Fo'castle Waltz

But I don't imagine they'd have the effrontery to let this l'affaire Slobodkin reach that stage. I'd not be surprised if they came crawling before the day was out with some song and dance—one of those now-listen-feller type of cringing apologies. The cabin was getting hot. My head ached worse. All right, I'd forget it, but I'd stick to my guns. I'd be a damn fool having suffered and bled (spiritually, that is) for something, to be swayed by a dinner in the officers' mess—which naturally would accompany their overtures and a few properly conciliatory phrases. I'd fought for and I'd demand a written statement guaranteeing me and all the members of the crew—they were my buddies, the sort of guys that would back me up, and it was for them too I'd been martyred, for mine was not a puny self-interest—the liberty to smoke and sing any place, and under any circumstances, aboard this tub, the S.S. Hermanita.

So after the Captain and his cohorts had made some arrangement to compensate me for the damage done my good shoes—

My shoes!—I'd forgotten about them. Hell, those shoes were out on that broiling deck alongside the kerosene drum. The sun would burn them to a crisp and curl them up so I'd land in New York barefoot.

I frantically stuck my head out the porthole.

Where is everybody—?

It must have been dinnertime. I had heard Chips in his store whistling the march he played on his concertina—over and over again—till I felt it in my back teeth, but his whistling had died some time back. He must have gone off to eat.

Mush's yellow coconut of a head appeared out of the darkness of the shelter deck and he came up the deck with eyes down and a purposeful tread. Anyone up on the bridge could see this young deckhand was seriously going about his own business. As he neared my porthole I hissed at him.

"P-sss, say, Mu-ssh, ya s-see my shoe-s—?"

That guy Mush must have heard me. His stride broke, but he kept coming right along, his head bent, eyes to the hot deck.

"Mus-s-sh," I tried again a little louder, but that guy had turned deaf, dumb and blind; as far as he was concerned I was a sound in the rigging. He swung into the door under the prow deck without giving me a flicker of recognition. Well, how d'you like that? My buddy—

I heard him in our cabin next door clanking open a locker door. I hoped it was his own. Then after a while the sound of his slamming it shut—then silence. After an endless minute, I heard a gentle rap on the door of my brig.

"Hey, Lou. Listen, Lou—"

It was my pal, Mush, whispering through the keyhole.

"Lou—listen, Lou— The Mate said I should keep away from the prisoner—"

"The prisoner?"

"Yeah—you—the prisoner. I'm sorry, Lou—"

And I could hear him as he started getting up out of his crouch at the keyhole.

"Wait a second. Mush—"

"I can't, Lou—"

I talked fast.

"Mush, wait—all I wanted—would you do me a favor? I left my good shoes up near that number two hatch—they're my last shoes—would you throw 'em in my locker? And there's a book in my locker—see—a red one, Emerson's Essays, First Series. That's all—just get it and toss it in my porthole, will ya—?"

He was still for a few seconds. Then his voice came through again.

"Jeezus, Lou—I'm sorry—I can't. The Mate said keep away from the prisoner."

"For Christ sake. Mush—hey, MUSH—"

But he was gone. I stuck my head out the porthole—he had just climbed out on deck. With long, walk-don't-run strides Mush hurried away from me, my porthole, and his conscience. I blistered his back with my expletives, until he escaped into the cool shadows of the shelter deck.

I sat down again on my tarpaulin feeling a little dizzy—the shouting, the smoking, the heat, my headache and all. No question about it, I was on a spot. There was no use trying to rationalize my way out of this one.

If this guy, my pal Mush, my shipmate, my chief witness, was backing down, terrorized by that Swede Mate—and I still didn't trust Al's short upper lip and the old fat Sailing Man— why, if Mush indicated the hands-off policy of this crew, I sure was on a spot—and it was a very black one.

It all had been so obviously simple. They wouldn't have dared bring charges against me. Why, if the crew stuck with me—and this thing reached the law courts—the Captain, the Mate, and the Chief Engineer would have been blackballed off the open sea, and they couldn't have got a berth on a garbage scow.

Captain Brandt would never have lived down the stigma— his fifty years of excellent seamanship blotted out with this one blunder, flooding the holds the way he did, aided and abetted by those two canawlers, the Mate and the Chief Engineer.