In the wheelhouse, the light from the compass binnacle threw a soft, mysterious glow over the saturnine features of Tex Worden. The scarred wood of the wheel was gripped in his work-hardened hands. He stared into the darkness toward the chronometer, trying to see the time. He rolled his quid in his jaws and spat with careless accuracy into the sawdust box near the wheel.
The third mate walked into the wheelhouse and stood watching the forestay for a minute.
“How is she?” the third asked.
“Right on course, Mr. Mate, sir.”
The mate glanced at Tex Worden’s face. There was no hint of a smile. Mr. Wesley turned away, feeling irritated. He always felt Worden was laughing at him. Mr. Wesley didn’t like to feel that he was amusing. In fact, Mr. Wesley took himself quite seriously.
Worden moved the wheel a couple of spokes to starboard, an adjustment that turned gears and opened valves. Aft, the steam steering gear hissed and grumbled and the rudder moved. The noise woke a sleepy fireman, who rolled out of his bunk and shuffled toward the head, muttering to himself.
The third engineer, on watch below, glanced toward the oiler sitting beneath the ventilator, and then back at the gauges. The engineer was thin, dark, and nervous. Thin because he was never in the best of health; dark because his father had been a Southern Italian; and nervous because he was the father of the second mate’s third child and feared that the second mate knew.
Aft, in the mess room, Shorty Conrad, the buck-toothed seaman, listened to the conversations around him. He was thirty-two, but looked scarcely twenty. He had been born in Australia, orphaned in Texas, and drifted down to the sea. He liked to drink, gamble, and fight and was a failure at them all. He did not have to strain to overhear Mahoney, the twelve-to-four oiler, telling whoever would listen that he was going to “get” Denny McGuire. Shorty smiled to himself. Mahoney had tried before…and McGuire could look after himself.
The night was a symphony of velvet darkness in which millions of stars swung their tiny lanterns overhead. Not a gleam was in sight that might have been another ship, but miles behind and to the north a Matson passenger liner was bound away from San Francisco to Tahiti. Her route intersected that of the tanker at a long narrow angle. It would be days before her greater speed would cause the ships to pass, and more days still that they would be just over the horizon from each other, invisible companions in a nearly empty ocean.
Her radio officer was tapping out a story to the Sparks on a Sydney-bound freighter. Jerry, the Matson radio operator, was headed home. He was from the southern islands, though he let few know it. Blue eyes, courtesy of a German father, and a sure hand had cinched the deal with the Radio Service. His dark complexion went unremarked upon among the naturally tanned community of ship’s officers. He would leave the ship in Tahiti and find passage to his tiny island. A brother and mother were waiting for him, waiting for him to come home from the sea.
In his bunk on the Lichenfield, Ordinary Seaman David Jones stirred restlessly. Beyond the iron hull next to his ear, the sea sounded terribly close. Tears welled slowly to his eyes and trickled down his cheeks. He lay, staring upward in the darkness. A month ago he had been working on a farm, earning what he could to pay the doctors who looked after his mother and visiting her and his sweetheart on weekends. Now his mother was dead, his sweetheart far away, and he was a fugitive from the law, sailing off to the Far East.
Forward, in his cabin, the second mate arose and put aside his book. John Harlan loved fine books. He liked them not only for their contents, but for their luxurious bindings and paper. He liked the finely wrought illustrations, too.
He smiled at these small pleasures, and then picked up his coat. It would be a quiet watch and there would be a moon. A night for thinking, for dreaming, for making love. It had been such a night when he and Helen—his face darkened but softened again as he remembered. After all, who was he to condemn anyone? There was too much condemnation in the world and too little understanding.
He walked out on deck and stared up at the sky. No, he had been mistaken. No moon tonight, only the stars and the sea. A wraith of wind touched his cheek as he started up the ladder to the bridge.
