The Death Ship

by B. TRAVEN

  Next came the A.B.’s — able-bodied seamen. Then came the deck-hands. All of them were higher in rank than we. Stanislav knew more about sailing than all the three A.B.’s and deck-hands put together. Not only the donkey and the A.B.’s, but even the deck-hands often put on airs when one of us passed by them, as if they were about to suggest that we first had to ask their kind permission. We expected any day that one of these haughty mugs would utter such a demand. Stanislav and I wished they had.

  We all were dead. All of us were convinced that we were on our way to the fishes. Funny that even among the dead these fine distinctions of rank and class do not cease to exist. I wonder what goes on night and day beneath the surface of a cemetery, particularly in the cemeteries of Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

  There was, nevertheless, a certain bond that kept us together. We all knew that we were the moribunds. The destiny of all gladiators was ours. Yet we never spoke of it. Sailors do not speak of shipwrecks. It’s no good doing that. If you don’t want to have the wolf around, then don’t call him. Don’t even speak of the devil if you don’t want to go to hell. We all felt the last day approaching, nearer and nearer. It made us often nervous. Maybe it is the same way that a condemned criminal feels in his cell when he knows the last week has arrived.

  We did not like each other. We did not hate each other. Simply we could not and would not make friends or even comrades. But, strange, when in port, none of us ever went ashore alone. We went ashore in bunches of from four to six.

  Pirates who had not made a pinch for six months could not look as terrible as we. No sailor of any other ship in port ever spoke to us or said hello. We were too filthy and dirty, too ragged, for any decent sailor to admit belonging to the same honest trade as we. Suppose we tried to speak to other sailors; they never answered. They just hurried away from us as quick as they could. When hanging around in a tavern or in a saloon with dancing dames, we could say whatever we wished; we could insult any other guy that was present. They all pretended that they had not heard what we had said or that it had not been meant for any of them. By the way, this fighting among sailors in foreign ports, seen so frequently in the pictures, is just, like so many other things in the pictures, the bunk. It’s a lie all over. Sailors do not fight one tenth as much as sea-stories and pictures try to make the paying public believe. Sailors have more sense than the movie-producers. Evidently no one ever wished to fight with us. We were too dirty and filthy even to be knocked down by a decent sailor. Perhaps he would have felt himself infected. Other sailors just finished their drink, paid, and left. Often they did not even drink, only paid and left quietly. They all belonged to the honest working-class, the fourth rank in a modern state. We had the feeling that we did not even belong to the sixth rank, if such a thing exists in modern civilization. I suppose it does.

  There was still another reason, I think, why no other sailor, or groups of them, ever tried to fight with us. They could see that nothing mattered to us. We would kill mercilessly, once entangled in a row. We would tear them to shreds. We would not leave one piece of their clothes good for use. It would have been expensive for them even if they had won the fight. What did we care? Prison or the noose? It was all the same to us. We could not be frightened by any punishment, because we knew what it meant to have six or ten grate-bars out in one watch. We had a Portuguese deck-hand who was only waiting to get a chance to knife a man to death. He had said so, and he had explained it by saying that he was badly in need of a vacation in prison, or else he would die like a dog on the Yorikke. He said the worst prison he had ever been in was in a small North African town. But he added that it was still better than to work for the food he got on the Yorikke. I am sure there were others on the Yorikke who thought the same way and who were waiting for their chance, only they never spoke about it so frankly as did that boy.

  The crew of the Yorikke was known, let’s say notoriously, in all the ports of the Mediterranean, save those of France and Italy, where we were never allowed to go ashore. All the ports of the west coast of Africa as far down as the French Congo were touched occasionally, when the skipper thought it wise to do so, or when some tribe or little nation tried the newfangled ideas of freedom and independence advised by our smart brother Wilson.

  Wherever and whenever we stepped into a saloon, the owner would be nervous and eager to get us out as soon as possible, although we threw upon the bar all the money we had in our pockets or in our mouths. Often one of us had all his pockets torn, and in such a case the money was carried in the mouth or, if it was paper money, in the cap. We were good customers. The saloon-keeper knew it. Nevertheless, he did not for a minute let us out of his sight. Every step, every move we made was watched by him.

  People in the streets frequently shrank away from us in horror when we crossed their way. The constant fight of the Yorikke to live and to prevent herself from being sent down to ground port was marked in all our gestures and movements. Women grew pale when unexpectedly we came into their path; and women who were waiting for child often shrieked pitifully when they saw us. They pressed both their hands against their belly and murmured prayers to protect their unborn children against the evil, and then they ran and ran without looking back.

  Men who were just ordinary townsmen or peasants lost their self-confident manner when meeting us. Some of them plainly showed fear. Most of them just turned their faces away, so that we might not think for a moment that they meant to offend us.

