Sounds like a simple operation filling our hold with water. It was simple. It was dumb!
There were five holds aboard that ship—two large ones fore and two large ones aft and a smaller one midships. The large holds were three-storied, and the large, square opening of the hatch cut down through the center of each of them. Immense steel girders (called crossbeams) fitted into slots and stretched across the big square openings to keep the old hull from being pushed catty corner by the pressure of the water against her plates, I suppose. The three levels of the hold were floored with immense wood planks. Before we sucked up the La Platte and flooded that bottom level, we rigged our cargo booms again, and working the deck winch, we lifted those crossbeams out of their slots and lowered them to the bottom of our ship. There they were lashed to the big timbers that floored the bottom holds of the ship. The object of that was to keep those timbers down when the holds were flooded. Then we covered our hatches neatly, collared our booms again, stowed the rigging, hoisted our anchor, and steamed out—with enough of our ship held down by that water ballast to keep our propeller in the ocean where it belonged instead of foolishly fanning the surface.
Good—huh? We still could take on cargo up in Brazil in the upper two levels of the holds, or if the agents up around the Santos and Rio weren't antagonized by our ill-mannered Sparks, maybe we'd pump our ship dry again and fill up that bottom hold with coffee or something else that smelled good—not that it mattered to me. I was going to skip ship with the rest of them anyway when we hit Brazil.
We hadn't steamed out very far before we all knew every thing was not so neat and shipshape as it had looked in the calm waters of the La Platte. That first night out we hit a little weather. Those big steel crossbeams weren't big enough or< heavy enough to hold down the floor timbers. The water in the hold easily floated those huge planks and the steel crossbeams broke loose from their lashings and the whole tangled mass smashed and crashed around in the hold, threatening to ram out the rusty plates of our ship's hull and let the rest of the ocean in to play with those hell-raising timbers and rolling| steel girders.
Naturally, nothing was done about it through that dark night and nothing could be done about it the next morning—the pumps weren't working!
Their outlets were clogged from years of neglect. Scotty told us they'd been trying to work those pumps all through the night, trying to empty those holds again—but no go. The suction just clogged them even worse, until they were completely tight!
Now we were in a real mess, and everybody, even Joe and the old pink-eyed guy and a few of the others who had shrugged off our rocky passage up from Ingeniero, were bothered. Not only was the disastrous sea on the outside trying to smash into our hull; it was on the inside trying to bust out.
We uncovered our hatches and looked down into that roaring tangle of timbers, crossbeams, chains, swirling in our flooded holds. The sea was rougher inside the bowels of our ship than it was in the whole bloody ocean. We carried our own private storm with our own thunder. I'll bet that those La Platte waters had never been thrashed about like that before, and if we'd taken on any of the Argentinian fishes with that section of the ocean it must have been an incomprehensible catastrophe for them.
Every time the ship rolled even a little and that undisciplined mass banged up against the hull, everybody winced.
We saw old One-Ton (who everyone felt was primarily responsible) up on deck again conferring with the Captain and the Mates. There was only one thing to do, it seemed. We set up a pump on deck, dropped a big hose down into the hold, another from its outlet over the side, and we sucked up the waters from the hold and spewed them out over side. It was a slow process, and when there was only about six feet of water left in the hold we had to quit pumping. Those timbers and crossbeams cut our hose. It seems the big girders hadn't broken loose completely from the timbers they were lashed on at one end or the other. They rode the timbers with their loose ends scraping and kicking along the ship's bottom or hull.
Someone had to get down into the hold and swim around in that grinding whirlpool and straighten it out so our pumps could work again. The little Bos'n kicked his shoes off and, still completely dressed in his khaki pants, white shirt and old cap and all, he slid down a line and let himself drop.
He swam around down there quickly and efficiently doing his stuff, dodging those heavy timbers and threatening girders. We watched, expecting any moment he'd be smashed between those wild black timbers or crushed up against the hull, but he made out. After the girders were loosened and had sunk down to roll with a deep lazy sound on the ship's bottom, we dropped lines down and the Bos'n tied them to those timbers and we hoisted them up dripping wet to the deck. Finally they were all up and stacked in a sloppy pile on the deck. Then we pulled up the Bos'n, looking like a shivering cat that had been saved from a sewer.
I haven't often seen men do things that require courage; somehow I felt something should be said or done. Nothing happened. He went to his cabin, just changed his clothes and came back to the deck to supervise the pumping again.
The holds were emptied, and again we were a hollow shit bobbing along on the jagged surface of the open sea. It has been getting warmer as we shipped north and again we has been drifting in calm waters. Sparks was cackling on his radio; we were asking for cargo from Santos, Rio, or any place along the Brazilian coast.
The seething cauldron that we had rid ourselves of down the hold couldn't compare with the surreptitious turmoil that went on in the fo'castle as we waited for word—do we or don't we make at least one Brazilian port? The guys were packing their stuff ready to go on the beach, any place. . . .
Perry painted a drooling word picture of life as a beachcomber in Rio.
"Ya don't have to work or nothing. Look, ya see, Rio's a big harbor and it's beautiful—it's the most beautiful harbor in the world. Ask anybody." (A lot of the older guys nodded their heads to that.) "Jeezus, wait'll you see that big sugar loaf mountain coming up in back of the city—oh, boy, that's beautiful, ain't it?" he asked the nodders. They nodded and yapped —you bet—and he went on selling me Rio.
"There's a picture to paint. Wait'll you see that. An' them big palm trees along d'avenoos—great big palms—"
"What's about this no work angle?" I asked, not that I hoped to nullify the edicts—in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. I'd been thinking about my father's pushbutton and work's-only-for-dopes philosophy, and was naturally interested in any concept of a toil-free Valhalla.
"Sure, you don't have to work at all when you're on the beach in Rio. First, the climate's perfect. You sleep in the open, they got wonderful parks with big palm trees—ain't they got wonderful parks, ain't they?" (They who knew, agreed.) "Then, you can always get your grub and everything else—easy—"
"How?"
Perry was impatient with me and gave me a pained look as if it was perfectly obvious how to get everything else.
"Lissen—it's a big port, see, and the harbor's always full of ships from all over—see. There's always American ships and Limey ships in that port. Well, a ship comes in, you climb aboard. They're always glad to see a guy from home, they invite you to eat aboard—always room for one more, see— sure, they'll feed you—"
"Yeah—"
"Then, because you know the port, you show the boys around, take them to places where they don't get gypped, they take you along, buy you drinks and everything—"
"But—how long can you work that racket?"
"Forever. There's always new ships coming into a port like that. Ships are always shoving off and new ones always tying up. And the girls—ain't like down in Argentine. There's lots more girls, and they're prettier and they're independent, see. They don't all work for the houses. You might even pick one up—if she likes you—for nothing. Then you won't have to sleep in the park all the time if you don't want to, though the cops wouldn't bother you if you wanted to. They're not like the Argentine coppers, I can tell you..."