by B. TRAVEN
Before he could catch breath enough to say one word more, the whole boat was lifted high up upon a tower-like wave as though it were only a plank. When we were at the crown of the wave, the boat stood still for a fraction of a second and I thought that the wave would go out from under us and leave the boat hanging in mid-air. At that moment another mighty wave caught the boat in its huge fists, whipped it down, and crashed it heavily against the naked rock, and the boat was splintered into a thousand pieces.
No cry was heard, which made me feel sure that the others had been thrown so hard upon the rocks that they must have been left like fleshy rags.
I felt myself lifted up on another wave.
More to assure myself that I was still alive than to cry for help, which would have been silly anyway, I hollered: “Stanislav, have you something to hold on?”
For a short while I heard no answer. But then, his voice still with that twang of a mouth full of water, Stanislav cried back: “Not even a twig. Funk it all, the whole mess. Hey, listen, Pip, I am making back for the tub. Safest place right now. She sure will stay on for a day or two. She won’t fall in two yet. Come along. Ride down the waves.”
Naturally, he did not say all this in one sentence. The flow of his speech was interrupted by the pails of sea-water which old man Neptune gunned into his swear-hold.
His idea was not so bad. It couldn’t be. Because any other idea would have been without sense. I managed to keep my course to that dark tower which could be seen against the dimness of the horizon.
Both of us reached this goal, the dying Empress of Madagascar. It had not been easy. Dozens of times we had been thrown back and forth before we finally got hold of this haven in a restless world.
We climbed up, using the bulwark as a gangway. Reaching midship was quite a task, for we had nothing to hold on. We had to go a long way around up to the stern, and from there drop foot by foot until we dropped finally upon the wall aft of the midship-castle. This aft wall now was the deck, while everything else aboard had become steep walls. The two gangways, or corridors if you wish, the one at port side, the other at starboard, were in fact now shafts and no longer corridors. Going down these shafts, one had to climb from door to door, using the door-knobs and hinges for steps. The skipper’s cabins and the officers’ mess were at the end of the gangways toward the bow, now at the bottom of the shafts.
The Empress was standing like a strange tower firmly squeezed in between two rocks. Extraordinary as this position seemed to me then, I learned later that positions like that one have happened before, may happen, and do happen, although rarely. How she could have gone into that position only she could have explained. She stood so solidly that one might have thought she had become part of the rock upon which she had gone to die. She did not shake or tremble. One felt only now and then a sort of rumble whenever a particularly high and strong wave struck her and tried to lift her out between the rocks and throw her over, so as to give her the final shot of grace. At such times she quivered lightly, as if she were frightened of something terrible which she felt might soon take place. But after that she again stood rock-like.
There was no gale. Not even a strong wind. The unusually heavy breakers that came strolling along and pounded unceasingly against the ship seemed to come from a storm-center far away. The outlook was for no heavy weather within the next six hours or so. The sky had been dark all night, without being really black. Just covered over with light, fluffy clouds, which seemed ready to change into mist.
We crawled round to the galley, which was open. We went in and slept there as best as we could.
The sky began to turn gray. The sun came up over the horizon and gilded the sea. Fresh and clean and golden she rose from her bath in the sea and went climbing up the firmament like an invincible warrior for ever fighting against the powers of darkness. I could not recall any time in all my life when a rising sun made such an impression of earthly glory upon me. It made me feel inside happy and proud of being man and living in an age when such a sun was the lord of the world.
We looked out over the sea. Nothing was to be seen. Nobody seemed to have survived. I had no confidence that someone might come along and pick us up. Stanislav felt the same way. All day yesterday we had met no ship and had seen not even the faintest smoke-line of a ship passing in the distance. So we knew that the skipper had brought the Empress as far out from the ordinary routes as possible. His two former experiences had taught him to stay away from passing ships and coast guards and patrol-boats. He had hoped and worked for an easy burial, and then a fine get-away for himself and a few men. He had not taken into consideration that he might lose the whole crew of the foc’sle, all the men who were trained oarsmen. The A.B. standing by the helm had been thrown through the front windows out of the bridge and had disappeared. The two look-outs at the bow had gone down before all others. If the boats had been manned as provided for in the boat-lists, at least two boats would have gone off and away without any trouble.