  Usually we were followed by one or two policemen, who did all they could not to lose us without coming too close and making it too plain that they were ordered to stay with us all the time we were ashore. Never did they wish us to know that we were under the vigilance of the police. They thought that if we were aware of this we might get wild and lay the whole town in ashes. In many ports there was a rumor that the Yorikke had in reality some two hundred men aboard, ready to take any town or any ship on high sea whenever ordered to do so by her master. In these parts of Africa there are hundreds of little ports whose inhabitants are still fed with stories of pirates of the times of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

  The effect we had upon children was perhaps the most remarkable. Some of them, especially the older ones, cried for their mothers when they met us; some stood lifeless, as if touched with a magician’s wand; some ran off like deer. The younger ones, though, stopped in front of us, gazed at us with eyes wide open, as if seeing birds of paradise. Others would follow us, overtake us, smile openly like little golden suns, and frequently they would say: “Good morning, sailor-man! Have you a fairy ship to sail in?” They would shake hands and pray us to bring them little princes and maidens one inch high from the blue Yonderland. Then suddenly they would give us another look, and they would take a deep breath and show an expression as if they were waking up from a sweet dream. Then they would run away and cry without ever looking back again. It was on such occasions that I thought that perhaps we were already dead, and only the souls of children could see us as we really were.

  42

  The Yorikke went her own way — a way which very few other ships ever tried. Perhaps the skipper knew exactly what he was doing and what his orders were. From our point of view, however, it looked as if the Yorikke had no schedule whatever. I cannot recall many times when the ship made exactly the port it was bound for when it left the last port. France and Italy we avoided almost entirely. We did not put in at the greater ports of Spain, either. There we stayed a mile or so off the port, and the skipper signaled for a boat to take him in to get his orders and arrange his papers with the consuls and with the port authorities.

  For this reason no death ships are known. It’s just a yarn of bum sailors. Death ships belong to the period long before the American Civil War, to the times when slave-trading was a great business, and blockade-breaking could make a ship-owner rich with three successful trips. No, there are no longer any death ships today. They are things of the past. Any consul can tell you that. And a cons
ul is a high personage of diplomatic rank. He won’t tell you anything which is not true. No one knows death ships. No government recognizes them. After all, that which is not admitted does not exist, like the Russian revolution. Don’t look at it, and then it disappears.

  The seven seas are so full of death ships that you can have your choice of them! All along the coasts of China, Japan, India, Persia, the Malay Islands, Madagascar, the east and the west coats of Africa, the South Sea, South America, coming up as far as the Pacific coast of Mexico, where they land Chinamen and dreams of artificial paradises by the truckload. Money is always useful, no matter how you make it. The point is to have it. As long as you have it, no minister will ever ask you where and how you got it; just rent, or better buy, a church seat, and pay something for the missions in China.

  There is still room enough for a couple of thousand more of these beautiful and useful ships. Making immigration restrictions does not help the shipping trade very much. So the ships must look elsewhere for a sound business. One cannot do away with all the bums of the world, because there might be a few artists among them, and writers, or cranky millionaires. So it is close to impossible to check white slavery, just because there might be among the slaves a few wives of men with influence and some daughters of great kings of finance who wish to adventure on their own account. White slavery makes more money for those fine men who are paid to investigate and prevent it than for those who are actually in the trade. One is just as good a business as the other. Difficult as it is to do away with all the bums, it is just as difficult to do away with all the death ships. There are not a few shipping companies who would go broke overnight if they had no death ships. Other companies could not survive boom or depression if they did not send down to the bottom a ship when it is time to do so for cold cash. Honesty is the best policy. But it must pay. Otherwise this saying is as good as the saying about having gold in your mouth if you keep silent. There are some respectable ships among the death ships, just as there are quite a number of rather decent women in the C’mon-up-some-time trade. Since this is so, it would be hard work to find all the death ships. Wherever there is a road or a curb-stone, a bum may exist, regardless of how many bums you send up the river or down to the chain-gangs. After all, there is three times more sea-water than dry land. Therefore there is three times more room for bums at sea than on land.

  Certain people think one can find somebody easier on a desert than in the bush, and a ship on the open sea easier than in a delta like the one down at New Orleans. It is, of course, not so. Five ships may go out to find one ship and never find it, not even when its position is fairly well known.

  Nobody would ever have found the Yorikke if her skipper did not want her to be found. Often he had good reasons to be found, only to be safer afterwards. That skipper knew his peanuts. He could have been invited by the Marquese of Pompshundure and he would never have made a false step drinking his sherry or eating his fruit salad or asking the Marquese to dance the latest blues with him. He knew how to work himself and his old maiden out of any jam anybody had ever tried to put him in. The papers he presented were always in fine shape. Whether they were genuine was another question, which the guy who wanted to get him tight had not the guts to decide. No transatlantic liner could show better papers than he could when cornered.

  A Spanish chaser, a gunboat, came up while the Yorikke was just bordering the five-mile limit. Suppose the skipper said that the Yorikke was outside the limit, and suppose the Spaniard said she was not; the Spaniard wins, because he represents the state. The state is always right, and the individual is always wrong.