THE PRIVATE LOG OF JOHN HARLAN, SECOND MATE
March 20th: It is quiet, and there is no sound but the scratching of my pen and that distant throb of engines that is the constant accompaniment to all our days and nights. There is only the tiny microcosm of the ship, and all about the eternal sea. It often surprises me how little we notice the sea. Always, we are aware of it, but only during periods of storm or emergency does it impress itself definitely upon the consciousness. Our lives are narrowed to the small island of the ship itself, to our association with one another, our day-to-day work, and the expectation of ports to come.
There might be no other world than this. We are, strangely, alone. A tiny bundle of lives thrown helter-skelter into the steel hull of a ship. The end of all the cities might come, all civilizations might be reduced to dust, and we would know nothing of it. There is the intangible connection of the wireless. Sometimes we look up at the slender cables of the antennae and wonder at it, but no more. It is too new, too ephemeral a connection.
Thirty-three strangers live huddled together for a few passing weeks. Some will move on, and a new crew will form from the human driftwood, the shiftless wanderers, the men in dungarees who go down to the sea. Thirty-three men, thirty-three hearts beating against time, thirty-three unknown longings, thirty-three dreams.
Who are these men who share this ship with me? Who exist side by side for a time, and then vanish again? They seem as alike as motes in a beam—blue dungarees, white singlets, and the eternal talk of whiskey and women.
Five years now as second officer of the SS Lichenfield I have watched them come and go. Are they like me? Do they wish to write? Paint? Or compose? Did they want a chicken farm? A beer parlor? A dance hall? Do they want to pimp for a woman or preach the gospel? I watch them curiously, and I never cease to wonder. I have known seamen who attended the Sorbonne, Heidelberg, and Harvard. I have known seamen who knew Sing Sing and Devil’s Island. And once I saw a drunken wiper with a bloated, booze-sodden face fall into a chair before a shaky old piano and play Wagner and Brahms. One never knows.
The motives of men are a continual puzzle. Why was I, I wonder, cursed with this desire to write, to catch the whimsy of the moment in indelible words? What impulse started me believing there was worth in these transient thoughts and transient men? And that I, at all costs, must record them? Should I write of these men? I know no more of them than any one of us may know of another, for we are all strangers yearning across an abyss that none can bridge. Still, I wonder who they are, where they are going, what they are thinking.
Are they like me, escaping from a dream that has blasted itself? Are they leaving behind a wife they loved, children that meant so much? Are they leaving behind hope, honor, and pride? Are their lives as grotesquely tangled as mine?
Back there is a girl I loved and who became mother of my children. My children? Well, two of them at least. The father of the third I do not know, but he is no less deserving, no less worthy. And perhaps his father is as lonely as I, another helpless man searching for happiness or love.
For almost two weeks I have lived with this crew. Of Slug Jacobs, Mahoney, or Sam Harrell, I know little. I have seen Denny McGuire batter Mahoney into insensibility on the docks, yet I have also seen McGuire reading the sonnets of Edna Millay. I have seen Tex Worden stagger out of a waterfront brothel and flip his last half-dollar into a beggar’s hat. I have seen Shorty Conrad bending over a bit of paper, the tip of his tongue on his lip, his fingers cramped, writing a letter. To whom was he writing? Why?
Somewhere in the lives of these men there must be stories that I could write. They come on watch, they speak respectfully, and occasionally they venture a comment. I have Shorty Conrad and Pete Brouwer on my watch
. Pete is a big fellow but very quiet. He is the most capable seaman aboard, a genuine sailing ship man. That much I know, but who is he? Where is he going? What is his life?
PETE BROUWER
Able Seaman
He put his cup down and lit his pipe after carefully filling it from a woven leather tobacco pouch. His initials were worked into the leather with white strips. The whole thing was an intricate, painstaking piece of art. He had done it himself. He drew on the match. The crew’s mess and the entire aft house was inside the open-flame line, a red border painted on the deck that cut across the ship’s stern from rail to rail. Here it was safe to smoke. Two more such lines bracketed the superstructure amidships. The fires of the galley burned within those lines, and the officers and engineers could also smoke in safety.
Pete had served on tankers before, and it had never felt safe. He could see the plumbing that ran across the decks, knew the systems that were in place: caulked rivets, vents, and careful inspections. But it never felt safe. He was glad he was finally going home.
