For two days, we lay idle in Recife while the choleric captain burned up the cables to far-off New York, and the purser kept out of sight. Still, to most of the passengers, the captain’s troubles were a blessing. Here was a large city for a liberty, cooler, though it was close to the Equator, than San Juan, far more inviting. Had there been a repetition of San Juan, however, given two days ashore, our passengers would have torn both the ship and Recife to pieces, ruining forever our relations with Brazil.
But this time in port, General Scott was prepared. Rigorous warning went out to every passenger as to dire penalties, should there be a duplication of that outrageous night in San Juan. And as preventative medicine, Major Curtin’s M.P.s went ashore armed, with orders to pick up and return to the ship immediately any passenger seen on the streets unduly happy.
As a result of this, there was relative peace in Recifie and on the ship during our stay. Some disgracefully drunk cases were picked up and taxied back alongside by the M.P.s, but we were spared another night of hideous screeching.
On our third day in port, we finally started fueling about 9:30 A.M. Sailing time was set at 6:00 A.M. next day, March 11, in preparation for which Major Curtin had all the passengers carefully rounded up and checked in on board the night before. But when 6:00 A.M. on March 11 came round, we did not get under way. To the great chagrin of the skipper, who had been riding General Scott the day before over delaying the ship on account of passengers, several of the crew were missing. Not till 9.00 A.M., three hours late, did we shove off, even then leaving a quartermaster and an oiler who had apparently decided to desert the good ship Pig’s Knuckle, ashore in a foreign port.
We cleared Recife, and shortly were out on the broad South Atlantic, headed at last for Lagos in Nigeria, on the coast of West Africa, our final destination. The events in Recife had made the skipper more peevish than ever; no one could speak to him from then on without getting his head snapped off. This situation was in nowise improved by various alarms of sightings of both enemy surface raiders and U-boats—perhaps true, perhaps false. We ran from everything as a matter of prudence.
The weather stayed fine, and though we were running just a hair south of the Equator with the sun practically dead overhead at noon, giving maximum summer conditions, the air felt unusually comfortable. Certainly the climate at sea with us was far superior to summer weather I had experienced in New York, Washington, or Boston, where I had often sweltered with the thermometer around 90° F.
Major Goff and I, he from Idaho and I from Colorado, in both of which western states the weather is always perfect, pondering this phenomenon our second day out of Recife, became curious as to what the temperature really was there under the Equatorial sun. Ordinarily I should have solved this problem simply by a look at the bridge thermometer, but that ship’s instrument had been broken no one knew how long before (certainly long before we left New York) and never replaced. So I couldn’t help.
Major Goff, however, took care of the matter in routine Army style. Near by on deck was a sergeant. In the Army, sergeants are the solution to everything.
“Anderson!” sang out the lanky major. “Get us a thermometer!”
“Yes, sir!” With no ado and no questions asked as to where he might find one, Sergeant Anderson, like Major Rowan delivering the message to Garcia, set off to obtain a thermometer.
By and by, he returned with a fever thermometer, evidently from the sick bay.
“This may not do, Major,” he apologized, handing it to Goff, “but it’s the best I could get.”
The fever thermometer would read no lower than 94°, and it turned out the temperature on deck was considerably lower than that. Going back to the sick bay to return the clinical thermometer, I saw a small thermometer secured to the bulkhead, which with the surgeon’s permission I removed and took out on deck. The temperature there turned out to be 84° F., amazingly low for Equatorial summer, indicating that there are far more uncomfortable spots on earth in summer than right on the Equator.
Meanwhile, our troubles continued. While bringing liquor on board the ship had been strictly forbidden, still with the experience gained in prohibition days in the art of bootlegging, evidently some of the passengers had smuggled aboard plenty. The amazing situation developed that the senior civilian on board, the top supervisor for our Middle East contractor, was so continuously drunk at sea that the surgeon had reported him on the verge of delirium tremens. After investigation of this by a board of officers belonging to the Mission, he was relieved of his authority and ordered to be sent home immediately we got to Africa. It became clearer, how with such a man in charge of them and setting the pace, our civilians had shown so little self-restraint.
