The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  The important thing is to close the boxes well after you have looked into them. It is not wise to put on the shirt and the shoes right after you have found them. You might make a bad impression on somebody, and you might even lead innocent youngsters to follow in your footsteps, which is a real sin. The best thing is not to use anything you should find for yourself, but to sell it honestly when you’re in the next port. Any fine citizen will buy from you, because everybody knows the sailor always sells cheap, for he is not greedy for a big profit. He has no taxes to pay, no store rent, no light and telephone bills to bother about, so he can sell well below factory prices. If you need something good and really cheap, always try a sailor first. After this has failed, you may still go to the Jew.

  Of course, it is not so that a sailor has no expenses at all. It is not always easy to go through the boxes and bales. One has to be a sort of snake. I had learned the snake-dances and I kept in good shape because I trained several times every day. If you made just one wrong step in your daily snake-dances, you felt it right away in the scorches and burns on your skin. What better training can anybody have? Going about the holds and looking intelligently for the most salable goods has some difficulties too. It is not at all easy to make money, no matter where you try it and how. Here a box falls upon you, there a barrel comes down and squeezes you in and peels off your hide a strap of useful leather. There is no light in the holds at night. You may, if you are very careful, light a match for a moment. But suppose the mate on the bridge sees the flicker; it would not be so good for you. Better leave the matches altogether and rely upon your soft hands and your true feelings.

  The Yorikke carried rarely goods of real importance. Highly valued merchandise was not trusted to her. These frequent loadings and unloadings, though, did not let me sleep. I knew the Moroccans and the Riffs. Furthermore, I had examined the life-boats, and I had found that only one boat was in a seaworthy condition. It was the boat the skipper was supposed to man, with the chief, the carpenter, and two A.B.’s. All the other boats were hopeless decorations. Since the skipper’s boat was still dry and without water and provisions changed, I was convinced that the Yorikke had something in the hold too expensive yet to touch ground.

  One quiet night I went exploring again, and I came upon little barrels which, as I could see by the light of a match, were labeled thus: Garantiert reines unverfalschtes Schwabisches Pflaumenmus. Keine Kriegsware. Garantiert reine Fruchte and Bester Zucker. Kein kunstlicher Farbstoff vervendet. Erste and al taste Schwabische Pflaumenmus fabrik Oberndorf am Neckar. Which when explained in a human language would mean: Guaranteed Genuine Plum Marmalade. No War Substitute. Pure Fruit and Sugar. No Artificial Dyes. First and Oldest Plum Sauce Packing Plant Oberndorf on the Neckar.

  Now, what sort of boneheads are we? was my first thought. There we are pushing down with our bread some ordinary laundry soap which somebody calls margarine, while here the holds are overflowing with the finest and purest marmalade the German people can produce for the customers abroad. “My, my, Stanislav, I always had figured you a smart guy with a lot of good intelligence; but now I see I was mistaken; you are the biggest ass I have ever known.”

  What a feast this will be in the morning to smear this wonderful marmalade thick and soft on the warm bread! The Moroccans sure knew what was good for them. They preferred pure and guaranteed German marmalade to their dates and figs – of which they surely sometimes became as sick as we back home were of cabbage and potatoes.

  I heaved two of these small barrels and took them to the upper coal-bunker, where I could use the lamp without any suspicion from the bridge. No one could enter this bunker without my permission. Because a plank led from the bunker to the hatchway of the stoke-hold. None of the engineers ever ventured across this plank, for one roller of the ship or one false step would have thrown them twenty feet below. It took nerve to use this plank as a gangway when the ship was under weigh. What was more, the plank was not very strong, nor was it new; it might break any moment. When Stanislav or I crossed this plank, we did it flying. To be absolutely safe from any intruders, anyway, I drew the plank back into the bunker. I was now ready to get the barrel open and go at the marmalade.

