The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  He knocked with his shoes against two more boxes and seemed to listen to the echo. He pointed out another box, had it opened, saw the cans with the same labels, pushed it aside, and ordered open the third box. When it was open the skipper looked at it, bent rapidly down, and picked out two cans, apparently at random. He held one of these two toward the officer and said, again using a nasty satirical smile: “Won’t you examine one of these, sir?”

  The officer looked with a sort of consternation at the two cans in the hands of the skipper, and for two or three seconds he seemed to hesitate. Unexpectedly, however, and as rapidly as the skipper had done before him, he picked out two other cans from the box.

  The officer weighed them in his hands. Just when he was about to give one of them to the Portuguese the skipper butted in and said: “Sir, why don’t you open this can from the bottom?”

  The officer gazed at the skipper, saw his smile, got extremely nervous and said: “No, sir, I’ll have it opened from the top.” This time the officer had a smile which, no doubt, he thought ‘looked satanical. But the skipper was a far better actor. His smile could look really diabolical, while the best the officer could achieve was a rather silly-looking smile.

  He opened the box from the top by having the lid cut off. There was only cocoa in it, Van Houten’s Pure Hollandish, Free of Oil.

  The skipper laughed out loud. The officer, almost mad with fury, emptied the whole can. Nothing came out but cocoa, and the paper it was wrapped in to keep it dry.

  The officer picked out four more cans, opened the lids, smelled at the contents, closed the cans, stood thinking awhile, and then gave orders to his companions below in the holds to come up, the inspection being over.

  When all the men had come out and were standing at the rail to go down the gangway to their boat, the officer wrote out the receipts for the damage done, bowed to the skipper, and said: “I beg your pardon, sir, for the trouble I have caused you, but these were my orders. We are, as you know well, at war with the Riff colony, and so you will understand why we have to examine occasionally ships sailing within our waters. Thank you, good-by, and have a lucky voyage.”

  “All right with me, sir,” the skipper answered, shaking hands with the officer, “come again any time you wish, I am always your most obedient servant. Good-by.”

  Off went the shallop with the officers.

  The skipper bellowed up to the bridge: “Get her going. Full steam to get her out of the five. Damn it. Close cut.”

  He took a deep breath and forced it out with a whistling noise. His laughter was all gone. Now he got pale. After a while he wiped his forehead.

  He stood still at the rail where he had said good-by to the officer. Now he crossed over and came near the galley.

  “Cook,” he hollered, “full after-gale supper tonight, raisin cake and cocoa with plenty of milk, and for each man two cups of rum with extra tea at nine. Come here, get the cocoa.”

  He took up the various cans the officer had opened, smelled at them, and threw them overboard, save one, which he gave the cook. Then he fingered about the open boxes, picked one out here, and another one there, rather confident in his picking. He handed them to the cook and said: “Of course, special supper for the mess.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the grandfather said, and hurried off with the cans.

  “Por’guese,” the skipper called the hand, “close the boxes and put them back where they came from.”

  All this time I had been standing at the rail watching this elegant business. I hardly remember a picture which interested me so much as had this procedure. What wouldn’t I give to know what went on inside the brain of the skipper when he offered the officer the cans in his hands, and, more, when he suggested to the officer that he open the cans from the bottom! I had more admiration for that skipper than ever before. What a pity, I thought, that the times of piracy are all over and gone for ever. With this skipper I would have gone to rob the whole English merchant marine. It’s too late now, with wireless and all that.

  Anyway, I thought, something must be done, when I saw those boxes full of cocoa put back in the holds again. One should never lose any opportunity when it knocks at your back door. A few boxes of this Hollandish cocoa mean real money in the next port. All people like to drink cocoa.

  That same night, still well filled with the elegant supper, and feeling swell, I crawled into the hold and swiped five boxes.

  When Stanislav came below to relieve me, I said to him: “Hey, you smarty, did it ever occur to you that we sail a living gold mine? I am talking of cocoa, you dumbhead. Honorable trade. We can make at least three pounds easy money.”

  “No such thing as easy money on this trip,” he answered. “Still wrapped in diapers, kiddy? It would be a gold mine all right if there were cocoa in these cans. But there isn’t. That’s the only objection to the gold mine in this case. Are you still that dumb to believe in newspapers, advertisements, and labels? The labels are all right. Only they don’t belong to these cans. Haven’t you inspected them? Don’t dream into your pockets any money so long as you are not through with the inspection.

  Haven’t I told you a hundred times not to trust in the Yorikke, whatever she may show you? If you look closer you will see in these cans only cocoa-beans — beans I mean. But you won’t find in any port any soul to buy these beans unless you can sell them at the same time the bean-mills to grind the beans with. If you have got the right mill and you try to grind the beans, they come out: pupp-pupp-pupp-pupp-pupp-pupp, like this, and whoever swallows them won’t need any cocoa any more, with milk or without. What an innocent lambkin you are! I don’t understand myself how I can get along with such an ass.”

  I was sure Stanislav was lying to put one over on me. I had seen the cocoa with my own eyes. So had the Spanish naval officer. It couldn’t be all black magic.

  I simply could not believe it.

  Immediately I went up to the bunker and opened the boxes. Stanislav was right. There were cocoa-beans inside. Hard ones, with shiny brass shells. In all the five boxes there were the same kind of beans. I did not find one single can in which there was Van Houten’s Pure Hollandish Cocoa. It all was Chicago again. Behind the label Pork and Beans you sure find anything, even bent hoofnails, but no pork and beans.

  I closed the boxes and took them back into the hold. I was certainly not interested in the kind of cocoa-beans the Arabians and the Moroccans cook.

  The skipper alone, that great magician, knew the word that turned cocoa-beans into emma-gees shells when needed. He was a great master of black magic, the skipper was. Yes, sir.

  43

  We were half a day out of Tripoli and met with real nasty weather. In the stoke-hold we were so thrown about that most of the time we did not know if we were at starboard or at port side or in which of the four corners and which of the two gangways of the bunkers.

  Thrown upon a pile of fuel, trying to collect my limbs, I accidentally looked at the crystal tube of the water-gauge, and I marveled how such a pretty-looking little thing could kill a grown-up sailor in the horrible way that it had done to Kurt from Memel. I questioned myself for a few seconds: would I jump at the broken tube and shut the cock and in doing so sacrifice my precious life?

  I would not do it, I decided. Let anybody who wants to be brave do it. I don’t care a tinkling about being brave and being called a great and regular guy.

  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 afte
rwards. 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.”