49
By now daylight had become complete. We set out to explore. And for breakfast. We climbed down the gangways.
At the bottom we came into the two cabins of the skipper. I found a pocket-compass and took possession of it. But Stanislav had to keep it, for I had about me no pocket without holes. In the cabin there were two fresh-water tanks for the personal use of the skipper. In the officers’ mess we discovered later two more tanks, which were larger than the skipper’s. It was likely that we would not run short of water for a month or longer, if, as we were sure, the pumps in the galley would draw water from the ship’s fresh water tanks, which certainly still held a thousand gallons. Of course it might be that these tanks had been cracked and were leaking.
On the Yorikke we had been familiar with every hidden hold. We could have found on the Yorikke the farthest and deepest nook without a glimpse of light. Here it was different. We knew nothing about the ship. But no sooner came the question “When do we eat?” than Stanislav, using his trained sense, found the storehouse. Looking at it, we were convinced that we could live for six months like Balkan kings in Paris. We would not even have to drink fresh water, for the store was well stocked with stout, ale, different sorts of wine, brandy, and a row of gallon-sized bottles with soda water and mineral water. And we had seriously believed the skipper a perfect dry. He would have been the first and only Scotch skipper whom I ever heard of as a dry.
We set up the stove in the galley and fired it. Now we could cook. We tried the pumps. One of them did not draw, but the other brought out fresh water in thick streams. It was cool; the refrigerator seemed to have worked well until the last minute.
We had an elegant breakfast. Nothing was missing. It was better even than I had ever seen on the Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa, New Orleans, Jackson Square. Well, let us not think. Thinking won’t do me any good when I’m on a reef off the west coast of Africa.
After we had eaten and while we were smoking the skipper’s cigars, I began to feel slightly sick. Stanislav too seemed not to be at ease.
For a while I thought there must have been something wrong with the food.
Then Stanislav said: “Now, Pippip, what do you know about that? I am getting sea-sick. Has never happened to me since I sailed for the first time on a Fünen fishing-boat.”
I became worse than a lubber on his first trip in heavy weather. No explanation could be found. The ship was firmly bedded between the rocks. The heavy breakers thundering, now and then, against the huge mass of the Empress made her sometimes tremble slightly, but that could not be the cause of our sickness.
After thinking, Stanislav said: “Now I can tell you what the trouble is with us. It’s that idiotic position of the cabin, with the heavy breakers going up and down all the time while we are standing still. Everything is head under foot. See? We have to get used to that position, and after a day or two we will be fine.”
“Right you are,” I admitted.
We left the cabin, climbed up upon the aft wall
of the main-house, then upon the bridge, and there the sickness left us, although we still felt funny having a ship in such a crazy position and set in a strange angle against the horizon.
The excellent cigars we were smoking made me a wise man. I said to Stanislav: “You see, it’s like this: only what you talk into yourself, only that makes you what you are. What I mean is this, I am sure that as soon as we learn to distinguish all that is imagination from what is established fact we shall realize very remarkable things, and we shall look henceforth at the whole world from a different point of view, without interference from any coined slogans or phrases or cheap ideas. I wonder to what far-reaching results such a change in thinking and general outlook might lead us.”
Stanislav did not follow me. I had thought all the time that he was a philosopher of high standing, taking things as they came and making the most of them.