  The barrel was open. I must state that I felt a shock, because I was astonished really to find plum marmalade in the barrel. To tell the truth, I had expected something different; I had thought that the label was misleading as to the contents. But sure as daylight at noon, there was plum marmalade inside the barrel. One should not do such a nasty thing as be suspicious all the time of good old Yorikke. Why, she is as honest and decent a tub as any other as any other — as any — now, wait a minute. What is that? The marmalade tastes like — Let me get this straight, hell. It tastes like — well, I should say it tastes rather good. Good? I don’t know for sure. Now, I’ll be damned, there is a taste of green copper in that marmalade. Haven’t they put pennies in the sauce? Sure, they must have. Like Mother did back home when she was cooking preserves for the long winter; when she wanted to keep the string beans in good color, she put in a penny. Old Norse custom I guess, invented by the good old Vikings who put into their preserves old copper nails left over from building boats. And here the label lies: No artificial dyes. I will try it again. Perhaps it is only imagination, while thinking of Mother’s string beans. No, no getting away from that taste. It really tastes like brass, really all verdigris. I can’t eat that on bread. Impossible. Rather prefer the laundry soap. I cannot get rid of this taste once it’s on the tongue. It sticks against the gums.

  The Moroccans must like this taste. They have got strange tastes anyway in lots of their eats, I know. Or maybe only the upper layer has got this brass taste. All right, boy, let’s go deeper with your finger into the sauce. Hello, good morning, now, what of all the fallen angels is that? These Germans or Swabes were in a hurry when cooking this marmalade. They sure have left all the stones inside. It was too much trouble for them to stone the plums. I wonder what kind of people these Germans are, eating the marmalade with all the stones in. There sure are still some savages left among them in the Black Forest and in Swabia. Let’s have a look at these stones. Funny shape. Let’s take one and look closer at it. Oh, well, of course, that’s why the strange taste. The stones are made of lead, covered with nickel lining, and put into an elegant little brass bottle. And inside the little brass bottle? Now, let’s get this straight. Yes, that must be the pure sugar. Swabian sugar. Fine little black glittering leaves. Pretty sugar they have in Oberndorf on the Neckar. That must be the plum stones and the pure sugar the Moroccans and the Riffs like; for which they sell all their dates and figs and horses. Swabian plum marmalade. The Moroccans like this taste.

  Yorikke, you have won back my respect. I was seriously afraid you had cheated me. It would have broken my heart.

  I don’t like women that cheat. If you want to go astray, all right, go ahead, but don’t be lousy and cheat with dirt. And just to see how loyal good old Yorikke really was, I crawled back into the holds to look at other barrels and boxes. Label: Mousetraps. What do Moroccans care about a couple of mice, having all the harems full of them? And, sure enough, there were, in those boxes, as many real mousetraps as there was real plum marmalade in the barrels. But when I looked for the stones left in the marmalade, I found no mouse, but Mausers, named after the great man who invented them.

  I found other boxes. Label: Toy Automobiles with Mechanism for Self-Running. When I saw where these toy automobiles were made, which was Suhl in Thuringia, I did not open them. Suhl in Thuringia is known as a town in which all the inhabitants live by making hunting guns and ammunition. I could have saved myself the trouble of opening the barrels of plum sauce had I known, what I learned a few years later, that in Oberndorf on the Neckar is not a single marmalade plant, but one of the greatest rifle and munition factories in Germany. To know something about geography is always a good thing, because then labels won’t catch you so dumb. On a label you may print anything you like, the label does not
object. On the other hand, it is rather unlikely that a well-established munition and arms factory will be converted overnight into a plum-marmalade packing plant. Therefore, if some grocer wants to sell you canned pork and beans made in Chic, better be careful, you might find anything inside, even Scotch or an automatic. Nothing strange about that. Who ever saw in Chic somebody raising pigs or beans?

  It was not alone Germany that was well represented in the holds. Stepmother England also was there, partly with Sheffield, partly with Manchester. Belgium, not minding her neutrality in the boxing match between the Moroccans and the French government, had contributed sugar-coated fruits. The English merchandise was labeled: Tinned Sheet Iron, Galvanized Corrugated Iron, Frying-pans. On seeing the sugarcoated fruits of Belgium, shipped from Liége, you became sure that those fruits were so indigestible that if you were to swallow only one you would never need any castor oil until all graves open again and the real name of the Unknown Soldier is headlined in the New York papers.

