The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  Now, of course, to set in one bar, hard and cruel as this job could be, was considered merely an interruption of the regular work. The real torture began when, on trying to set in one bar, other bars were stirred and pushed so that they also dropped, until five, six, or even seven bars had dropped into one fire alone. If this happened and it happened so often that we forgot how often then the whole fire went out of corn-mission, because all the fuel broke through into the ash-pit. The furnace had to stay open, for otherwise the bars could not be set in again. So after a while the whole boiler cooled off so much that the two remaining fires could not keep it working at even half its capacity. Consequently the boiler became practically worthless. The more time we had to spend at the bars, the less time we could afford for the two boilers which alone had to furnish the steam necessary to keep the engine running. No wonder these two boilers also began to slack and we had to leave the dropped bars for a long while and bring up the remaining boilers to a point where they were ready to explode any minute. As soon as we had them going far above their power, we again started to work at the dropped bars. Seldom did we get a bar in right at the first attempt. It dropped in again and again, often ten times, until we, finally, had them all in to last only until they were ready to drop once more during the same hour or the next.

  When, after long slaving, the bars were now in again, we had to build up the fires anew. Having accomplished this also, both of us dropped as if we were lifeless into a pile of coal or wherever there was any space free from embers and red-hot cinders. For ten minutes we could not stir a toe. Our hands, our arms, our faces were bleeding. Our skin was scorched; whole patches and strips had been torn off or burned off. We did not feel pain any more, we only felt exhausted beyond description.

  Then a glimpse at the steam-gauge whipped us into action. The steam would not stay. The fires had to be stirred, broken up, and filled.

  When bars were out I had to assist the fireman. One man alone could not put them back. While I helped the fireman with the bars I could not haul in coal. But whether I could carry in coal or not was of no concern to the fires. They ate and ate, and if they did not get enough to eat, the steam came down. So whatever huge piles had been in the stoke-hold just before the bars began to drop were all gone by now. To drag in the coal needed during one watch took all the hard work the coaler could give. There was hardly a free minute left to step up to the galley and bring below a drink of coffee or cold water to the fireman. The oftener bars dropped, the harder the drag had to work afterwards to pile up coal in the stoke-hold, which always, no matter what happened, had to be a certain load, of which not ten pounds could be cut off. Within four hours the fires of the Yorikke swallowed about sixteen hundred well-filled large shovelfuls of fuel. The fuel was in many instances so far away from the boilers that these sixteen hundred shovelfuls had to be thrown in four shifts before they reached the fireman, so that the real hauling for the drag was not sixteen hundred shovels, but sometimes close to seventy hundred shovels. Some of the bunkers were located close to the foc’sle, others close to the stern.

  This work, unbelievable any place on earth outside of the Yorikke, had to be done by only one man, by the drag. It had to be done by the filthiest and dirtiest member of the crew, by one who had no mattress to sleep on, no pillow to rest his tired head upon, no blanket, no coffee-cup, no fork, no spoon. It had to be done by a man whom the company could not afford to feed properly on account of the competition with other companies. But the company had to stand competition, because it was very patriotic, and every company had to go the limit to keep a good record in shipping in favor of its country. The country had to be first in all things, exportation, importation, production, shipping, railroad mileage. All was done for the good and for the glory and for the greatness of the country. A company cannot take care of two things that are contrary each to the other. If the company wants to beat competition, the drag and the fireman have to pay for it. Some way or other. Both the company and the crew cannot win. One has to be the loser in this battle, as in all other battles. Here on the Yorikke the biggest losers were Stanislav and I.

  The Yorikke has taught me another big thing for which I am grateful. She taught me to see the soul in apparently lifeless objects. Before I shipped on the Yorikke I never thought that a thing like a burned match, or a scrap of paper in the mud, or a fallen leaf, or a rusty worthless nail might have a soul. The Yorikke taught me otherwise. Since then life for me has become a thousand times richer, even without a motor-car or a radio. No more can I ever feel alone. I feel I am a tiny part of the universe, always surrounded by other tiny parts of the universe; and if one is missing, the universe is not complete — in fact does not exist.