In his place, Mr. Patrick Murphy, construction superintendent for the contractor, a man grown gray in the construction business, took over and brought some order back into the lives of his unruly charges. But Murphy had a hard crowd to deal with, especially as there was still plenty of bootlegged hooch, both Porto Rican and Brazilian, stowed away aboard. Finally Murphy brought his troubles to me. He had everybody under control but one man, an ironworker by the name of Bill Cunningham.
“This Cunningham’s a tough hombre, Commander,” explained Murphy. “When he’s sober, he’s as fine and accommodating a worker as you’ll ever see. But once he gets some liquor in him, he’s a wild man, spoiling for a fight. And he’s got fists like iron!” Murphy shrugged his shoulders hopelessly, then continued,
“I’m round sixty now, and none too well for that. If I was younger myself, I’d take care of him. He’s drunk right now and down in the starboard lower passage, looking for a fight. I could send the M.P.s down there and he’d get it. But when it was over, half a dozen of them M.P.s would be busted up and Cunningham’d be so busted up, too, he’d never be worth a damn to me. He’s a terror in a scrap, and I don’t want any. Now you’re an officer, Commander. Maybe he’ll listen to you. He’s worth saving for that African job if we can only get him there whole, and then keep him sober.”
My naval training had taught me it’s useless to enter an argument with a drunken sailor. The only safe thing to do is to slap him into the brig and talk to him when he’s sobered up and recognizes authority.
But from what Murphy said, slapping Bill Cunningham into the brig meant a battle royal which would ruin him for our purposes, and well I knew that we had very few good ironworkers. In Massawa, one would be worth his weight in gold.
Dubiously I told Murphy I would see what I could do, though I didn’t know Cunningham. While I had little faith in my ability as a lion-tamer, still it was possible that Cunningham might be awed by a naval uniform. If not, I was sure that I could run faster than any drunk.
So I went below alone to the passage indicated on the lower passenger deck, to find all the stateroom doors on both sides of the passage closed and presumably locked. In solitary possession of the passage, clad solely in shorts and a sleeveless undershirt which exhibited only too well his powerful shoulders and his brawny muscles, clutching in one fist a bottle of rum and banging with the other on the closed doors, was a man shouting drunkenly,
“Open them doors, you bastards! Come on out an’ fight!”
Evidently here was Cunningham.
At the noise of my footsteps, he ceased pounding, looked round toward me, then braced himself, ready to fight.
“Your name Cunningham?” I asked brusquely.
“Yeah. Wot’s it to you?” Uncertainly his bloodshot eyes scanned me from my feet to my brass hat. He didn’t know who I was.
“Lots. I’m in command in Massawa. You headed there?”
“Sure. I’m gonna work there.”
“Well, you’re not. You’re fired! You’re a damned disgrace to the United States. I don’t want any drunken bums like you in Massawa. As soon as we get to Lagos, your trip ends! That’s all of Africa you’ll ever see. You’re going right back home on this ship! How’s that suit you?”
Cunningham’s bleary eyes stare
d into mine. Steadily I stared back. My staccato phrases in discharging him so peremptorily had momentarily, at least, taken his mind off fighting and his befuddled brain was evidently struggling with the new idea as he gazed at me.
“How’s that suit you?” I reiterated sharply.
“Naw. I wanna go to Massawa. Had enough o’ this damned ship. Doan wanna go home on her,” he mumbled finally, dropping his eyes.
“Well, you’re going to! You’re fired! You get that? I can’t use any bums like you. But if you think you can do better, quit this damned drinking right now. Then come see me the day we’re due in Lagos and maybe I’ll reconsider. That’s only maybe, remember! I won’t promise anything.” I paused a moment to let that sink in, then snapped out,
“Which is your stateroom?”