He took up my last word: “Lead. Right you are, Pippip. We could lead the most beautiful life any sailor has ever dreamed of or read about. We have here everything we want. We may eat and drink what we wish, even caviar and Chablis, or a good English smoked herring washed down with two quarts of stout. Nobody butts in here and cranks about what we are doing or talking. But what’s all the good of it? The quicker we could get out of here, the better, I would feel. Suppose no bucket shows up, I figure we’ll have to do something to reach the coast. Every day the same. That’s what you can’t stand. I sure do not believe there is such a thing in heaven or under heaven as what is called paradise. For I can’t figure where the rich go. They can’t go to the same place where the sailors go and all the communist workers. Anyway, I tell you, if there should be a paradise and I was unlucky enough to be shipped there, I would yell the most terrible blasphemies day and night and in the afternoon, just for the sake of being thrown out, so that I have not any longer to play the harp and always sing church hymns with stale Methodist sisters, and with seamen’s mission preachers, and with mission librarians, and with those hussies that come aboard looking in the foc’sle for photographs from Spain to confiscate them and then sleep with them after much praying to save sinful sailors. Hell must be a pleasure to get away from revivals and collections for the salvation of the heathen.”
I laughed and said: “Don’t you worry, Stanislav, you and me, we won’t get in there. In the first place, we have no papers, no passports. You may depend on that all right; they ask papers from you when you come to the gate. Stamped by consuls and passport-office clerks with the okay of an Episcopalian deacon. Or else they bang the door right in your face. And don’t be short of papers that make a modern citizen, such as birth-certificate, vaccination-certificate, certificate of baptism, certificate of confirmation, marriage license, income-tax receipts, receipts that you have paid your light-bills and for the telephone, an affidavit that you have no connections with criminal syndicalism or Moscow, and a certificate from police headquarters that there are no charges against you still pending. You think what I say is funny. But why the hell does a man need so many papers here on earth if no one would ask for them up there? Doesn’t every preacher tell you everything on earth here is only a preparation for the beyond? So are all the papers and passports, only preparations to have them in good shape when knocking at the gate to be let in.”
“Now, what you say, Pippip,” Stanislav answered, “makes me think. The whole mess we are in does not fit me all right. Everything we have here is too good to last. It can’t last, I tell you. I am suspicious of the whole safari here. Having such silly luck as we have, I think there must be something wrong. I simply can’t stand by. All looks like as if this good luck and all this splendid grub and drinks has been shipped to us for the simple reason that something very tough is kept in store for you, and they wish to pep you up and fix you well before you get the finale done. I know that feeling. It was plumb sure exactly the same before we went into that fight off Skagen.”
“Shucks. Don’t talk liver-wurst. You’re the kind of guy who spits out roast chicken when it flies into your open mouth, to avoid meeting with tough luck. All nasty things come by themselves. They don’t need any help from you. Live your life when you have it; you don’t know a thing what will be hereafter, and there may be no way of making good what you lost while still here.”
Stanislav picked up his usual good humor. He laughed and shook off his depression and his German philosophy mixed with Slav fatalism. He whistled. But right after that he said: “Damn it, a sailor whistling. Funking hell, I don’t know what is the matter with me. Guess I have eaten too well. I am an old fool, that’s what I am. Never before in all my life did I have such rotten ideas. Only today. It all started while we were sitting in the old man’s cabin, in his easy chairs, at his table, drinking out of his glasses, using his mess-gear. And there it was that I thought: Now we are eating here like real gents, and right there, below your feet, almost touching them, there are swimming in the foc’sle all the guys you saw yesterday still alive. You have only to crawl down through a few feet of water, smash in the doors, and out they come floating, all dead, swollen already, with their eyes wide open. They won’t allow us to sit here quietly and eat and drink like kings. They sure will call the unseen visitor of the ships to come and get us off the table and join them. A ship is something alive, with a soul, and therefore she does not like to have in her bowels dead sailors, who give her indigestion. Corpses as a paid-for cargo, that is different. That is all right. But no dead sailors swimming and floating about, and no way to spit them out. I hate it.”
“What can we do about it?” I asked. “Can we help it?”