  The winch used for heaving ashes had personality, and it had to be treated accordingly. Everything and every part of the Yorikke had individuality and soul. The Yorikke as a whole had the greatest personality of all of us.

  When once on a trip from Santander making for Lisbon we were caught in one of those terrible cross-gales in the Bay of Biscay, the Yorikke was thrown about so that we all thought she would never weather it out. When we — my fireman and I — came below to relieve the former watch, and I saw how the pile of fuel was thrown from port side to starboard unceasingly, I had only one thought: what will happen to us or to the Yorikke if six bars should drop in one fire. If the steam in such a heavy sea is too low, the ship will easily get out of control, and it may be smashed against cliffs or helplessly driven ashore or upon sand-banks.

  Any sailor who is not superstitious —

  My fireman was relieved at four. My watch did not end until six. I went to call Stanislav at twenty to five. We had to clear ashes for an hour. I could not get him out of the bunk. He was like a stone. He had already been a good long time on the Yorikke. He had still not got used to it. People who do not know what hard work really means and do nothing but just figure out new laws against criminal syndicalism and against communist propaganda usually say, when they see a man at hard work: “Oh, these guys are used to it, they don’t feel it at all. They have no refined thinking-capacity, as we have. The chain-gang means nothing to them; it’s just like a vacation.”

  They use that speech as a dope to calm their consciences, which, underneath, hurt them when they see human beings treated worse than mules. But there is no such thing in the world as getting used to pain and suffering. With that “Oh, they are used to that!” people justify even the beating of defenseless police-prisoners. Better kill them; it is truly more merciful. Stanislav, a very robust fellow, never got used to the dropped bars or to all the rest of the hard work on the Yorikke. I never became used to it. And I do not know of anybody that ever became accustomed to it. Whenever a fireman with fairly good papers, or on reaching his country, had a chance, he skipped off; if he could do no better he skipped without waiting for his pay. There is no getting used to pain and suffering. You become only hard-boiled, and you lose a certain capacity to be impressed by feelings. Yet no human being will ever become used to sufferings to such an extent that his heart will cease to cry out that eternal prayer of all human beings: “I hope that my liberator comes!” He is the master of the world, he who can make his coins out of the hope of slaves.

  “You don’t mean? Is it five already?” asked Stanislav. “I just lay down. It cannot be five.” He was still as dirty as when he had left the fire-hold. He had no ambition now to wash up. He was too tired.

  “I tell you, Stanislav,” I said, “I cannot stand it. We had six bars out in one fire, and two in another. I cannot come at eleven to help you clear the ashes and then start dragging again at twelve. I am going over the railing, I tell you.”

  Stanislav was sitting on his bunk. His face black. In the thick kerosene smoke of the quarter I could not distinguish his face well. He turned his head to me and he said with a swollen sleepy voice: “Nope, don’t you do it, Pippip. Don’t leave me. I cannot do your watch also. I will have to make the railing also. No. Hell, I won’t. I would rat
her bury two cans of plum marmalade in the furnaces and let the whole thing go to blazes, so that they could no longer catch lost souls to get their insurance with. I still feel something in my breast here for the poor guys who might come after us. Geecries, that game with the plum marmalade might be a pretty come-off. I have to think it over some time.”

  Plum marmalade? Poor Stanislav, he was still dreaming. So I thought.

  32

  My watch ended at six in the morning with an hour’s work clearing ashes with Stanislav. I could not leave any reserve fuel for him. The shovel dropped out of my hands. “It’s okay, Pippip, don’t mind. We’ll get even some day when I am down.”