He stared across the room, looking out the open port at the quiet sea. Soon they would be in Manila. After that, it would be on to Asia proper, back to San Pedro, and then, finally, through the canal and home to Amsterdam.
He would take his sister to the Vijzelstraat. He had never been there, but a seaman had told him it was a good place for music and dancing, with the best of food—good Dutch food, not the slum he had been eating all these years. She would like that, he thought; young girls like to go places. Then he would get a good job on a coastwise run where he could be home often. No more would he go out to the far waters.
So many times he had tried to return and always there was something to prevent it. Sometimes it was a good ship to somewhere else; sometimes he had spent his money. This last time, in San Pedro, he was robbed. His watch, the one his father gave him twenty years ago…they had taken that too.
It seemed so good, coming into San Pedro. He had liked that ship, the Johnson City, and he had liked the crew. They were all such good fellows, and had been looking forward to a place they could call home, even if it was only for a few days. Pete leaned against the bulkhead at the end of the bench, and his eyes closed.
Behind them the sun, red from its exertions, had been sliding wearily into the sea. To the north was a lighthouse and the long roll of tawny hills on the peninsula were taking on the colors of sea and sky. To the south was Long Beach then a thick forest of oil derricks. Here and there over the town a thin finger of smoke pointed inquiringly at the heavens. A water taxi sputtered by, and farther up the channel was the stack of a Luckenbach boat.
“She hasn’t changed a hell of a lot, Pete,” Shorty remarked. “She never does. Just the same old oil and lumber docks. Probably the same women up on The Line, too.”
“Ya, ’Pedro a good town. I have been here on a vind-ship, fifteen year ago, maybe. Then there vas not so much as now.”
“Man, I can hardly wait to get ashore.” Deek slapped Shorty on the shoulder with a heavy palm. “I got a swell dame up on Beacon Street!”
“Yeah,” Doc laughed, “an’ about a thousand other guys got her too!” He looked at Deek and shook his head. “Get wise to yourself, friend. All these dames are after is your dough.”
“Nuts t’ you, sailor. You’re just sore because that gal in Hong Kong gave you the gate!”
“Hell, that was nothing to what she gave you!”
Shorty picked up a heaving line and stepped over to the rail. He swung the monkey’s fist to get the feel of it, examining the men on the dock.
“A dollar says you can’t do it,” Doc said, stepping up and measuring the distance with his eye.
“Okay, bud, you just stand by and watch!”
The ship was edging in to the dock, and the mate walked out onto the wing of the bridge, gauging the distance.
“On the dock there!” he shouted. “Stand by to take a line!”
Shorty tossed the coil of rope with more force than one would have thought possible. The hard monkey’s fist shot through the dockman’s hands and struck him a resounding blow on the chest. The man swore and scrambled to retrieve the line.
“All right, you chisel-bum, give me my money! I hit him! I hit them all, to Singapore an’ back!”
Quickly, they paid out the line while Pete took a turn around the drum of the winch. Deek stood by with a cork fender. Leaning on the rail and chewing a cut plug, he swore at the men on the dock with good-natured fluency.
Pete said nothing, watching the gray warehouses, Terminal Island, and the town across the channel. Shorty had taken the line at the winch, and Pete walked forward and with the ease of long practice threw a stopper knot on the line while they took it to the bitts. He worked quietly, surely.
“Hayes!” The mate pointed from the bridge. “Help Chips fix the rat guards. The rest of you see the gangway is down and then you can knock off.”
The gangway was hurriedly lowered into place and the longshoremen swarmed aboard and began throwing off the hatch covers. Pete stopped for a minute, wiping his hands on a bit of waste, and watched the scene along the dock. It was as familiar to him as it had been so long ago in Amsterdam when he had first gone to sea with his father. He never tired of watching the endless process of loading and discharging cargo. The thought that cotton and steel were transported to Japan, wheat and lumber to England, more steel to China, rubber, tin, and foodstuffs to the States, just for the happiness and comfort of men, was a marvel to him. So much fuss, when so little is needed to be content!
