I had a pretty good brush drawing of him hanging there with his big corncob pipe clinched in his teeth. He was a gentle-looking old fellow, but I'd seen him flare up the day before...
The heat had been getting us all that past week. Everyone was touchy and irritable—maybe that's why there were so many of the crew looking forward to really letting themselves out, why the "Fadder Neptune" torture brigade had so many recruits. The crew had made Flip's life miserable with their squawks about the grub. He'd taken it good-naturedly as he served us with his shiny face always smiling, his corncob tucked in a corner of his mouth and his sweat dripping into our food as he slapped the heavy plates down in front of us. But he boiled over the day before as he served lunch and a little grease from a plate of pork chops slopped over on the Maverick's arm. That worthy hopped up, grabbed the dish, and smashed it on the table, sending the chops slithering every which way.
"Yo' goddam nigga," he yelped. "Why d'hell doncha watch what you're doin'?"
Flip's black eyes flashed like smoldering coals suddenly afire. He silently whirled, disappeared into the galley, and was out again before the door swung close, with the longest, sharpest, brightest bread knife I ever saw. It was not one of those ordinary dull saw-toothed blades. This was one of those knives that had been resharpened until it had worn thin and developed a fine curve.
He faced the Maverick with his knife clutched low and blade up. In discussing it later, those of the crew who knew about knife fighting said his stance was perfect as he stood legs apart, toes out, knees slightly bent, and the knife waving back and forth, low in a cobra-like sway, its blade up and the point directed at the Maverick's gut.
He eyed the Maverick and in a thin, shrieking voice, shrilled as he advanced:
"Goddam—man—bra'k deeshes—damn bra'k deeshes—"
There was a swift breeze in the mess and I knew the Maverick was gone. We could hear him clattering down to the safety of the propeller shaft below.
Of course, that incident spoiled our lunch—if anything can spoil a lunch of greasy, fried pork chops and soggy bread, served up in a mess which smelled of kitchen garbage, as the temperature read 120 in whatever shade you could find.
Some of the crew gulped some water to unpaste their mouths, and they murmured, "You oughtn't to do that, Flip."
But Flip looked around, turning his head like a bewildered child and insisted:
"Goddam man—bra'k deeshes."
And it was evident the only retribution worthy of such a crime was to carve out the culprit's innards.
Back on the poop, during the general discussion about the incident in which the Maverick did not join—he had some sewing to do—the general consensus of opinion was that Flip's stance was perfect but he carried his knife just a mite too low. I remember a Bulgarian highlander (he claimed to be that— I knew him as an art student) telling me once that his countrymen had used their knives as Flip had on that day. And the Bulgar had demonstrated—he stood with his knees widespread, his blade held about the level Flip had held it as he waved a vicious plaster knife in my studio and showed me how Bulgar highlanders carve out their differences of opinion. He contended that that's the least harm you could do a man with a knife, since his countrymen were accustomed—on being bested in a dispute of that sort—to gathering up their intestines (which naturally spilled out on the ground), stuffing them back in their abdominal cavity, and wrapping themselves up with a long sash they usually carried for that purpose. Then they'd walk off and get sewed up again until the next time.
I didn't add this to the poopdeck's blood and thunder. They were doing all right without it.
Some of the guys had drifted into a discussion on knife-throwing. They generally disapproved of the commercial form displayed by the sideshow experts—those charlatans who, to a roll of drums, stand a skinny, frizzy-haired dame up against a board and, holding their knives at the point, toss them overhand from the shoulder and silhouette their girl friend (for whom they evidently feel a complete indifference) with a barricade of quivering stilettos. That method is slow, showy, and completely ineffectual in a fight.
Big Joe, who should know, whipped out a seven-inch-blade clasp knife and showed how a knife should be thrown. He first showed his knife off. It had a fine handle with a tricky button in it. He pressed this button and the big blade snapped open instantly, all the way, ready for blood. Then Joe snapped it shut again and put it in his back pocket, stepped forward, and with one gesture snapped out his knife and threw it at the canvas-covered box on which I was sitting. There had been no pause to open the knife—it all had been done in one quick movement. The blade had rested on his open palm, point forward, as he threw it underhand and it landed in the side of that box just a few inches from my dangling, naked foot.
Then when Perry, the cockeyed Portuguese, persuaded Big Joe to let him try his knife, I hopped off that box quick and stood behind Perry to watch him pitch it. After all, that's the best way to watch. Umpires stand in back of the hurler's box instead of up at the catcher's end. That's not for fear that they might be beaned by an erratic pitcher. It's a more scientific approach, observing at the source, rather than the receiving end, a missile in flight, be it rawhide or cold steel.
After that a little more talk on cutting—the old-fashioned razor method with the blade folded back over the closed fist for slashing across, glass beer mugs smashed on the table so that the handle remains clasped in the hand while the jagged edges can be used for gouging (a similar technique was crashing the bottle and using the neck as a handle while you ripped with the splintered other end). I recall no mention of schlaege, the refined German university sport which is not just straightforward cutting so much as a form of mutual masochism.
Philip, the Captain's messboy, talked quietly and apologetically about Flip to Mush and me. It seems Flip was an Igoroti, one of the Philippine mountain people. Philip told us old Flip's grandfather had cut up and eaten his enemies. It was said the mountain people were cannibalistic in the old days. What disturbed Philip most was the fact that Flip had put in three long hitches in the U.S. Marines and had shipped a number of years on ships with English-speaking crews, and stiU his English vocabulary consisted of about only thirty or forty words.
The triumphant announcements that he made when he slapped our food down in front of us, his "Por' chops, opricock pie, etc.," usually took hours of drilling every morning before they could be considered even good Igoroti English. For that Philip apologized.
Well, I thought Flip was one I could count on. The least he could do was to cut those lines they tied us with and I'd have a running chance. I could hop about until the ship was safely over the Equator and then shout "Out of bounds" or something else as appropriate when we were safely over into latitude S. 01. According to the laws of the sea they shouldn't be able to do anything then.
Maybe I could depend upon Flip. I picked up the papers and pencils I'd come for and went back to the shelter deck where Birdneck was to have waited for me—to draw his portrait. I found him stretched out and snoring in the sultry shade of the deck. I let him sleep, and sat down there and worried— till I fell asleep too.
In mid-afternoon we crossed the Equator.
Mush, the pale guy from the black gang, and I had arranged to meet before breakfast that day and talk over some sort of all-for-one-one-for-all protective pact. Nothing came of it. We couldn't agree.
All afternoon that day we chipped deck up on the prow— that was tops in misery.
"We should be hitting the old belt right about now."
I looked up into the sun's glare at the Bos'n.