  Thus it happened. The Spanish gunner signaled with flags and whistles. The skipper did not heed. So the Spaniard got sore and he fired twice the stop-and-stand-by order. The shells filled about the mast-heads of the Yorikke so that the old maid started to dance, thinking it was still Abukir. The skipper was laughing. Anyway he could not make it and bring the Yorikke out of the limit. We were not prepared to choke down the crying throat of the old hussy. Well, the skipper gave the signal to the engine to stop and stand by. The Yorikke was within the five miles, no doubt. The skipper pretended to be out. They would have blown us straight to hell if the old man had not stopped.

  Aboard they came. Much bowing and begging your pardon and excuses for troubling us.

  “Yes, sir, excuse me, you are still within the limit. No, sir, we have just taken our position. If in doubt, may we take position together, sir, so as not to leave any question?”

  “It’s all right,” said the skipper.

  “May we, please, examine your papers? Thank you, sir. Are in order. Only a matter of routine, you know. Would you mind, sir, may we, please, make a slight inspection of the cargo, sir? Won’t take long, sir. Half an hour or even less, sir. Acting under orders, sir, excuse me, sir.”

  Said the skipper: “No objection, gentlemen. Am at your service, gentlemen. But, please, make it snappy. Or I will have to make your government responsible for all and everything. I am short already, gentlemen. We have had dead wind all the time. Go ahead, gentlemen, the ship is all yours.” The skipper laughed. He went on laughing and laughing. How this man could laugh! It was a sight and at the same time a feast for the ear. He changed his laughter from the bright and jovial to the ironical, then to the vulgar haw-haw of a fishmarket woman; then he would chuckle and giggle like a high-school baby. He went through the whole scale and all the shades of laughter, while the officers were diving into the holds or ordering boxes heaved out of the holds to be opened on deck.

  Every child on all the coasts of the Mediterranean knew the stories about corned beef from Chicago. Exactly as the husband whose wife is known by all the men in town is always the last person on earth to hear something, so it is with governments. Not before the dumbest village idiot has long forgotten it will the government obtain official knowledge that the whole village was swept away during the flood last year. So the Spanish government, in the grip of a stern dictator, finally had word from an office-boy about the lively trade in corned beef from Chicago.

  The officers of the gunner, supported by an experienced customs officer, went about the holds of the Yorikke like ants about a dead mouse. They were actually looking for corned beef. And the skipper laughed and giggled so that one could hear it from bow to stern.

  The officers became nervous, partly because they did not find what they were looking for, but mostly on account of the laughing and chuckling of the skipper, of which they could make neither head nor tail. They thought of going straight to the bottom of things, and they asked the skipper: “Pardon me, sir, have you any corned beef on board?”

  The skipper narrowed his eyes and smiled at them as if he wanted to make love, and said: “Of course, gentlemen. Excuse me, please. Por’guese, show the gentlemen to the galley and tell the cook to let the gentlemen inspect the corned beef from Chicago.”

  The officer in charge looked at the skipper for a while, half-dumb, half-surprised. Then he said, saluting: “Thank you, captain, this will do. I do not want to see it. I am not yet through here. It will take me only a few minutes more, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “Not at all, sir,” the skipper said. He bowed and laughed again.

  The experienced customs officer and two men more were still in the holds below, rumbling about.

  The officer in charge went to the hatchway and pointed out several boxes to be hoisted on deck. The skipper ordered two of our hands to assist the officers.

  Up came the boxes. The officer tapped them all off, some with his hands, others with his shoes, and still others with his closed pocket-knife.

  “Have this one opened, please, sir,” he asked the skipper.

  The skipper giggled, now drawing up his lips in an ironical manner. He ordered the Portuguese, who was ready with tools, to open the box pointed out by the officer.

  When the box was open, one could see a row of cans sparkling in the bright sun.

  The officer took out one can, t
hen another. So did the skipper; he picked out one and another one.

  The officer looked at the label, and the skipper smiled. The officer read: “Van Houten’s Pure Hollandish Cocoa. Free of Oil.”

  The skipper handed the officer one of the cans he held. He laughed right out and said: “Why don’t you open this can, sir, to make sure it is cocoa?” His smile became satanical now. I was watching him, and I thought if something should go wrong the old man might be capable of killing that officer like a rat, shut in the others still below in the holds, and try to make off, resting his luck upon the well-weighted safety-valves of the Yorikke. Later, knowing him better, I knew he was far too intelligent to do such a thing. He had brains enough to get himself out of any jam, regardless of how thick it might have come. Anyway, his smile stayed diabolical, but it changed again into a light chuckling.

  When he offered the officer one of the cans he held in his hand, the officer looked him straight and searchingly in the face. He noted his ironical smile. The officer pressed his lips together and got pale. He seemed no longer able to control his nerves. His hands trembled. He knew something was queer about the ship. But he got angry with himself for finding himself outsmarted by the skipper.

  He reached for the can the skipper handed him. Again he looked the skipper in the face like a professional poker-player. Then, with a resolute gesture, he gave the can to the Portuguese and said to the skipper: “Please, sir, order him to open it.”

  “Go ahead, Por’guese,” the skipper said.

  The officer thought of corned beef from Chicago and expected to find it in this can labeled Van Houten’s Cocoa. When opened, there was in it: cocoa. The officer looked rather disappointed, almost pitiful. But he came to and smiled at the skipper.