  I did not miss mattress, pillow, blanket, soap. I understood now why such things were not supplied on the Yorikke. They really were not needed. Covered with soot, dirt, oil, grease, as I was, I fell into my bunk. What meaning inborn cleanliness? All culture and civilization depend on leisure. My pants were torn, burned, and stiff from oily water and soot. My shoes and my shirt looked no better. Now, when we put in the next port and I stand at the railing and look down upon the pier, side by side with my fellow-sailors, I shall not look any longer different from those who I thought were the worst of pirates when first I saw them. I, like the rest, was now clothed in striped garments, in prison clothes, in death-sheets, in which I no longer could escape without falling into the hands of the guards of the world of bureaucrats, who would pinch me and bring me back to where I now properly belonged. I had become part of the Yorikke. Where she was, I had to be; where she went, I had to go. There was no longer any escape to the living.

  Somebody yelled into my ear: “Breakfast ready.” Not even an ambassador’s breakfast would get me up and out of my bunk. What was food to me? A saying goes: “I am so tired I can hardly move a finger.” He who can say that does not know what it means to be tired. I could not even move an eyelid. My eyelids did not close fully. So tired they were. The daylight could not make my eyelids close. No power was left within me even to desire that the daylight go away and give my eyes a rest.

  And at that very instant when I had the feeling: “Why worry about daylight?” the huge iron mouth of a gigantic crane gripped me, then tossed me violently up into the air, high up, where I hung for a second. The man who tended the crane had a quarrel with something or somebody; and, being a bit careless, the brake slipped off his hand and down I fell from a height of five thousand feet, and I dropped squashing upon a pier. A mob gathered around me and cried: “Get up, you, come, come, snap out of it, twenty to eleven, heave ashes.”

  After I had heaved ashes with Stanislav, there were just about ten minutes left. I had to hurry to the galley to carry dinner for the black gang to the foc’sle. I swallowed a few prunes swimming in the watery starch. I could not eat one bite more. The jaws would not work. Somebody bellowed: “Hey, drag, where is my dinner? Hop at it.” It was the donkey-man, who had to be served separately in his own quarter. For the drags were the stewards of the donkey-man, who was their petty officer. He could have done all this alone, because he had practically no work to do. Yet he would have lost his dignity if he had to go to the galley and get his dinner himself. Hardly had I set the dishes on his table when the bell rang and the watch on the bridge sang out the watch-relief. I went below to help the fireman break up the fires and haul in the fuel from the bunkers.

  At six in the evening I was relieved. Supper was on the table in the quarters. It had come in at five. It was now cold and everything edible had been picked by the other hungry men. I did not care to see what was left. I was too tired to eat anyway. I did not wash myself. Not for all civilizations present and gone did I care to have a clean face. I fell into my bunk like a log.

  That lasted three days and three nights. No other thought entered my mind and my feelings but: “Eleven to six, eleven to six, eleven to six.” The whole universe, all religions, all creeds, and my entire consciousness became concentrated in this idea: eleven to six. I had vanished from existence. Two painful yells cut into what had once been my flesh, my brain, my soul, my heart. These yells caused a piercing pain, as the feeling might be when the bared brain is tickled with a needle. The yells came, apparently, always from far away, falling upon me like avalanches of rocks and timber, thundering into my shattered body like the onrush of a hundred express trains gone wild. “Up, twenty to eleven!” was one of the yells. And the other: “Holy sons of fallen saints, three bars have dropped! Turn to it.”

  When four days and four nights had passed, I felt hungry. I ate heartily. Now I was initiated and a true member of the Yorikke. And I began to get accustomed to it. I had lost the last tiny little connection which up to this hour had bound me to the living. I had become so dead that no feeling in mind, soul, or body was left. There were times when I felt that my hands were steam-shovels, that my legs and arms moved on ball-bearings, and that all the insides of my body were but running wheels.

  “It is not so bad after all, Stanislav,” I said ironically to him when I came below to relieve his watch. “The hash tastes all right. The grandfather is not so bad a cook. If, the hell of it, we could get only more milk. I say, brother, the pile of coal you are leaving me here in reserve isn’t very much to brag about. We stoke it off in three fires without even saying so much as pem-pem. Listen, how do you think I can loosen the chief from a good shot of rum? Haven’t you got a good tip?”