  The Moroccans are quite right. They have my sympathy. Spain to the Spaniards, France to the French, China to the Chinese, Poland to the Poles. What did Wilson chase the American boys into the European war for? Wasn’t it for the simple reason that the Czechs should have the right to call their sausages in Czech instead of in the uncivilized Austrian lingo? We don’t want any Chinese in our God’s country, or other furreners either, to help us eat up our surplus wheat. Let them stay at home, where they belong. So I don’t see any reason why I should get sore at the Moroccans. And, just for Wilson, as a good Yank I have to ship on the Yorikke and get things cleared up for democracy and for the liberty of small nations.

  I feel as though I am going to fall in love with that hussy Yorikke.

  35

  “I say, Stanislav, haven’t you got any pride left? I simply cannot understand how you can swallow all the time that marge. Ain’t you ashamed a bit?”

  “What else could I do, Pippip?” Stanislav said. “Above all things I am sure hungry. You don’t suppose I should boil my rags and thicken the juice that comes out to have something on the bread, do you? I have nothing on the bread save that stinking margarine. You just get cracked up eating all the time that stale bread without something on it. I feel like concrete in my stomach sometimes.”

  “Now, aren’t you just as dumb as I imagined? Man, don’t you know that we are shipping right now the finest German plum marmalade?”

  “Yep, I know.”

  “If you know, why don’t you loot a barrel or two?”

  “That marmalade is no good for us.”

  “Why not?” I asked innocently.

  “Good only for the Moroccans and the Syrians, and, of course, for those who make it and those who sell it. The Frenchmen get all the time belly cramps whenever they eat it. Or let’s say when it is fired into them. Then they run so fast that they can catch up with their grandfather and overtake him at his funeral.”

  This answer made me wonder: “Then you know what is inside?”

  “What sort of an ass do you believe me?” He laughed. “The two gentlemen of Portugal were still in the skipper’s cabin when I was already through with my exploration. It would not be me, an old honest sailor, if seeing labels of Danish butter, or sardines, or corned beef, or chocolate, I didn’t right away investigate the possibilities of a bargain sale at the next port.”

  “This time you are mistaken,” I said; “there is really marmalade inside.”

  “There is always something inside. But this marmalade you cannot eat. Has got a horrible brass taste and a smell after black sulphur sugar. If you eat too much you may get belly poisoning. You may get green all over the face like the statue of a general. Last trip, before you were on, we had corned beef. It was genuine. Nothing inside. The finest stuff you can think of. Sometimes you are lucky. The skipper had to ship honest goods for a trip or two. He was sure he’d be brought up by French chasers. See? It was a thick layer. Going to Damascus. The Syrians were in dire need. They had some misunderstanding with the French governor as to the people they wished to trade with.”

  “How were the stones beneath the thick layer?”

  “The stones? You mean what was the true inside of the corned beef? Well, as I said, the layer was fine. For days I did not have to touch the galley vomit. Of course, if you went sufficiently deep into the corned beef you found excellent carbines. Made in U.S.A. Late model, had come out during the last weeks of the war and could not be sold, because the armistice came too soon before they could cash in on them. They had to sell them. You cannot have them wait until the next war and then be stuck with them. Next war they have got a better model. Tell you, when we had landed those corned-beef cans without any trouble and the skipper had got all the syrup he had expected, we got two cups with real cognac, roast beef, chicken, fresh vegetables, and canned English pudding. Yes, siree. Because. Well, because, you see, it was like that. A French chaser got us up. The officers came aboard. Spying about, asking the crew, spreading francs and cigarettes just like old junk, expecting some guy to spring a word or two. But they had to leave with a sour face, and they had to bow and salute to the skipper as though he was their admiral.”

  “And no one gave the skipper away for the francs and the cigarettes?” I asked.