“Exactly what I mean,” Stanislav said. “We can do nothing. That’s what makes it so bad. And look at this: all the others have gone fishing, while just we two have been left. Just we two. There must be something wrong somewhere.”
“Look here, Stanislav, what’s the use of spitting like that? And if you don’t get quiet, I shall change quarters. Yours will be the starboard gangway, mine the port-side one. And we won’t even say hello when we meet. As long as I am still alive, I won’t listen to such nonsense. There is plenty of time later when we are washed off here. Besides, if you seriously want to know my opinion as to that queer leaving us behind alone but, boy, there is nothing to talk about. We simply did not belong. We were shanghaied, kidnapped, robbed, stolen. We were not here on our own account. We surely never wished anything bad to the Empress of Madagascar. She had never done us anything wrong. So why should we help her to her funeral? And she knows it. She had no reason to do us any harm. That’s why we are still sitting here, whereas all the rest of them have gone off.”
“Why, for all the funking sons, didn’t you tell me this before, Pippip? Of course, you are right.”
“I am not your legal adviser. Besides, you never asked me, and you are not paying for it either,” I said. “And look here, Stanislav, really you should be less ungrateful toward fate.”
“What do you mean by that, Pippip?”
“What I said. You are ungrateful, that’s what you are. You need a guy to tell you that. Destiny has made you half-partner of one of the latest issues of His Majesty’s merchant marine. She is a bit slow. I will admit that. But so are others which are less beautiful. If somebody makes you a gift of a fine turkey, you wouldn’t be so rude as to ask also for the cranberry sauce, would you? You are not only fifty-fifty on this most elegant British ship, you are also half-owner of a store the like of which you won’t find in many ports along the coasts of western Africa. Caviar, jam, jelly, golden butter, milk, tips of asparagus, spinach, plum pudding, ten different kinds of soups, meats, fish, fruits, all the crackers you need, biscuits, and then, the honey of all, ale, stout, real Scotch, three brands, cognac, French wine, Italian wine, Port wine, Malaga wine. Man, Stanislav, you do not deserve what destiny has dropped into your lap. You are rich, Stanislav, did you ever realize that? You are a ship-owner. We may form the company right now. I vote for you as president if you vote for me as the vice-pres, yes, siree. I mean i
t. Has the world ever seen an ungrateful guy like you? Owning an eight-thousand-register-ton ship and then still worrying about the running expenses. I guess I will go below and shake me up a cock. Just feel like.”
“That’s right.” Stanislav was again the jolly partner he had always been. “I am going with you and get drunk. Who knows, a can may hop along and pick us up, and for the rest of my life I would never forgive myself for leaving behind all these treasures without having even tasted them.”
So there now began a banquet which could not have been any better for the original owners of the Empress when it was newly born out of the shipyard. I think we got mighty soused. Whether we spent at this banquet one day or four I could never figure out. We got sober and drunk, and sober and drunk again. How many times this happened neither of us could tell.
Occasionally, to cool off our heads, we went up on deck and looked around for a passing ship. We never saw one. We felt sure none had seen us, or it would have come close to see what was up with our ship, standing on her head, with her buttocks high in the air.
“We are getting sour weather,” Stanislav said one afternoon.
He was right. It came up late in the evening. It was getting heavier and wilder every hour. Looked like one of the worst that came along those parts of western Africa.
We were sitting in the skipper’s cabin, which was lighted up by a swinging kerosene lamp.
Stanislav went restlessly to the windows and then back again to his seat.
“What’s the rag?” I asked. “You can’t do anything about this heavy sea coming up.”
He looked at me with a pretty worried face. He said after a while: “Tell you, Pippip, if this weather comes up the way I see it coming on, it is very likely the Empress slips off the reef, is thrown over, and goes down with this heavy water-filled bow of hers like gliding off the rails of a shipyard. Then we will have hardly any time to get out of her suck-water. I tell you we’d better look in time how to get off her before she takes us for a ride with no return ticket.”