  “Nothing easier than that, Pippip. You are looking sour enough. You will make it. Go right up and tell him your stomach won’t hold, you spill it all at the fuel, and if you won’t get a stomach-cleaner you cannot stand the watch through. Tell him you are spilling all green. You will get a good full-sized swinger from him. You can ride this same horse twice a week. Only make sure not to come too often. Then he gets wise and he may fill your glass with castor. Being used to good clean drainings, you won’t notice it until you have shot it all in. Then it is too late. You cannot spit it into his cabin. You have to finish up and get it all down. It won’t do you any good if, after having sipped the castor, you drop six or eight bars in your watch. Believe me, it sure would not be a sweet watch. Keep that prescription for yourself. If you spill it, it will be

  ineffective. The firemen have got one of their own invention. They don’t give it away, those sinners. They often make as many as four, even five shots a week. But they don’t know genuine comradeship, those knights in shining armor.”

  The time came, though slowly, when I began to get my own ideas again, and this was when the two piercing yells ceased to have any corrupt effect upon me. No longer did I stagger about the bucket in a dazed and unconscious state. I began to see and to understand. Rebirth had taken place. I could now, without the slightest feeling of remorse, bark at the second that I would allow him to throw me overboard for bragging if I would not smash his head with a hammer and drill his back with the poker if he ever came into the stoke-hold again when we were on high sea, and bars were out, and the steam was falling to a hundred twenty. I swore to his face that this time he would not get away through the gangway safely like he did the other night. He could not have done it anyhow. Maybe he knew it. We had placed in the gangway a heavy poker, hung up in such manner that when, from a certain spot in the stoke-hold, one of us pulled a string, the poker fell down, making impossible the get-away of anybody in that gangway. Whether he, once trapped, got off with his life or only with a bleeding head and shins depended in the last decision not on what he had said to us but only on how many bars had dropped into the various ash-pits.

  There were no regulations and rules for the fire-hold. Articles, of course, were signed when signing on, but the articles were never read to anybody as is required by law. Yet we had proof that people can live without laws and do well. The fire gang had built up among themselves rules which were never mentioned, but, nevertheless, kept religiously. No one was there to command, no one to obey. It was done to keep the engine, and so the ship, going, and at the same time give each member of the fire gang exactly the same
amount of work and worry. Since there were nine fires to serve, each fireman left to his relief three fires elegantly cleaned of all slags and cinders. The first watch cleaned fires number one, four, and seven; second watch fires number two, five, eight; third watch fires number three, six, nine. The relief could depend on these fires being left clean by the former watch. Therefore, no matter how much trouble the new watch had with their bars, they were sure to have at least three fires going at full blast. The relief, furthermore, found a certain amount of fuel ready in front of the fires. The former watch did not leave the stoke-hold until the ash-pits were drawn clear. Without this unwritten agreement in the black gang, work would have been nearly impossible.

  Another important agreement was that the outgoing watch did not leave one single bar dropped. All bars were in when the watch was relieved. Sometimes a watch worked half an hour into the new watch just to bring in the bars which had fallen out ten minutes before the relief came.

  Now let us have a heavy sea with all the trimmings. Such as we had once when sailing along the Gold Coast of western Africa.

  The pleasure began with the heaving of ashes. I released the heavy ash-can from the hooks, and, hot as the can was, I carried it against my chest across the gangway toward the railing. Long before I reached the railing, the Yorikke swung out on a swell roller, and I with my hot can rolled some thirty feet toward the bow. I had not yet got up on my feet when the Yorikke fell off to the stern, and I, still with my can, had, of course, to follow the command of the Yorikke. After two of these rollers there was nothing left in the can, and the first mate cried from the bridge: “Hey, drag, if you want to go overboard it’s all right with me. But you’d better leave the ash-can with us, you really won’t need it when you go fishing.”