The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  The skipper was still writing in his book.

  After I had given up my name and my country, only my right to work was left. My work was the only thing the Yorikke wanted me for. Therefore I was going to sell my man-power as high as I could.

  “The pay for coalers is forty-five pesetas,” the skipper said without looking up from his book.

  “Hey! What’s this? Forty-five pesetas?” I yelled.

  “Yes, didn’t you know that?” the skipper asked with a tired look at me.

  “I signed on for English pay.” I defended my wages.

  “Mr. Dils?” the skipper asked sharply, throwing a stern glance at the second engineer.

  “Did I — I mean me, myself ever promise you English wages? Say it. Did I?” the horse-thief asked grinningly.

  Right then I could have socked that son of a beachcomber, never mind, I could have socked him so that his own mother would have said: “That is not my son, that must be the left-over of a twisted alligator.”

  But I came to in time. I would not have liked to be in chains on the Yorikke, eaten by the rats that had just taken out marriage licenses. Just keep cool, my boy. I felt like ice dropped by the kitchen door at the back porch. And with an icy voice I said: “Yes, you have. You have promised me English money.”

  “Exactly, my man,” the pickpocket said, “I have promised you English money. Exactly. But I haven’t said a single word about English wages, have I?”

  “Now what is this, Mr. Dils?” the skipper interrupted. “If you mean to hire men, I should suppose everything is straight.”

  “It is straight, sir. I have promised this man English money, but not English wages. Have I or have I not?” He was addressing me again.

  “Yes,” I answered, “that is right, but I was of the opinion that you meant English wages, which would be about ten pounds a month.”

  “We cannot take into consideration here what your opinion was,” the skipper said to me. “We can only consider what was said and what was not said. If Mr. Dils has said English money, then he was right. We pay the forty-five pesetas of your monthly wages, of course, in English currency. No mistake in that. In English pounds and shillings, at the rate of the day on which the payment is due. All overtime is paid at four-pence.”

  Weeks later it came to me that I had not asked for how much overtime these fourpence are to be paid, for the hour, for the day, for the week, or for the year. When I found out it was meant for the week, it was too late to make any objections. Objections would have been overruled anyway, since overtime was never paid, and asking for it meant the hold of horrors.

  “Where do you wish to sign off again?” the skipper asked without looking at me, keeping his eyes on the book and writing letters and figures.

  “Next port of call,” I said quickly.

  “You cannot do that,” the horse-thief said.

  “Oh, yes, I can do that and I shall.”

  “You have it all wrong, brother, you cannot sign off at the next port of call,” the pickpocket said again. “You signed on until we make Liverpool, didn’t you?”

  “That’s what I meant,” I said. “Liverpool is the next port we are putting in.”

  “Not on your life,” the skipper said. “We cleared papers for Saloniki, Greece, you see. But in the meantime I have changed my mind. We are making North Africa. That’s what I am going to do.”

  Cleared for Greece and making North Africa. Aye, aye, sir. Now I get the whole course straight. Morocco and Syria right now are paying well for for All right, skipper, I get you. As soon as you have pocketed the money you are after, we make for the grand port, or, let’s say, for the ground port. From now on, you cannot hide anything from me, an old salt. Nosser. Not from me. This is not the first smuggler and armer I have shipped in. But for the sake of fighting and for another chance to look behind the curtain, I did not give in.

  “You have told me Liverpool, haven’t you?” I said to the horse-thief.

  “Not true, sir.” The horse-thief addressed the skipper with lips drawn wide, trying to grin like a hyena. “I said, when offering this man a job, that we had a light cargo for Liverpool, and that he may sign off at Liverpool as soon as we make it.”

  “I see,” answered the skipper, “I see everything is in fine shape. We have eight cases of Spanish sardines for Liverpool. Low freight rate. Time to deliver not over eighteen months. I cannot make Liverpool on account of eight cases of Spanish sardines at the rate of seven and six each. The fresh water I have to take in for this trip would cost me more than the freight these cases pay. But, of course, as soon as there is a chance to get a full cargo for Liverpool, I shall not hesitate to make that port.”

