Joe went below to the focastle and rolled into his bunk. His shipmates all stared at him without speaking and when he spoke to Tiny who was in the bunk below him, he didn’t answer. That made Joe feel worse than anything. He turned his face to the wall, pulled the blanket over his head and went to sleep.
Somebody shaking him woke him up. “Come on, my man,” said a tall English bobby with a blue helmet and varnished chinstrap who had hold of his shoulder. “All right, just a sec,” Joe said. “I’d like to get washed up.” The bobby shook his head. “The quieter and quicker you come the better it’ll be for you.”
Joe pulled his cap over his eyes, took his cigarbox out from under his mattress, and followed the bobby out on deck. The Argyle was already tied up to the wharf. So without saying goodby to anybody or getting paid off, he went down the gangplank with the bobby half a step behind. The bobby had a tight grip on the muscle of his arm. They walked across a flagstoned wharf and out through some big iron gates to where the Black Maria was waiting. A small crowd of loafers, red faces in the fog, black grimy clothes. “Look at the filthy ’un,” one man said. A woman hissed, there were a couple of boos and a catcall and the shiny black doors closed behind him; the car started smoothly and he could feel it speeding through the cobbled streets.
Joe sat hunched up in the dark. He was glad he was alone in there. It gave him a chance to get hold of himself. His hands and feet were cold. He had hard work to keep from shivering. He wished he was dressed decently. All he had on was a shirt and pants spotted with paint and a pair of dirty felt slippers. Suddenly the car stopped, two bobbies told him to get out and he was hustled down a whitewashed corridor into a little room where a police inspector, a tall longfaced Englishman, sat at a yellow varnished table. The inspector jumped to his feet, walked towards Joe with his fists clenched as if he was going to hit him and suddenly said something in what Joe thought must be German. Joe shook his head, it struck him funny somehow and he grinned. “No savvy,” he said.
“What’s in that box?” the inspector, who had sat down at the desk again, suddenly bawled out at the bobbies. “You’d oughter search these buggers before you bring ’em in here.”
One of the bobbies snatched the cigarbox out from under Joe’s arm and opened it, looked relieved when he saw it didn’t have a bomb in it and dumped everything out on the desk. “So you pretend to be an American?” the man yelled at Joe. “Sure I’m an American,” said Joe. “What the hell do you want to come to England in wartime for?” “I didn’t want to come to…” “Shut up,” the man yelled.
Then he motioned to the bobbies to go, and said, “Send in Corporal Eakins.” “Very good, sir,” said the two bobbies respectfully in unison. When they’d gone, he came towards Joe with his fists clenched again. “You might as well make a clean breast of it, my lad…. We have all the necessary information.”
Joe had to keep his teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. He was scared.
“I was on the beach in B.A. you see… had to take the first berth I could get. You don’t think anybody’d ship on a limejuicer if they could help it, do you?” Joe was getting sore; he felt warm again.
The plainclothes man took up a pencil and tapped with it threateningly on the desk. “Impudence won’t help you, my lad… you’d better keep a civil tongue in your head.” Then he began looking over the photographs and stamps and newspaper clippings that had come out of Joe’s cigarbox. Two men in khaki came in. “Strip him and search him,” the man at the desk said without looking up.
Joe looked at the two men without understanding; they had a little the look of hospital orderlies. “Sharp now,” one of them said. “We don’t want to ’ave to use force.” Joe took off his shirt. It made him sore that he was blushing; he was ashamed because he didn’t have any underwear. “All right, breeches next.” Joe stood naked in his slippers while the men in khaki went through his shirt and pants. They found a bunch of clean waste in one pocket, a battered Prince Albert can with a piece of chewing tobacco in it and a small jackknife with a broken blade. One of them was examining the belt and pointed out to the other the place where it had been resewed. He slit it up with a knife and they both looked eagerly inside. Joe grinned, “I used to keep my bills in there,” he said. They kept their faces stiff.
“Open your mouth.” One of them put a heavy hand on Joe’s jaw. “Sergeant, shall we take out the fillin’s? ’E’s got two or three fillin’s in the back of ’is mouth.” The man behind the desk shook his head. One of the men stepped out of the door and came back with an oiled rubber glove on his hand. “Lean hover,” said the other man, putting his hand on Joe’s neck and shoving his head down while the man with the rubber glove felt in his rectum. “Hay, for Chris’ sake,” hissed Joe through his teeth.
“All right, me lad, that’s all for the present,” said the man who held his head, letting go. “Sorry, but we ’ave to do it… part of the regulations.”
The corporal walked up to the desk and stood at attention. “All right, sir… Nothin’ of interest on the prisoner’s person.”
Joe was terribly cold. He couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering.
“Look in his slippers, can’t you?” growled the inspector. Joe didn’t like handing over his slippers because his feet were dirty, but there was nothing he could do. The corporal slashed them to pieces with his penknife. Then both men stood at attention and waited for the inspector to lift his eye. “All right, sir… nothin’ to report. Shall I get the prisoner a blanket, sir? ’E looks chilly.”
The man behind the desk shook his head and beckoned to Joe, “Come over here. Now are you ready to answer truthfully and give us no trouble it won’t be worse than a concentraytion camp for duraytion…. But if you give us trouble I can’t say how serious it mightn’t be. We’re under the Defence of the Realm Act, Don’t forget that…. What’s your name?”
After Joe had told his name, birthplace, father’s and mother’s names, names of ships he’s sailed on, the inspector suddenly shot a question in German at him. Joe shook his head, “Hay, what do you think I know German for?”
“Shut the bugger up…. We know all about him anyway.”
“Shall we give him ’is kit, sir?” asked one of the men timidly.
“He won’t need a kit if he isn’t jolly careful.”
The corporal got a bunch of keys and opened a heavy wooden door on the side of the room. They pushed Joe into a little cell with a bench and no window. The door slammed behind him and Joe was there shivering in the dark. Well, you’re in the pig’s a.h. for fair, Joe Williams, he said aloud. He found he could warm himself by doing exercises and rubbing his arms and legs, but his feet stayed numb.
After a while he heard the key in the lock; the man in khaki threw a blanket into the cell and slammed the door to, without giving him a chance to say anything.
Joe curled up in the blanket on the bench and tried to go to sleep.
He woke in a sudden nightmare fright. It was cold. The watch had been called. He jumped off the bench. It was blind dark. For a second he thought he’d gone blind in the night. Where he was, and everything since they sighted the Scilly Island lights came back. He had a lump of ice in his stomach. He walked up and down from wall to wall of the cell for a while and then rolled up in the blanket again. It was a good clean blanket and smelt of lysol or something like that. He went to sleep.
He woke up again hungry as hell, wanting to make water. He shuffled around the square cell for a long time until he found an enamelled pail under the bench. He used it and felt better. He was glad it had a cover on it. He began wondering how he’d pass the time. He began thinking about Georgetown and good times he’d had with Alec and Janey and the gang that hung around Mulvaney’s pool parlor and making pickups on moonlight trips on the Charles Macalister and went over all the good pitchers he’d ever seen or read about and tried to remember the batting averages of every man on the Washington ballteams.