The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  “One minute, Pip —” Stanislav was snapping for air, “let me just catch a noseful.”

  The fireman was lying somewhere in the thick black cloud inside the boiler. We could not see him at first. But when I crawled back into the boiler I found him lying flat under the lower flue.

  It is difficult for a living being to squeeze himself through the manhole. First you put your head through, then one arm, then you bring both your shoulders so far forward that your body takes on the shape of a cylinder. Now you get the other arm out and then you finally squeeze the lower part of your body through. Having tried this half a dozen times, getting bruised and scratched on both arms and shoulder-blades, you can do it rather quickly and efficiently.

  To get out a lifeless body is quite a job. We had to take a rope and sling it around the body and under the arms. With another rope we had to bandage the fireman mummy-fashion. After we had him out, his arms and shoulders were well peeled.

  Stanislav wanted to take him right beneath the air-funnel into the blizzard. When I saw it I cried: “Lavski, you are killing him. First he must come to and breathe well before we can do that.”

  We blew into his face, beat his wrists and the soles of his feet, and worked him up with artificial breathing. The heart was throbbing so feebly that we could hardly hear it. But it was beating regularly. We poured water over his head and his chest, and we pressed a wet rag hard against his heart. Whether his face was pale or red we could not make out, because he, like Stanislav and me, looked blacker than a Negro. When I noticed that his breathing was slowly coming along, we carried him under the air-funnel, but put there only his head. The rest of the body we covered with rags. Stanislav had to go on deck to twist the mouth of the air-funnel into the breeze, because the wind had changed.

  When we were entertaining ourselves a bit in the boiler, the horsethief was quick to put his cone through the manhole, choke away the little air that came in, and bawl us out. Yet now, when we were in need of somebody to help us and treat us to a good shot, he did not show up, but sat with the chief in the mess, lapping his coffee and blabbing about useless drags and lazy firemen. A cup of gin would have done the fireman good right then, and us too, if only to forget for a minute that grinding of scale dust between our teeth.

  We had the fireman coming on fine. We carried him to a pile of coal to have him sit upright. He was still far away somewhere under palm-trees in southern Spain. It took him quite some time to find himself back in the stoke-hold.

  “What of all the drunken lousy beachcombers is up again?” The horsethief, that second engineer, had come from the engine-hold, through the famous gangway alongside the boilers, into the stoke-hold, and he was standing right at the corner of the boiler wall, yelling at us, who were still working about the fireman. “You are paid to work here, and not for sitting around and clicking your stinking swear-traps. Get to work, the hell with you.”

  Stanislav or I could have said: “Look here, sir, the fireman was —”

  Yet both of us had, at the same second, exactly the same instinct. And it was the right instinct. Without saying one word we both bent down, grabbed a huge chunk of coal, and gunned it against the face of that pickpocket.

  He was almost as quick as we. He had his arm up to protect his face the same moment we flung the lumps of coal.

  He flew off through the low, narrow gangway. But Stanislav had another big piece of coal ready, and quick as a weasel he was after him and hurled that chunk into the dark gangway with all his might so that it exploded into dust against the iron wall of the side-bunker, and he cried: “You heap of dirty shit, if you ever drop in here again you are going through the ash-pipe to feed the sharks, so help me geecries, and you may spit straight into my face if I don’t do it. Now go to the old man and report me and have a month’s pay cut off. But if you do, grandson of peaches, there will not be a square inch of skin left sound in your face when we get ashore.” Stanislav had run to the steel door of the engine-hold, which the second had tightly closed behind him. But he listened to what Stanislav yelled through this door, and he took note of it.

  All the time we were lying at Dakar, scaling the boilers, the second never came in again and never again said a word even if he did not hear the hammering in the boiler for half an hour. From that day on he treated us as if we were raw eggs. He, in fact, became more diplomatic than even the chief. So the Yorikke again had taught me something new, by which I mean: It works wonders for a laborer to have a hammer or a lump of coal at hand to use at the right time in the proper way. A working-man that is not respected has only himself to blame.