  Since I am out of my baby-shoes for quite some time, I know damn well what those eight cases are for. Blindfolding for papers and clearances. Always good to have on hand for an excuse to change the course when it is necessary for some hot reason. I was sure he had small cargoes for Italian ports, French ports, Albanian ports, Turkish ports, Egyptian ports, Syrian ports. He may put in any port he wishes, without any chance for anyone to accuse him of having incorrect clearing papers. I do not know why, but I begin to like this man. I begin to understand why he, a man of culture, is running a ship like the Yorikke. At heart he is a vagabond, a pirate. Perhaps it is in his blood. He cannot help it. The times for pirates are gone. It doesn’t pay any longer. In these times the career is too short. But there is still in modern times a sort of dangerous trading and shipping that the right man with the true pirate spirit can find far more adventurous than any pirate of old could ever have thought of. Pirates of old were brutes. They were never in need of intelligence. Sheer brutality did the job in those times. Modern pirates must have intelligence and quickness of mind, and more of it than the admiral of a fleet of battle-ships. For a man with brains and an adventurous spirit it is, by far, more thrilling to outwit clever customs officials and captains of gunboats who chase ships that run arms to Syrian and Moroccan rebels than it was for crude pirates to capture a defenseless merchant ship.

  I see clearer every minute what kind of tub I am in. There is no escape. The company wants to get fat. It can’t be done in decent business with ships like this one. But it can be done in a business that pays better than any decent business can ever do. Money must be made. That’s religion. Because expenses must be met. The greatest disgrace is to fail to pay your debts and to go into bankruptcy. A decent citizen pays his debts. And ships cannot run without sailors. What’s the use anyway?

  “Sign your name here,” the skipper said to me, breaking into my thoughts about economic problems.

  He handed me his pen.

  “Here? My name? Me? Never!” I protested.

  “As you wish,” the skipper cut short. “Mr. Dils, will you, please, sign here as witness for a man who cannot write?”

  I felt myself going wild. That pickpocket sign for me? Such a lousy leper sign on my behalf, as a sort of representative of a red-blooded American? Not he. And nobody else, as long as I have a hand to write with.

  “All right, skipper, I shall sign myself. I see there is no way out. I am caught. My just punishment for betraying sweet sunny Spain.”

  “Do not talk so much nonsense. Write your name and have done with it. I have got lots of other things to do than to taddle around with a stubborn coaler. Put it down and beat it. We cannot spare a coal-shoveler much time.”

  I wrote with clear letters that will last until the trumpets of the Last Day are calling, and somebody then will be confused as to how to call me.

  “Helmond Rigby, Alexandria, Egypt.”

  There it now stands for ever. Black on white. I can’t get away from it. Ahoy, Yorikke, ahoy, hoy, ho! Go to hell now if you wish. What do I care? It’s all the same now to me. I am part of you now. Where you go I go, where you leave I leave, when you go to the devil I go. Married. Vanished from the living. Damned and doomed. Of me there is not left a breath in all the vast world.

  Ahoy, Yorikke! Ahoy, hoy, ho!r />
  I am not buried in the sea,

  The death ship is now part of me

  So far from sunny New Orleans

  So far from lovely Louisiana.

  Hello, over there, beyond. Yes, I mean you there, you beyond. We are comrades now, gladiators. What was it you said? Yes. Morituri te salutamus! The modern gladiators are greeting you, 0 great Cæsar, Cæsar Augustus Capitalismus. Morituri te salutamus! The moribund are greeting you, 0 Cæsar, great Imperator Caesar Augustus. We are ready to die for you; for you and for the glorious and most holy insurance. Send us to the grand port, to the ground port; you are welcome, thank you.

