I lit a cigarette, sat down and waited for them. They wouldn't find me breathlessly hanging around the door for my release. I'd make some concessions. All right, I'd quit singing and I would clean bilges—there was a certain fascination to the work. Speculation on the ingredients of the muck held a scientific interest for me, and I'd missed the gentle rhythm of dipping my can in the schmutz and swinging it past my nose that idle morning. But smoking I'd not give up.
I could claim I had to smoke as a health measure—I didn't want to grow any more. Any insurance statistician will tell you short men have a better chance at longevity than the tall. That's not only because they make smaller targets and don't stick up from ramparts or bleachers like their taller brothers—obvious victims for a stray slug or a foul ball, or whose mere presence in a barroom always inspires some cocky bantam to pick an argument. Most heavyweight prizefighters on their nights out spend their time ducking wild swings from little expert accountants on a binge, who know they won't be smacked in return. Not all tall guys are so adept at ducking the flying bottles. They haven't the training. But because of the easier and more functional layout of the intestinal coils and vital organs in the squat trunks of short men, they die only from the more cheerful diseases brought on by overindulgence, such as high blood pressure, gout, and cyrrhosis of the liver, instead of the sharper afflictions which cut down the tall, narrow-torso'd men (at the ratio of 3 to 2 according to the statisticians), whose crowded vitals develop congestion of the intestines, elongation of the pancreas, and auto-intoxication.
The insurance statistics might be affected by the fact that short men more easily fall victim to the insistent sales talks of insurance salesmen. Being short they can't run as fast as the long-legged, and the statisticians have more of them on their books. The big fellows trailed down and hooked by the clawing insurance agents must have been pretty sorry specimens to begin with and died off quick. So our insurance companies paid off before they had a chance to bleed them properly with their complicated financial chicanery—and started this campaign to encourage the breeding of short, stocky men (in the manner of the modern oven-sized turkey) who live long, pay up every penny with compound interest on their life endowment with special feature policies, and place their advertisements on the flaps of match holders—where I read this argument in favor of smoking—I'm just quoting.
De Quincey's thesis on the spiritual solace of tobacco wouldn't rate with the Captain or the Swede Mate and it served no practical purpose. Besides that, he was a Limey. The insurance company's argument was better.
Under cover of returning that slice of bread I retrieved my irons, which I'd left on the tin pie plate, when the Mate let Captain Brandt into the brig. He had snapped the door open so quickly I was caught with my shackles down, and felt naked around the wrist. My Swedish gaoler stood in the doorway to forestall any prison break from his chain gang. The Captain was sad-eyed. I couldn't tell whether it was his concern over my lack of appetite as his eyes passed over my untouched dinner tray—remember my health and life were his responsibility—or his understandable chagrin at my Houdiniism: when anyone puts anyone else in irons he naturally expects him to stay there. He waited until I'd fumbled my way back into the handcuffs before he spoke.
"Boy—h-m-m—the Mate tells me you've changed your mind."
"Yes, sir." The Captain looked at me, then the Mate, and back to me again.
"H-m-m-m—and the Mate tells me you're willing to turn to again."
I nodded. The old buzzard gave me a long look, then turned his back and said to the Mate:
"Well—I dunno—h-m-m. Dunno as how we want him to. . . . What do you think, Mr. Mate?"
And that scurvy Scandihoovian scum of a Mate shook his head.
"I dunno either."
They both turned and looked down at me sitting there in chains on the tarpaulin, and they shook their heads together. I bit a few strands off the corner of my mustache—it had grown long enough to curl around my mouth and be bitten on such occasions when I might have been gnawing at tenpenny nails. Those two seagoing pythons had me in their scaly coils and they were twisting.
I felt the bitter gall rising as I looked at their cold-blooded fisheyes. Mine were smarting and I turned to blink at the shattered light of the porthole.
They went on twisting.
"That young feller worked all right," said the Mate, "on port work and on our voyage down, but since then—"
"H-m-m—yes—well, maybe if we give him another chance—"
I swung my head around again and brightened up. The Captain gave me a nod but the Mate kept his neck stiff and before he let go he gave one parting twist. He screwed up his eye and growled:
"And remember, young feller, there's them bilges yet—to be cleaned."
As if I didn't know that number one hold was dry and could be polished off with a whiskbroom and a dustpan. I O.K.'d the cleaning bilges clause of our peace pact, too, and the Mate dug up the keys to my handcuffs, unlatched their creaky locks, and my wrist went out the main entrance of their rusty confines.
Comrades, I had nothing to lose but my chains—so I lost.
They marched me back to midships and we climbed the ladder to the messdeck. The first one to welcome me back to the land (or sea) of living freemen after my two-hour imprisonment complete with irons, bread-and-water, et al., was old One-Ton, the Chief Engineer.
He was smoking his after-dinner cigar as he stood there, resting his big stomach up on the rail. That orangutang face of his slowly broke into a big grin; he lifted his good arm, took the cigar out of his mouth and gave me a short, slow salute with it.
"Hi—the Prisoner of Zenda—" and his soft belly rolled off the rail with the convulsions of laughter and coughs he brought on himself with that witticism. I felt there was no malice in his crack and grinned back at him.
He might have meant the Count of Monte Cristo, but I couldn't be sure, never having seen him read anything but the cheap pulp magazines I've mentioned earlier. By not too great a stretch of the imagination there could have been some parallel drawn between Dumas' hero and the figure I presented as I climbed up on the messdeck. I never read the book, but in the movie version I'd seen Edward Dantes had been played by a pompous young English actor whose scattered whiskers during the first few reels were not unlike mine—he too needed a haircut and was barefooted. The point of departure in our resemblance was my glasses—perhaps the Prisoner of Zenda had bad eyes too. I never got around to that book, either.
The Mate led me to the crew mess and told Flip to dig up some dinner for me. The old guy was glad to see me back and free again, and he served me with a cheerful chuckle. I didn't have much chance to talk to Al or the fat Sailing Man (Mush was off my list) as we swept out the number one bilges. The Mate sat up on the comer of the open hatch most of the afternoon—to quell my spirit, I suppose, if mutiny should once more well up from my depths of despair, or if I felt like singing again.
It was not until that evening up on the poop that I realized Mush, alone, was the only guy aboard who was scared to back me up. The crew was with me to a man. Though they admired and credited me with plenty of guts, they were disappointed I'd given in so soon. They had been working on plans to saw through the wooden bulkhead that separated the brig from our cabin. Chips was coming through with a saw from his stores. Philip was cacheing food from the officers' mess to feed me proper. Perry was going to give me the lowdown on my legal rights, and Joe, who was the most disappointed of all, had planned to direct my campaign on how to break the Mate. He shook his head and wished I'd held out till that evening at least and he'd have had a chance to tell me how to run a mutiny. He had had lots of experience.