  “We? On the Yorikke? We took the francs and the cigarettes all right. But give away somebody? We are filthy. And we are dead. Gone beyond hell. We would take in a little purse or a pocket-book of somebody who is careless about it and might lose it anyway. when going along the street. We loot the holds and sell out at bargain prices. We would throw a hot bolt at the head of that second engineer when he comes bothering us about the steam and the bars. That’s all honest and clean. But squeal to the police and the customs guards and the arms-chasers? Not for a thousand pounds in cold cash, fine as it would be to have them. But, you see, what good would these thousand pounds or francs do to you? No good at all. What’s the use of having a thousand pounds in your pocket and lose all the honesty of a decent sailor? You cannot look at your own face any more for the rest of your life.”

  We were lying before anchor off the coast of a small port in Portugal. The skipper felt that the Yorikke was suspected. He was sure that as soon as he should be in French waters he would be stopped and searched. So he took in honest cargo for the next two trips. The cargo was not worth much. But anyway it was cargo, and he could get hold of the most elegant clearance papers. The French would have to pay good money for having molested him and for making him reach his port twenty-four hours late. After two such searches, and after having made so much trouble for the French government and getting a payment of some ten or fifteen thousand francs in damages, he then could afford again a half a dozen trips that really paid, without any fear of being molested.

  On such occasions, when the Yorikke lay about, waiting to take in cargo, we knocked off work at five in the afternoon and were free until seven in the morning. Since we were at anchor off the coast, we could not get ashore. The boatmen charged too much, and the skipper refused to give any advance, being afraid that we might not be aboard when the Yorikke was ready to go under weigh.

  So we now had time to sit together quietly and peacefully and just tell our stories and exchange our opinions of life and the world.

  There were as many nationalities represented on the Yorikke as there were men aboard. I have not found a single nation as yet which has no dead citizens somewhere on this earth — I mean such dead as still breathe the air, but that are dead for all eternity to their nation. Some nations have their death ships openly. These nations call their death ships the foreign legion. If he survives this death ship the legionnaire may have a new name and a new and legally established nationality with all the chances to come back to life again. Certain nations give citizenship to men who sail under their flags for three consecutive years. It was different with the Yorikke. The longer you shipped on the Yorikke, the farther away you sailed from any possibility of winning or regaining any citizenship. Ev
en the Chinese or the Swahilians would not have taken you in, regardless of how many applications you might make and how many truckloads of papers you might fill in.

  The Yorikke was a nation all by herself. She had her own language, her own established morals and customs, her own tradition.

  In Algiers I once met a man who claimed to be a hundred and sixty years old. He was a Syrian, from Beirut. He looked like forty, and at the same time like two hundred. He told me that he had so far been on the Yorikke twenty-three times. The skipper knew him; and he admitted that he could vouch for the fact that this Syrian had shipped on the Yorikke at least four times. The Syrian, having invited me to a cup of coffee in a Turkish coffee-house, told me that he had shipped first on the Yorikke when he was rather young, as a kitchen-boy. I asked him what the Yorikke shipped in those times. He said that while he was kitchen-boy she was used as a transport ship for Napoleon, to transport his soldiers to Egypt. It was before he made himself emperor. Then, of course, as the Syrian told me, the Yorikke carried only sails and had no steam-engine. Which, by the way, proved that the Syrian was entirely correct in his story. He could not have known what the Yorikke looked like in those days if he had not been on her.

  I asked him how come he had shipped so often on the Yorikke. He told me that the Yorikke had always been his guardian angel, and that he would never forget the good service she had often rendered him. For, poor man, he was always in trouble with his wives. Each time, of course, it was another wife. He had consumed about nineteen, which accounts for the times he shipped on the Yorikke, taking into consideration that during the first trips he was still too young to be able to consume a healthy wife. It so happened that whenever he had a wife who was a real nag, he had no money to get rid of her. So he just waited for the Yorikke to come in port and off he went. When he returned he found his wife otherwise provided for, and he was free again for the next issue. The next issue, after the proper time had passed, proved a worse nag than the former. So he again had to make use of the Yorikke as an effective divorce lawyer.