  Oh times, oh morals! How things have changed, boys, you there from beyond! The gladiators marched martially into the arena in an array brilliant and glittering and shining against which a circus-parade in Kansas City would look like the funeral of an inmate of a poorhouse. Gee, how they marched in! With the blaring of fanfares and trumpets and the beating of great drums and the playing of marches such as Sousa would have liked to compose, if only he had had the right feeling for the tunes of true martial music. And the women! Those beautiful dames hailing the marching gladiators from their balconies, covered with carpets representing all the riches of Persia, those beautiful perfumed janes hailing and cheering the gladiators as if they were boxers in Madison Square Garden. Smiles and kisses were thrown from the ladies down to the victorious fighters. Amidst the rousing cries and hails and applause of the most excited crowds any world has ever seen, while the trumpets blared and the drums roared and the finest bands of the Roman Empire played emotional war-tunes, these gladiators breathed their last sighs, dying as no modern soldier ever has a chance to die.

  We, the gladiators of today, we must perish in dirt and filth. We are too tired even to wash our faces. We starve because we fall asleep at the table with a rotten meal before us.

  We are always hungry because a shipping company cannot compete with the freight rates of other companies if the sailors get food fit for human beings. The ship must go to the ground port, because the company would be bankrupt if the insurance money would not save her. We do not die in shining armor, we the gladiators of today. We die in rags, without mattresses or blankets. We die worse than hogs in Chic. We die in silence, in the stoke-hold. We see the sea breaking in through the cracked hull. We can no longer go up and out. We are caught. The steam hisses down upon us out of cracked pipes. Furnace doors have opened and the live coal is on us, scorching what is still left of us. We hope and pray that the boiler will explode to make it short and sure. “Oh, down there, those men,” says the stateroom passenger who is allowed a look through a hole, “those filthy sweating devils, oh, never mind, they do not feel it, they are accustomed to the heat and to such things as a ship going down; it’s their business. Let’s have another cock well iced.”

  Of course, we are used to all that may happen. We are the black gang. If you are hungry and you need a job, take it. It’s yours. Others are waiting to take it for less.

  We go to hell without martial music and without the prayers of the Episcopalian. We die without the smiles of the beautiful ladies, without holding their perfumed handkerchiefs in our hands. We die without the cheering of the excited crowd. We die in deep silence, in utter darkness, and in rags. We die in rags for you, O Cæsar Augustus! Hail to you, Imperator Capitalism! We have no names, we have no souls, we have no country, we have no nationality. We are nobody, we are nothing.

  Hail to you, Imperator Augustus! You don’t have to pay pensions to widows and orphans. Not even as little as a coffin. We do not even ask for six square feet of the cheapest ground. We, O Cæsar, are the most faithful and the most loyal of all the servants you have. The moribund are greeting you: Hail, Cæsar!

  27

  At half past six a Negro brought in the supper. It was brought in two good-sized tin kettles, more or less of the kind used at camp-fires. These kettles were battered as if they had seen hundreds of battles. They were dirty and greasy, and they looked as if at least a full month had passed since they had last been cleaned.

  The supper was a watery meager vegetable soup with an ugly-looking layer of rancid fat on the surface. In the other kettle there were potatoes in their skins, the cheapest sort which could be found in a poor market. Then there was another tin can in which I saw hot brownish water. The Negro noted my look, and, as if he had heard of finger-bowls, he thought perhaps I might use this water for the wrong purpose. To avoid any misuse of it he said: “That’s the tea.” The tea smelled like the hot water Mother used in the kitchen when rinsing the dishes in the sink.

  “Where is the meat?” I asked the Negro.

  “No meat today,” he said.

  I looked up and saw that he was no Negro, but a white man. He was, as I learned right afterwards, the coaler.

  “Getting supper to the foc’sle is your business,” he told me in a sleepy voice, and in a way as if I had offended him.

  “I am not the mess-boy on this tub; you may as well know that right from the begin.”

  “No mess-boys on this box, no mozos, no moises,” he informed me.

  “And so?”

  “Well, here the drags have to do it, the coal-drags.”

  With this I received the first blow. The blows were now falling so quickly and so hard, one after the other, that I ceased to count them. Fate was on. Let’s have it.

  “Supper is brought in by the drag of the rat-watch,” he went on.

  On decent ships this would be the dog-watch. Here, I assumed, the dog-watch is the watch which on honest buckets would be the palace-watch. All right with me. Go on. I am caught fine. Let the blows rain thick and mercilessly.

