against the quay. I had to draw up my legs or she would have taken them along. I had no intention of shipping my legs to Morocco while the rest of me remained in Spain.

  She kicked at her stern like an old hussy trying to dance the rhumba. A whirlpool of muddy foam was stirred up by her propeller From her side she spat and filled and pished and sissed like an old farm-mule with bladder trouble. Then she began swaying like a drunken society lion trying to avoid the lamp-posts, and never able to do so.

  The skipper tried his hand again and succeeded i
n steering her clear of the wharf. Seeing her now only about two feet away, and noticing that her hull looked pock-scarred, I said to myself that even if I had a chance to escape the hangman by signing on for this bucket, I would prefer the hanging. For I could not remember ever having seen anything in the world, ship or no ship, that looked so dreadful and hopeless, and so utterly lost, as did the Yorikke. I shivered. It was better to be a stranded sailor and hungry than to be a deck-hand on this ship.

  21

  While the bucket was still struggling asthmatically to come clear, I glanced up to the fore-deck, where a dozen men were standing — obviously part of the crew off duty.

  I have seen in my time ragged men, filthy men, wretched, lousy, stinking, dirty, broken, drunken, besmeared, sticky, unwashed, uncombed, unshaven, pishy and pashy, slimy, dreggy, and smutty men, but, so help me God, never before in all my life, not anywhere in the world, not even excluded Asiatic and South American ports, had I seen men like that crew hanging on the railing of that ship and staring down at the pier. A crew shipwrecked and marooned on a god-forsaken island for two years might look — but probably not — like that. How was it possible for a crew on an outgoing ship to be so? It was inconceivable that a ship could sail with such a crew.

  I certainly did not look elegant. Far from it. Oh, very far! A Scotchman seeing me might have thrown me a penny. Yet compared with these men I looked like the sheik of the most sumptuous chorus baby on Broadway.