"Phew! Jeezes, you stink. 0-o-o-h! I feel sick." His eyes rolled a hurt, accusing glance at me as he retched horribly and turned back to the bulkhead with a groan.
It wasn't my fault. I was just trying to cheer him up.
For the next three or four days Mush, Al, the Fat Man, and I worked stowing gear, picking up odds and ends all over the ship. Al was right about the Bos'n. He worked us ragged. The A.B. on watch would join us for a short spell, but the A.B.'s were always favored. They mustn't get too dirty with the greasy cables or any of that stuff since they'd have to take their turn at the wheel—and the wheelhouse and bridge were kept shining bright and clean and must not be messed up with deck filth.
So every morning we four would climb to the Captain's deck with long-handled brooms, the kind the street cleaners use, and a couple of buckets of sand. We'd leave our shoes on the deck below, not that the old Turk, Captain Brandt, was a Mohammedan. That was so we'd not drag any filth up on his wooden deck. We were there to wash it down, not dirty it up. The Bos'n would join us, wearing huge rubber hip boots and dragging a long black water hose attached somewhere to a hydrant on the deck below.
Our job was a simple one and pleasant. We'd roll our dungarees above our knees. Did you know that's why sailors' dungarees and trousers are bell-bottomed—to facilitate rolling? A sophisticated young lady had argued a theory (in my studio some time ago) why sailors' trousers were so snug around the middle—which you may or mayn't dispute. She contended that, since sailors spend so short a time in each port to facilitate amorous conquests and since they have little time to dilly-dally with a prolonged courtship, in the interests of science—to propagate the race of the courageous men of the sea— their trousers were designed snugly for the same reason gentlemen wore padded, embroidered codpieces in the good old days. And since I wear dungarees as I work in my studio and she wore rather thick-lensed glasses and was a complete stranger, I switched the conversation to a more spiritual level—I did not dispute her argument.
Then to return to our morning's schedule. We'd roll our dungarees. The Bos'n would straddle the big black hose, looking more like a cat than ever—a veritable Puss-in-Boots with the hose tailing out behind him. He'd turn the nozzle and shoot a stream of water down the deck. We would throw a few hand-fuls of sand, and then we'd scrub away. I recall, too, that sometimes we'd use a brick-shaped rock attached to a long-handled stick—holystoning the deck—but we couldn't have used it much since I don't remember much about it.
Just about the time we'd finished the Captain's deck—and it looked nice and damp and clean—the Old Man himself would climb up, shuffle across our nice clean job in his old slippers, open the shuttered door of his cabin, and slam it shut without saying a word. No "Good morning, gentlemen"— nothing!
We always met him coming up and only once saw him going down, but that once cleared up a minor mystery which had concerned me for many days.
Captain Brandt's costume on clear sunny days (and there were many of them brittle and clear) never varied. He wore those old leather slippers on his brown bare feet, a clean, white, freshly starched Ship's Officer's suit that might have fit a long time ago. His jacket was always flapping open, showing his white undershirt, his scrawny neck, and his top trouser button opened over his potbelly. Pushed back on his head was a white linen yachting cap, the top of it worn through, exposing his sunburned old pate.
The morning we met the Captain coming down we started the day Soogie-Moogie-ing the outer bulkheads of his cabin— and I learned the meaning of that cabalistic phrase.
Soogie Moogie means simply washing down the white paint work with huge sponges dipped in buckets of water afloat with strong washing soda. Here's how it's done. For some strange and unexplained reason the yacht-polishing Swede Mate would meet in secret conference with our little Bos'n's Mate and brief him on what section of the ship he wanted us to tackle with our sponges, buckets, and hose. That decided, we'd march up to the prow where Chips (the big Russian who gold-bricked the ship's carpenter's job) kept the stores—with two buckets to each man. With the air of a high priest Chips would scoop a measure of powerful washing-soda powder out of a big barrel and drop it into one of our buckets. Then we'd troop back to the bathroom, a cement-paved large cabin that was a combination shower, lavatory, urinal, and laundry back aft next to the deck crew's fo'castle, where we'd fill both our buckets from the fresh-water faucet. There was a thin loose pipe hanging in the bathroom from which live steam was on tap; we'd heat our buckets with it and then we'd be all set to work.
Each of us would swing our sponge, laden with the soapy soda water (Soogie), over a section of white paint work. That powerful stuff would eat the black grease off fast—and take the skin of your hand, too. And if it splashed in your eye, get fitted for a black patch. Then quickly you followed up with your fresh-water sponge—I guess that was Moogie. Then somebody hosed that section, and the deck around, too, so the soda wouldn't eat its way down to the engine room.
There you have it. Soogie Moogie.
I still don't know why we did it, since the paint work would never stay clean more than a day. That old oil burner dropped soot on everything, and a black film would soon settle over our work.
Then the last hour of every morning would be devoted to washing down the fo'castle and the passageways back aft. That was a pleasant diversion and the only time we day men could vent our spleen on the A.B.'s.
We came into the fo'castle clattering and banging our buckets and brooms as loud as we could. The A.B.'s on the First Mate's watch, big Joe and Slim the Georgia Boy, would usually be sleeping with their curtains drawn. So would the bullet-head on the Third Mate's watch. When we'd wake him he'd growl senselessly. He had to get up soon anyway, for he had to turn to at noon. No use writing eight bells—that bell time system confuses me as much as it would you. I was always a little sorry when we wakened the stocky white-haired sailor with the pink eyelids who was on the Third Mate's watch, too. He was a gentle, soft-spoken old fellow.
Everybody up, we'd spray lye on everything—benches, deck, and bulkhead—hose it down, and then work away with those long-handled street-cleaner's brooms with such gusto that as we left the fo'castle scrubbed down and dripping wet but clean-smelling, I always felt if any germs had survived the assault, they rated a long life.
That was usually the morning's work, and we ate a well-deserved lunch. Hard work seemed to make the food taste better, or else my sense of taste had become corrupt by daily exposure to that fare.
Afternoons, we'd chip decks.
Now, there's a lousy job. Soogie Moogie has its pleasant aspects, a cooling pastime in the heat of the day and on this side of the equator—though splashing around in the wet when it got cold below Brazil was bitter and nasty. Chipping decks was a nasty business, hot or cold.
The Bos'n would send me forward to Chip's store to get the instruments of torture: chipping hammers—a vicious, narrow little hammer with ends like a small pickax—and the wire scrubbing brushes.
I'd always find big Chips stretched out taking a siesta on a couple of rolled tarpaulin, with his hard straw hat over his face to keep out the light. The first time I was sent up there I woke him:
"Hey, Chips, don't you ever work?"
He shoved his hat back, opened one eye, and grunted, "Huh? Verk? What t'hell ya tank I go to sea for? Verk? Naw, vacation."
Since the big fellow was an accredited A.B. with his Union dues paid up and good discharge papers, he could always get a ship. Obviously his life was one to be envied—one continuous vacation.
He slowly unfolded his long arm from behind his head, reached across the cabin to gather up the hammers and brushes, loaded me up, and said, "Good-by." Then, shoving his hat down over his face, he went back to sleep.