Still further confused by the sudden change of subject, Cunningham shuffled uneasily, dropped his fighting stance, and started solemnly to scan the closed stateroom doors.
“That one,” he announced finally, pointing uncertainly with the bottle to the fourth door down.
“As a start, then, get into that room and stay there till you’re sober!” I ordered.
Cunningham’s drunken eyes came angrily back to mine. With those shoulders he might have broken me in two, but I gazed back unflinchingly. For a long minute we stood glaring at each other. Whatever then motivated him, I never knew. Perhaps it was fear over the loss of the chance of ever seeing Africa. Perhaps it was his dread of the long trip home in the Pig’s Knuckle. At any rate, without a word he shuffled off into his stateroom, leaving me in possession of the empty corridor. I went back up on deck, and told Pat Murphy quiet now reigned below.
CHAPTER
11
AT 11.5 KNOTS, OUR NORMAL CRUISING speed, leaving a little power in reserve for emergencies, we steamed on due east for Africa, keeping a little to the south of the Equator. Lookouts were doubled, the Armed Guard crews kept always on the alert at the guns. It was hereabouts in the South Atlantic the year before that Nazi raiders had caught and sunk two merchant ships, the Zamzam and the Robin Moor, with particularly brutal attacks on their passengers and crews, seeing we were then neutral.
It was amazing how out of the world we were on our last leg from Recife to Lagos. We never received any radio news reports, for the ship’s radio set was kept constantly tuned only to the emergency SOS wave length and consequently could receive neither any long or shortwave news broadcasts.
As for private portable receiving sets, of which several had been brought aboard by passengers, all had been gathered up and locked away on General Scott’s orders. Such sets in receiving, reradiate sufficiently to act as short range sending sets themselves, giving off a signal which a U-boat not too far off can pick up with a direction finder and thus track down. So as completely cut off from the world as in the old sailing ship days, and at a speed not much faster, we headed for Lagos.
The weather stayed remarkable-blue skies, blue water, clouds of flying fish, with at night a gorgeous phosphorescent wake, burning stars—and no moon. This last was especially appreciated, as with no Wacs, no Waves, and no other women aboard, we had no need of a moon, and its absence made everybody feel better since it completed our black-out perfectly.
But the weather was our only bright spot. In the dining room, the unending round of stew, frankfurters, and pig’s knuckles, all served as usual with soggy potatoes and awash spinach, more unpalatable than ever under tropic skies, kept the ship true to her nickname. Then the skipper began running with all the huge steel cargo doors in the side of the ship’s hull down near her waterline, swung wide open, ensuring her prompt capsizing in case of torpedoing. A protest by General Scott against the most serious jeopardizing of the safety of a ship at sea in wartime I ever heard of, brought nothing but a wisecrack from the skipper in answer to Major Curtin who carried the, general’s request that they be kept closed as a matter of elementary safety.
In fact, the offended skipper went on from wisecracks to inform the major in ordinary times he would be warranted in locking up General Scott, the major himself, Colonel Gruver, and some other officers he named (oddly enough he omitted me) for their interference with his ship, but he was generously refraining. The fact that these were not ordinary times seems to have eluded the skipper altogether. Had they been, the Army would not have chartered the ship, the general and the rest of the Army passengers would not have been aboard on their way to war, and none of us, including the captain himself, would have been there in the South Atlantic in danger of being torpedoed.
So Major Curtin only laughed at the skipper’s gesture of magnanimity in refraining. It was as obvious to him as it was to the skipper, that locking up the general, with 200 armed troops at his back, for endeavoring to ensure the safety of his troops and himself, was something not lightly to be undertaken by anyone.
Eight days out of Recife, found us on March 19 in the Gulf of Guinea, center of the slave trade in the old days. We were just north of the Equator, heading northeast for Lagos and only 346 miles from it.
