Fo'castle Waltz

Sitting on the hatch, occasionally I wondered how Columbus got away with it—how could he have persuaded the Queen of Spain to sink all her jewels in the gamble that the world is round with the material he had. Since it's well known—history is oft recorded in old folk songs—I gave particular attention to a version Joe sang of the Christopher Colombo chanty. It differed from the accepted conventional—in fourteen hundred ninety-two was the time Columbus started. The Queen of Spain shed a bucket of tears but Columbus—etc., etc. That suggested of course that it was an affaire de coeur and he had used her love for him to swindle her out of jewels, thus financing his wild schemes. Joe's version indicates Columbus used cold logic. As I remember it—in fourteen hundred ninety-two a Dago from Italio was walking up and down the street selling hot tamalio. One day he walked up to the Queen, demanded ship and cargo; and I'm a lousy sonabitch if I don't bring back Chicago—for I know the world is roundo and sailors can be browndo—etc., etc., and it went on to such depths of degradation I would not attempt to write it, although the essence of it suggested a scientific disclosure.

Assuming then that Columbus persuaded the Queen by sterling-pure logic—and granting the success of the standing-egg-on-end demonstration—and that it had taken place (though I wondered when I first heard of it as I do now—was it a hard, soft, medium or raw bit of hen fruit)—but if you will recall, his strongest argument was that on sighting a ship out at sea the observer first sees the tip of her mast, then sails, finally hull coming up from the horizon, thus proving the surface of the seas are bent, and that happens everywhere, he contended. Therefore, if the surfaces bend all around Eureka, the earth is shaped like a ball. Q.E.D.

I rise from my hatch in protest, for sitting as I did—whenever I could—and studying the horizon and its relation to ships, Fd never seen a time when it appeared as if our ship was tettering on a hump of water. It seemed to me we rested at the bottom of an immense, blue-green bowl—the horizon rose all around us as its rim. It was a handsome bowl and sometimes, when schools of grinning porpoises flashed up in the sun rolling over each other in that breathless game of tag they were always playing, and the flying fish took off from one fine wave to scoot for what they might have thought was a finer one, it looked very much like some of the decorative bowls I've eaten out of in our better sea-food restaurants in the city. And often, in relation to its vast circumference, I felt like one of those unexplainable black lumps of something uneatable that always seems to be on the bottom of an oyster stew even in the best restaurants. Of course, this bowl I was sitting in was finer in color quality than any I'd ever eaten out of.

Now if Columbus paddled the Queen out in a gondola or bumboat to demonstrate his theory, she might have been blinded by his charm, for surely, as I sat on the hatch, ships appeared as full-fledged little spots on the rim of the horizon— no mast-first, stacks-next shenanigans about it—but there they were, full fledged and steaming away, including as much of their hulls as I ever saw while they were in sight. They'd come along keeping their distance, grow to the size of one of those you can buy for about ten cents in any five and dime store, and then pass on to shrink to the tiny spot they had been to the nothing they started from. No sinking over the horizon stuff about it.

It might be things look different up on the mast (I never climbed the mast; I was strictly a deck sailor), and Columbus proved his theory from there; but if he persuaded the Queen to climb the shrouds of one of those dinky Mediterranean feluccas—what with those voluminous skirts affected by the ladies of the time—I question the man's intentions. Damn it (and I hate to say this) he was no gentleman.

I didn't mind the slow uneventful days between the Equator and the Argentine. It's only that I was anxious to get down there. My water colors and drawings were going pretty well and I had visions of doing some work down there. I was told the coast towns were all dull, but Perry said the interior was pretty, and I hoped to get out onto the Argentine plains and do some of their Gauchos swinging their curious lassos.

One day rolled over the next not unlike that school of porpoises I'd mentioned, until one morning when Joe shouted, "Hey, you keeds, always bellyaching you wan' see land— Dere she is—dere's land—"

But Mush had been caught with that a number of times since Perry first sprung it on us. It seemed to be a good staple joke, always good for a "haw" from somebody. Mush didn't even turn his head as he sneered:

"Yeh, yeh, I know—three miles straight down."

"I'm no kiddin'—I tell you dere she is, Brazil—over dis side—"