  After the boilers were scaled and washed we got two cups of gin and a good advance. So we thought things over, went ashore, and gave the port the once-over. I could have stowed away on a French that was making Barcelona. But I did not take this opportunity because I would have left the skipper with my four months’ pay in his pocket. I could not afford to enrich skippers. So I let the French sail without me. Stanislav could have got a Norwegian on which he could have gone as far as Malta. He had the same reason not to go I had. His outstanding pay was even higher than mine.

  We just roamed about port and looked ships and crews over. Wherever a sailor goes or tumbles, he thinks he is going to meet somebody or something unexpectedly and so have a surprise without paying for it.

  45

  Looking at ships in port is practically the only thing worth while for a sailor to do after having seen the dames and if he hasn’t enough cold cash left over to get his belly wetted. To the pictures you cannot go, because you do not understand the language. So there is nothing better to do than to criticize other ships, their looks, their crews, their grub, their pay, and to wonder whether it would be better to ship with this one or that one or stay where you are.

  So we came at last to the Empress of Madagascar. She was English. Seven thousand tons or even close to eight; yes, sir. Seeing her, we thought she might be a fine can to get out on.

  A fine shippy. Clean and brilliant, freshly polished over. Almost new. Could hardly have more than four years. The gilded stripes and lines and patches were still shiny. The paint like from last month.

  “Now, wouldn’t she be a peach to have her under your legs?” I said to Stanislav. “She is so smart she has even painted eyelashes. Let’s have a closer look at her. Trouble is we have no chance with her.”

  Stanislav said nothing. He just looked at her as if he meant to buy her and find out the price for it.

  If it were not for the four months’ pay I’d have to leave behind I sure would like to try her. Wonder if I could make the chief fire me by getting so stiff that on coming aboard I would go to his cabin and knock him down. Then the old man might pay me off and keep only half a month’s pay for socking the chief. Or I might go to the old man directly and tell him I am a Bolshevist, and I have got it in mind to get up the whole crew, and we would take over the ship and run her for our own benefit or sell her to Russia. Or I might go to the skipper and tell him the old story about my mother back home sick in bed and having an operation and ask for the biggest advance possible. Once I had this advance in my pocket, I would watch out for the Empress and hop on when she is hauling anchor. There is still the question of where she will set me off again, because she cannot take me with her to England. The British Board of Trade, having so many thousands of unemployed juicers to take care of, would be worried to death what to do with me.

  Anyway, it costs nothing to work her a bit.

  We went into port and there I left Stanislav in a place he found jolly and needed badly.

  Then I strolled back to sweet Empress.

  “Ahoy, there!” I yelled up, seeing a guy with a white cap leaning against the rail.

  “Ahoy yourself!” he answered. “What ye want?”

  “Ain’t a chance for a fireman?”

  “Papers?”

  “Nope.”

  “Naaaw. Sorry. Nothing doing, then, up here.”

  I had known this befor
e. A pretty, innocent dame like this doesn’t take a guy like me up with her. Here I have to bring the marriage license or out you go. Mother is still holding her hand over mousy.

  Along the dock I walk, down the whole length of the bucket. On the quarter-deck I see a bunch of the crew squatting, playing cards. I am close enough to understand almost every word they are saying. Now, that’s some English they are talking! And on an English can on which the gilded stripes are still sparkling? There must be a ghost somewhere around here. They are playing cards. But they do not quarrel, they do not fight or argue or laugh or swear or accuse one mug of having drawn the wrong card at the right time or the wrong ace at no time, or debate who should have dealt and who not.