“Come on, Pete! Let’s get ashore! What do you say we see what the town’s got. Then we can ship out for Rio in a couple of weeks?”
“No, Shorty, I have saved my moneys, unt now I go home. Tventy year ago I sail away, unt never have I been back. My mama, she write, ‘Peter, you come home now. You are all ve have. There is no money.’ My sister, she is young girl, unt she all the time work with the fish. It is no good for young girl. My mama, she is old now.”
“Sure, Pete, an’ I don’t blame you. Hell, if I had a home to go to I’d sure be on my way in a rush. But you told me about your brothers, can’t they help out?”
“No, no. I am only vun now. Papa he go down in the Baltic, many year ago. Hans unt Karl vent mit a German ship, mit munitions, unt t’ey not come back. Vun, two, t’ree, like that they go. Now all are gone but me.”
“You been gone twenty years, Pete? You must’ve been a little nipper then.”
“Ya, I am but ten. My papa, he give me a place mit his ship. I am cabin boy then, unt we go to Pagoda Anchorage, for tea. But I am vashed over side ven I am twelve. A vind-ship in a storm, you know, it can not come ’round. They t’row me a buoy, unt I float t’ree days, unt t’en I am picked up. T’ey take me to Australia. T’ere I am living two year, unt t’en I go in a bark to Cape Town. T’en to Calcutta, unt to Bombay. I write many times home, but do not go.”
Doc was shaving his lean neck when they walked into the fo’c’stle, his head back and tilted to one side. The straight razor sounded like sandpaper on his face.
“Hey, you bums,” Deek yelled when they came in. “Better get your ears washed. We’re going ashore an’ throw a wingding! I’m going to paint Beacon Street seven colors t’night!”
Pete walked over to his bunk and sat. He dug into his tobacco pouch and stoked his pipe, watching the others shake out their shore clothes. Then he lit up and inhaled deeply.
“Pete, ain’t you comin’? The first drink’s on me tonight!” Deek said, straightening his tie in the reflection over Doc’s shoulder. “But I’ll buy another for the guy that’ll shove this monkey away from the mirror!”
Shorty slipped on his blue serge coat. Dressed up, he looked like a high-school boy playing hooky. “You don’t have to spend anything. Let me foot the bill.”
“No, Shorty, I stay aboard tonight. You fellows go
—you drink for me. I like t’e drinking too vell when I am with shipmates!”
“Aw hell, Pete, be a sport. You ain’t going to blow your pile in one night! Come on, join the gang!”
“Let him alone, Deek,” Shorty said. “He knows what he’s doin’. Hell, if I had a home to go to no spree would keep me away.”
“Aw, he don’t have to spend nothin’! We’ll make it a going-away party! The drinks will be on us. Hell, t’night I’d even treat Doc…an’ I’ll see that he buys a round or I’ll shake him till he needs one of his own adjustments!”
“Here’s an idea, Pete. You leave your dough with the Old Man an’ come on ashore. We’ll have a swell time.”
“Sure, come along!” Deek growled, shoving Doc with his shoulder as Doc coolly began dusting powder over his face. “I’d give a party to get rid of any mug that thinks he’s goin’ to leave us to go off and be a chiropractor. Hell!”
“Okay, okay, but when you’re bumming along the beach for coffee, I’ll be playing tunes on the spine of some hot Hollywood blonde.”
“Let’s go, Pete! Leave your money with the skipper an’ we’ll shove off. We can’t have a sailin’ ship man parked in his bunk while all his steamer-bum pals go ashore!”
* * *
—
The moon was suspended low in the sky, and the dark arrows of the masts stabbed a night misted with stars. The dock echoed as they hurried along. The great lumber piles rose above them, and the alleyways between appeared and then were swallowed by the darkness behind. Once, they avoided an open trapdoor in the dock, and Deek swore as he almost stepped into it. There was a glimpse of oily water down below, and Shorty shivered a bit, hurrying to catch up with Pete.
No Traveller Returns (Lost Treasures) Page 3