He swigged a big gulping drink of the wine and reached it over to me. So we spent the morning sitting there quietly, smoking, talking and emptying that jug.
I apologized to Joe for misjudging him and expressed my admiration for his excellent planning. He modestly shrugged that off—pas de tout—it was nothing, and he told me of more worthy occasions: the time he had sold a couple of hundred running foot of brand, new and shiny hawser off a ship for the equivalent of ten American dollars and a small keg of brandy, one inky black night in Marseilles.
The morning passed pleasantly and around about noon there were only a few more drinks left in that jug. I told Joe I didn't want any more. I was holding on to my edge of that plank rather grimly...
Joe threw his head back and drained the last of that wine in one long, continuous swallow. As I watched the wine bubbling out of that jug into his mouth it looked as if those bubbles were going down his thick, curved throat carried by the spasmodic rolling of his Adam's apple. It made me feel seasick as I watched.
After what seemed an endless period, while he waited for the last few drops to roll down the inside of the jug to his waiting outthrust tongue, he sat bolt upright, his chin pulled back, and rested the empty pinkish glass jug on his knee. He belched —a long, rolling, roaring belch—and then he jerked his head around toward me with a big grin of accomplishment.
"Oh boy—dat's good—heh, keed?"
I yeah'd. I tried to belch too, but no go.
Then Joe got busy. He swooped his long arm down, filled the jug with water, and let it sink down into the harbor. He took my bucket of paint and with a few expert twirls of the brush, smeared the unchipped hull with a series of dabs, streaks, and blotches. When he was through it looked as if we'd put in a hard morning's work, and had chipped and red-leaded a lot more than our share on the stern of that ship.
A very artistic-looking job, we both agreed, and Joe carefully arranged a series of dabs and smears down near the water line which made a crude but readable big capital J.
Being a provident, farsighted guy, he had tied a rope ladder up at the rail and attached it to our plank early that morning. At that, when we loosened the lines that had curved us around the hull and swung out, I had quite a time getting back on the ship; but after he grabbed me a few times as I thrust my foot through the wobbly rungs of the ladder and almost toppled into the water, he boosted me up to the rail and told me to stay off ships. I'd never be a sailor.
There were two important topics of conversation at lunch. One, how did the Chief Engineer break his arm? And the other, the prizefights at the Seamen's Mission the crew were all invited to that evening.
Some along the table said the Second and the Chief had squabbled over some dame, and the Second broke old One-Ton's arm—that was too preposterous and no one believed that. Others thought the old bastard had got tanked up, toppled over, and just cracked his arm with a fall. That, incidently, we found out from Philip later, was the story. The Chief had been up around the deck that morning with his right arm in a sling and swathed in bandages. They said he looked very sad, grousing around the deck with his eyes bleary and bloodshot, sipping long drinks of bromo seltzer. From the look of him you couldn't tell if it was his arm or his head that hurt him most.
The second topic of talk was the Seamen's Mission boxing bouts. It seems the crews from the Limey ship, the Belgian, the Hog-Islander, and we were all invited. It was free. No collection to be taken up, no religious service, no strings attached at all, and there was a rumor lemonade would be served (old Pat coughed so hard at that he almost upped his lunch).
And who was going to fight? Us. The purser of the Limey ship had been a middleweight ham and beaner and he would referee the bouts. There'd be a real roped-off ring set up in the Mission. Any of us who had any talent for boxing could pair off. A nice old guy from the Mission had come aboard that morning and given the dope to some of our crew.
There was no great enthusiasm shown for the boxing bouts. The crew felt it was a trap, a device (Perry called it) to steer them away from the houses and the barrooms. Nobody was going. What did they think we were—a bunch of dopes? None of us would be caught dead in a Seamen's Mission.
Perry nailed Joe and me as we stalled through the afternoon. We'd been fussing with some gear in the shelter deck, and we'd been taking turns sleeping off the effects of the morning's wine. He had contacted a swell outlet for our cigarettes—a small shop in Ingeniero White that serviced the fishermen of the harbor. Perry had sold a number of cartons the night before and was sure we'd get the best prices there.
After supper we tucked the cartons of cigarettes under our jackets and went ashore. Neither Joe nor Perry was satisfied with the way I carried contraband. They complained the stuff showed, and tried to poke the long cartons around under my jacket so they'd be less conspicuous. They complained I bulged too much, particularly around that box of Sweet Caporals. We'd never get by the cops. I maintained my bulges were natural and I knew more about the possibilities of anatomical structure than either of them or as much as both of them put together.
Had either of them ever heard of the curious physical developments prevalent among the Hottentot and Kalahari Bush people? Naturally, I referred to the mature female of the species, but I didn't mention that—we weren't talking sex.
Joe, because of the build of him, was a natural-born smuggler. His shoulders were so broad he easily carried a few packages under his armpits without disturbing the line of the loose windbreaker he wore, but Perry showed his stuff all over and I must admit I swelled with a peculiar angularity in spots.
The first cop we passed was picking his teeth—he had been working on the back molars as we came along and his mouth was so wide open he couldn't have taken a good look at us as we passed.
The desultory blast he blew on his whistle didn't sound very suspicious, so naturally, his brother cop further along the road, after a quick glance at us, went on reading his newspaper as we passed under his lamppost. Neither he nor any of the cops were very vigilant so soon after supper.
We got to the little shack and we unloaded with no preliminary ceremonies.
Perry who was handling negotiations for all of us seemed disturbed at the prices the fat Argentinian was willing to pay. The market was decidedly bearish—there were too many American cigarettes around. That gang of Hog-Islanders had probably dumped a carload all over Ingeniero White and sent the prices crashing.
The best Perry could get was four pesos fifty a carton—just a profit of sixty cents American money and hardly worth risking a fine or a stretch in one of those unpleasant Argentine jails. After a lot of pretending that we wouldn't sell—Perry would pile all the packages up on one arm as he kept howling what must have been the Spanish equivalent of Skinflint, Robber, Shylock—and then he'd wave us out with his free arm with a "Come on, fellers, t'hell with dis Jew." And as we reached the door. Perry would whirl and waggle his finger as he hoarsely warned that no Nord Americano sailor would ever enter this shop, etc., etc.
The fat Argentinian just shrugged his massive shoulders at all that.
Finally, Perry slammed the cartons down on the counter and took the four-fifty price with a hurt look.
My box of Sweet Caporals was not included in the deal. The guy gestured toward them, but Perry waggled that finger again. Oh no, not at that price. The Argentinian seemed interested. Perry screwed up his eyes and seemed to be giving the Sweet Caps a build-up. He topped his argument by dramatically pointing to a ragged poster of Firpo, the Bull of the Pampas, that hung on the wall back of the counter. That seemed to settle it and for those special cigarettes the Argentinian paid eight pesos—a profit of almost two and a half dollars, since the purser had only charged me (on his books) seventy cents for them.