  Rat-watch for me. The watch from twelve to four. Bells were not known here. All terms were confused. Here one might even hear such terms as downstairs and upstairs. Because high-class sailors were rare on the Yorikke. And if there was one, he could not use the proper terms; he would have been taken for a high-brow and ridiculed. Most of the men would not have understood him at all.

  Rat-watch. The most horrible watch that was ever invented to punish rebellious sailors. You come to the foc’sle at four, tired. You wash your face as well as you can. Then you have to get the supper for the whole outfit. After having had supper you wash the dishes, since there is no mess-boy to do it for you. The cook does not care how dirty the kettles are; he throws in your grub, dirty or not dirty. Now you lie down in your bunk to get some sleep. You have to eat all that your belly will take, because there is no other meal until eight in the morning. On this full belly, full of potatoes and a thin greasy soup, you cannot sleep right away. You just turn round and round. The other guys off duty are sitting there playing cards and telling stories to each other. You cannot yell at them to be quiet because you want to sleep. They might lose their ability to talk. Knowing that you need sleep, they are already only whispering. But whispering is more annoying than talking in a loud voice. Close to eleven you fall asleep. All the other boys have turned in meanwhile. Precisely at the minute you take the first deep breath in a profound sleep, it is twenty to twelve and the drag of the other watch is waking you up as roughly as he is able. Out of your bunk, down below into the stoke-hold. At four in the morning you return from your watch. You wash your face. Maybe you don’t. You are too tired. Like a stone you fall into your bunk. At about a quarter past six the noise starts on deck; the day-hands are chased around, here hammering, there sawing, yonder shouting and commanding, rattling of chains and squeaking of winches. At eight somebody shakes you out of your sleep. “Breakfast is ready,” he yells into your ear. All during the forenoon there is not one minute without that hard noise of work on deck. It beats into your brain without pity. Twenty to twelve nobody comes to call you, because no one on a ship would expect anyone to be asleep at that time. The little sleep you might be favored with is also taken away from you because you have to be on time for your watch, and you must not oversleep or you will start your watch with such a row from the second engineer
that anger eats you up, and your work will be twice as hard. You stagger drowsily below, and you almost fall against the furnace doors. No pity. The ship must go on, because a ship is under control only when under steam, just as an airplane is out of control when it has lost its minimum flying speed. So you go to your watch and work worse and harder than a Negro slave until four. And so it goes, on and on.

  “Who washes the dishes?”

  “The coal-drag.”

  “Who cleans the shit-hold?”

  “The drag.”

  Cleaning privies and such things is, absolutely, an honorable work. Provided one hasn’t got anything else to do. In this case it was what a Mexican would call: la porqueria y la cochinera mas grande del mundo entero. Or something which cannot be explained well in good English with dames listening in. Anyone who would have come close to see would have said: “This is the filthiest and dirtiest cave I have ever seen in all my life.”

  From my experience on a decent farm, and from experiences in tropical countries, I know that pigs are cleaner in fact than hundreds of thousands of human beings ever try to be. So it would do pigs, when left alone and not interfered with by miserable small farmers, an injustice if I had said this here looked like a pig-sty. I could not blame the skipper for never wishing to inspect the foc’sle, as was his duty. He sure would not have been fit for two full weeks afterwards to eat a single meal. We had to look at it every day, and we had to eat also. No excuse for anything when there are only two points around which you revolve: Live or die. Yesser.

  My punishment for having left sunny Spain is hard.

  On ships like the Yorikke it is the coal-drag who has to do any work that comes along that no one else will undertake. No matter if the work is the lousiest, the filthiest, the most dangerous, the drag is called upon to do it. He has to do it. He has no right to refuse. Suppose there are three drags, one for each watch, when the crew is complete; the lowest of these three drags is the drag of the rat-watch. And suppose the two other drags refuse to do a certain job, the last called upon to do it is – yes, sir, you guessed right is the drag of the rat-watch. He has to do it. If he prefers rather to go overboard or knife himself, he doesn’t get any chance to do so until he has completed the job to the full satisfaction of the skipper or the chief; I mean the chief engineer.