We had already traveled 6500 miles in the thirty-one days we had been at sea since leaving New York, and only one thought animated all hands on our last day out—if our luck held for just one more day, we should get to Lagos and say good-by forever to the Pig’s Knuckle. Personally, I regretted the ill-advised moment in which I had canceled my chance to go by air—a trip in a Flying Fortress piloted by even the least experienced of the Army Air Corps’ newest flyers would have been more competently run and far less nerve-racking. And it would have taken only four days at most, instead of the thirty-one we had already been on the ocean in our roundabout wanderings.
Our last night at sea found the skipper fearful of something at last—an air attack! U-boats and their torpedoes he disdained, but apparently planes and their bombs, menacing his upper decks directly, were something else with him. At any rate, he requested of General Scott that the military lookout be doubled during the night to watch for planes, and I volunteered for one of the watches.
From midnight on till 4:00 A.M., I stood a sky watch atop the pilot house but sighted nothing at all except a lovely array of stars, most of them never visible in northern latitudes, which of itself repaid the effort and the loss of sleep. Aside from that, it enabled me to size up leisurely the best stars for morning sights.
I was very anxious to see that the ship made a good landfall this last time. A good landfall was imperative for us, as the Guinea coast each side of Lagos was covered with uncharted British minefields for the benefit of any U-boats which might try snooping in the vicinity. It was no shore to come blundering up against blindly as we had at Porto Rico, looking for landmarks to tell us where we were; not at least if we wanted to get into Lagos still afloat.
I selected two stars, the planet Venus in the east and the star Shaula of the constellation Scorpio bearing south. Both of these were of a magnitude bright enough to remain visible in a sextant even when approaching dawn lighted the horizon sharply enough for use. And these two stars made practically a right angle with each other in the sky, so that the lines of position I could get from sights of them would intersect almost perpendicularly and give me an excellent “fix” for the ship.
With that determined and no enemy planes showing up, I went below when my watch ended at 4:00 A.M., got the third mate’s sextant (as well as the third mate who turned out to help) and went back on the boat deck.
By now I had confidence enough in the navigational ability of both the third mate and the junior third (both of whom had worked diligently on navigation the past few weeks) to trust them on their own to get the ship back safely to New York from Africa. But this last position was unusually important and I felt safest doing it myself.
Between 4:32 A.M., when the horizon began to show up in the east, and 4:49 A.M., when the increasing dawn started to fade out even my bright stars, I obtained a fine set of sights of both Venus and Shaula. These, swiftly worked out by Ageton’s method, gave us for 4:49 A.M.
ship’s time) a sharp “fix” for the ship. The intersection of my lines of position placed us then in Latitude 4° 43.3' North, Longitude 2' 07.7’ East, just 129 miles from Lagos.
The third mate, with no further ado, entered this on the chart as his early morning position. From it, run up to 7:00 A.M., the skipper then changed course some 10° more to the westward, and with the ship speeded up to her maximum, 13 knots, headed (so he hoped) directly for Lagos.
Meanwhile, I turned in, clothes and all, to catch up on my lost night’s sleep. Hardly, it seemed, had I even closed my eyes when a knocking on my stateroom door woke me again. I glanced at my watch. Only seven o’clock. Who wanted me that early when I had been up practically all night?
I looked up and there in the open doorway stood Bill Cunningham. I rolled out of my bunk, sat up on the edge of it.
“You said to come to see you the day we got to Lagos, Commander,” announced Cunningham in a voice strangely soft as compared to his husky frame. “Here I am.”
He was certainly bright and early. I rubbed my sleepy eyes, looked him over. He was sober, and from his clear eyes and skin, had evidently been so for some time. The change in his manner, his voice, and his appearance since the day I had last seen him below in the corridor, was remarkable. He was as mild and inoffensive a person now as one might ever see.
“All right, Cunningham, you remember what I said when I fired you. How about it?”
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