4. Rots!
EVERYONE SIPPED HIS COFFEE GINGERLY NEXT MORNING, our messboy lifted his eyebrows quizzically as he gathered the plates of lumpy oatmeal most of us had sidestepped, and his eyes brightened as he thought of a joke.
"Wotsa matta—sea slick?"
And he went off to the galley cackling quietly over the joke he'd made.
The events of the night before hadn't scared the fat Sailing Man. With his face screwed up as if he were thinking deeply and working hard at it, he gobbled, gulped, and crammed down all the food set in front of him and everything else within reach of either arm.
We went back to work, and for the next few days it was a monotonous repetition of all the work we'd already done. Some new men had joined the crew—more of the same type we already had. Then after a few days the work developed another pattern.
Al told me he'd heard the Mate and Engineer talking: that afternoon we were going to Bayonne and start loading.
"And damn glad of it," he said. "I'm getting sick of working alongside these old stumble-bums."
"You're gonna work a lot longer with this bunch," it seemed to me.
"With this bunch? Naw. This gang of dock rats, they won't ship out. They just do port work when they're hungry and to get a couple of bucks to buy the smoke, that raw alcohol they swill. They couldn't take a ship down to Coney Island and nobody'd sign them. You'll be seeing the sailors that'll sign on after we're all loaded and ready to ship out. They never do port work—especially in the home port. It's slobs like these and like you and me that do it, but the sailors sign on. They know how to take a ship where it's going."
Late that afternoon the East River was let into our drydock. A tug pulled us out in the stream and sent us on our way. At about sunset we tied up alongside a big warehouse in Bayonne.
I say we set sail and we tied up. Not that I made any contribution—seems I never caught a line thrown at me, never knew what to do with it if anyone handed it to me, and in general was a useless lump of cargo—to the disgust of the howling Swede Mate and most of the crew. But I was willing.
The big Russian came along the deck, loaded down with large circular sheets of galvanized iron.
"Come on, kid, give a hand."
I jumped, delighted that I'd been picked to help with this special job, whatever it was, and I chased after him quick.
"What you got there?" I asked.
"R-r-ot gu-ard."
"Huh?"
"Yah, r-rot gu-ard. They keep rot off ship."
I couldn't figure out how these huge circular sheets of metal could possibly save the ship from decay or rot, so I shut up. It might be just another seamen's superstition—like not shipping women aboard whalers or something.
The big Russian tied them on like collars around the big hawsers that held our ship to the niggerheads on the pier. When he had tied the last of these (my help consisted of reaching him pieces of rope yarn as he leaned over the rail and tied them in place), he straightened up and surveyed his handicraft with a grin.
"Now watch dock rot drop off. All dock rot—them, too," and he nodded his head toward the frowzy bunch of old port workers.
"R-rot" had been his Russianized version of "rat," and he was as sure as Al had been that the old dock rats would quit the ship before we sailed.
We worked late that night. The Phi Beta Kappa's brother and the Fat Man protested under their breath with every step they took.
"Wait'll the Union hears about this. . . . What d'hell they think we are—slaves or sometin'?"
"We put in our eight-hour day. . . ."
"What if the longshoremen starts a half-hour later tomorrow . . . ?"
They grumbled, but they worked, and we all turned in without any talk.
As we slowly pulled on our clothes the next morning, a little man wearing a ship's officer's cap appeared at the fo'castle door and in a thin high-pitched voice said:
"All right, men, turn to—come on, turn to."
Then he wheeled and walked out on deck as if he expected us to follow him like a herd of sheep after a Judas goat.
We sat there looking after him—some of us with our pants half up, others staring through the necks of the grimy shirts they were pulling on over their sleep-numbed heads.
The Fat Man bellowed; he was hurt and indignant.
"What d'hell is dis? We ain't had no br'kfust yet."
The little man in the cap turned and piped, "All right, get it—and then come back aft."
"Who's the little guy?" I asked Al as we climbed up to the messdeck.
"Must be the Bos'n's Mate. Heard he's coming on this morning. Looks tough."
"That little fella tough?"
"I've seen 'em like that before—watch 'im. He's tough."
I guessed all the men recognized that quality in the Bos'n. We ate quickly, and nobody stalled after breakfast. As we came back to where we'd left the little Bos'n, we found him flipping hatch covers by himself with the agility of a cat, neatly turning them one on the other and then sliding them down the deck— no mean feat that.
Watching him as we came along, we realized this little man, with his high, sharp cheekbones, his three-cornered eyes set a little aslant in his head, his precise feline movement, was no ordinary sonovabitch—and no one ever called him that. He might have been mothered by a cat—maybe a puma or one of the other slender sinewy members of the family Felidae. He looked like a pale, tawny cat, moved like one, and, as I remember his voice—his high-pitched, yowling voice—he sounded like one. He seldom smiled; when he did, his skin tightened away from sharp, white teeth in a three-cornered grin!
And did he drive us! As I think of it even now, my back creaks—but the crew took it. He didn't stand back and bark his orders but he'd grab hold, and with his face an expressionless blank, say, "Let's turn this, fellers."
As hard as we worked, he was always ahead of us and working harder. The crew had resented the Mate standing with his hands on his hips or astride the upper deck barking orders and driving us on. But nobody felt like stalling when the little guy grabbed something twice as big as himself and weighing three times as much and said quietly; "Now let's turn this."
Those hatch covers he'd been working on alone as we came down from breakfast were a two-man job. Every morning since I came aboard that old tub our first task had been uncovering the hatches. The hatch was covered in sections by heavy, unmanageable planks about eight feet long, two feet wide, and darn near six inches thick, and they weighed a ton, or so it seemed to me. They were laid out in two rows across the hatch, a center beam catching them over the hatch proper.
Somehow or other I'd always be stuck with the end at the crossbeam. The man on the deck end of the hatch cover had something to cling to to give him purchase, but on the hatch itself there was no succor. I'd grab my end and lift and uncover my own ruin every morning—the deep black pit of the hold. If my partner at the other end of the cover were to yank it just a little, I'd be pulled off balance and be bounced ignominiously into that hell hole. I was always polite at my end as I'd sing out with a cheerful lilt to my voice:
"O.K., feller—now easy goes it. Heave—" The hatches were uncovered every morning to air the empty hold, and covered each night to keep the rain out, I imagine. Every evening as we'd cover them I always enjoyed helping pull the big tarpaulin like an immense canvas tablecloth over the hatch. There was something nice about it—it was like handling a big sail. I know the fat Sailing Man enjoyed it, too, for he'd mumble something like "Le's reef her, boys" and under his breath begin a chanty—"As I was a-rollin" or "Whiskey made me go to sea. ...