  Shark-fins and ambergris! What is this? They are squatting as though sitting on their own graves and playing for their own worms. They seem to have the right grub. Look fed all right. Somehow something does not fit. Never seen sailors playing cards with troubled faces like these. Something is queer about the whole safari. A newly born ship. English too. What is she doing here in Dakar anyway? In a port all French more French, I should say, than Marseille? What’s her cargo, anyhow? I’ll be — Now, who would believe it? Scrap iron. On the west coast of Africa, close to the Equator. Maybe, she couldn’t get cargo on her way home and took scrap iron on for ballast. Makes at least some coin for the company. Home, Glasgow. Maybe they are badly in need of scrap iron in Glasgow. As for ballast, scrap iron is still a better cargo than rocks. Nevertheless, strange that an English bucket with such elegant looks cannot get cargo from Africa to old England or Scotland.

  Now, if I hung around here in Dakar a few days, I would find out what’s the trouble with that hussy. She can’t be a bobtail, can she?

  Come to think of it, these birds squatting there are playing cards like deads on their graves. Like deads on — Hello, old masher! Dead ones. But no; it cannot be. It simply cannot be.

  A dame looking so elegant and innocent, could it be that she is already walking the street? No. No, I am just a bit suntipped. Must be the boiler-scaling. Cracks of scales still in my eyes. I haven’t got my eyes clear yet. Seeing things. If I had money to spare, I would go and see the doc.

  I walked back and met Stanislav.

  “Let’s go over to that Norske and have a little talk with them,” Stanislav said.

  So we went to the Norwegian where Stanislav, yesterday, had made friends with a couple of Danes who came from a section of Denmark which Stanislav knew well. They had a can of fresh butter ready for us to take home. Living like real gents, that’s what these guys do. I got a mighty lump of fine Danish cheese extra.

  “Now, you two pirates, you are just in time to have supper with us,” one of the Danes said. “Sit down on your buttocks and have a real old Danish supper. Quality, and I mean it, and, of course, quantity even more.”

  So we sat down to a human meal, the kind we had not seen for so long a time that we for a while could not trust our eyes that such suppers still could exist somewhere in the world, and in particular in the foc’sle mess of a freighter.

  “Has any of you sailors seen that lime-juicer yonder there?

  The what is she? I mean the Empress of Madagascar?” I asked while we were eating.

  “Hanging around at the curb-stone quite a bit,” one of the men said.

  “Elegant dame,” I went on.

  “Yip, elegant dame, silk outside, crabs underneath. Better stay off her.”

  “But, man, why?” I could not understand it. “Why lay off her?”

  “Silk all right. But if you lift the camisole you might easily find yourself in a garden full of cauliflowers,” the Dane said.

  Broke in another one: “She is legal all right. She signs you on. With honey and chocolate ice-cream. Last dinner every day. With roast chicken and all the trimmings, and pudding besides.”

  “Damn your silly talk,” I said impatiently. “Now come along with the low-down. What’s her signal?”

  Said the speaker of the house: “You don’t look like a John to me. Rather like a hopper with heaps of salt water inside the belly. I thought you would guess it for yourself on seeing her. Well, she is a funeral hussy. Next trip to bottom, with hell waiting for you.”

  “Don’t you think you are just a bit jealous?” I asked.

  “Angel-maker and baby-farmer,” the Dane said. “Help yourself to another cup of coffee. Another treat of beef? Just stuff it in. We don’t have to be misers about milk and sugar. In the pot. As much as we want. Want to take home another can of milk?”

  “You make tears come into my eyes with such a question,” I said. “Well, I don’t want to offend you, so I will take it.”

  “Yip, sailor man. She has loaded dead men all right. But not dead soldiers from France to be taken home to mother across the pot. Not that. No, dead sailors still eating. But they may already write home to have their names carved in the lost sailors’ plank in their village church back home.

  They can’t miss it any more. If you wish to have your own sweet name on a plate in your church, if you have any, just go and sign on. It looks rather distinguished to have right by your own name such an elegant name as the Empress of Madagascar. Sounds a lot better than having gone down with an ordinary Caroline, or Clementina Pumpstay, or Landshit. Empress of Madagascar, boy, that looks like something great and swell, almost as if you had been her handy boy-friend.”

  “Why should she try to make insurance cash?” Stanislav asked.

  “Simple, honey, like making Swiss cheese around holes.”

  “She can hardly be out of her diapers three years,” I figured.

  “Now you got that straight and perfect; I see you can be trusted. Exactly, almost to the day, she is three years old.

  She was built for East Asia and South American trade to beat the Germans, who are undermining rates again. She was to make sixteen knots at least. The gent who constructed her tried out, it appears, a new model, a new stream line, see, to raise her speed, but with less fuel expenses. As it happened, when she made the virgin hop she could reach four knots only, with asthma. With such a speed any clipper would beat her and she herself couldn’t bring in even the pay for the crew, to say nothing of all the other expenses and a profit for the owners. With four knots she was scrap iron. Not even that.”

  “She could be rebuilt.”

  “Of course she could. You are a wise guy. But the owners thought of this before you came along and they did rebuild her. Rebuilt her not once, but twice. Each time she came out worse. She has to have the wind at the hams to make four knots now. So she cannot live, and she cannot die honorably. The owners cannot afford to sink her. It would break them. So nothing is left but to cash insurance.”

  “And you think it will be on her next trip?”

  “It has to be. She has tried to cash in twice already within less than three weeks. But she is so bully well that she did not even crack a leak. The first time she went upon a sandbank. Pretty like a swan she was sitting. I am sure in Glasgow they already celebrated the insurance with champagne. But bad weather came up and with it high water, which embraced the lady and whipped her off fine, off into twenty fathoms, where her old man could not do anything better than steam her off on her way. The second time she tried the game was last week, when we were already lying here. She was sitting smoothly between reefs. Well done by the skipper. He is a smart guy and knows how to navigate a can on a two-inch stripe. Wireless station, of course, was smashed up at the right time, so that the old man had an excuse for not using it. But he had to set flags to keep face and to bake proper witness cakes for evidence. He had tough luck again. Just when he had ordered to lower away the boats, a French coast guard popped up. What that skipper must have cursed when he saw the coast coming! Sure, he had the log already charmed up, and now he had to work the rubber to make it blank again for another fill-in. He had gone between the reefs at low water. The coast sent him, calling by wireless, three tugs. As soon as high water came in again, the tugs got the
lady out like on oiled roller-skates.”

  “And what is she to do now?” I asked.

  “Desperation. She has to take her last chance. If she reaches home safely, the Board of Underwriters will sure make an investigation. They will demand a change of skipper. A new skipper has to be worked up by the owners before he is reliable and trustworthy. It may happen that the underwriters back out of her, once she’s home again. Then it will be too late for her to make good for her owners. So you see she has to do it on her trip out of here or she can never make it. Around this coast here she must go at it, because it is the safest part, free from the interference of ships rushing in too quick. Here it is silent. Farther north there is too much traffic; besides, there she cannot go off too far from the route, as she easily can do here without arousing suspicion.”

  I wondered: “Why is she hanging here such a long time?”

  “No firemen.”

  “Silly,” I said. “I just passed by her and asked for a chance, saying I am fire’m.”

  “Got papers?”

  “Don’t ask herring.”

  “Without papers she cannot take you. She is English. Rules. Taking in dead ones would look suspicious under these conditions. The investigation might build up a case against her for taking on men without papers who may be inexperienced. She must have good men with clean papers. The firemen were smart. They burnt themselves well enough to be taken to the hospital. Care of the British consul. They know why. Because they are the worst off when she cracks up. The water rushes into the stoke-hold, breaking in the hatchways and gangways, and so they are caught like rats in a trap and cannot get out. They are scorched to death, or drowned, or blown into rags when the furnaces get the cold shower and gun off. The firemen don’t have to sign on again, once off. They make time in the hospital until the dame puts out of port.”

  “How is that bucket to get out without firemen?” I asked. “Don’t you worry, sonny. They are ready for kidnapping, or for shanghaiing, if you like that expression any better.”