Fo'castle Waltz

Now they had disappeared behind the filing cabinets. The light had gone out of the sun, and my dreams of the sea turned brackish and bitter. I weighed the possibility of tiptoeing carefully out of the U.T. office and, as I slowly and carefully began to rise from my chair, the broad face of the boy with the suspenders poked around the corner of a big filing cabinet.

Captain Flint wanted me up forward.

I had weighed and waited too long!

With leaden feet I stumbled down that sad vale of cabinets again. The back of my trousers felt sort of loose and breezy.

Evidently there had been an argument going on. Captain Brandt had the wind up as he sat with his straw hat resting on one knee, twirling his foot and swinging his arms to carry his points.

The first view I got of him with his hat off fascinated me so, I didn't hear what he was saying. He was one of those bald-headed old men who allow what hair they have left over the ears to grow long, usually on the left side of their head. They carefully comb the sparse hair over the bald top of the head and slick it down, deluding no one but themselves, since as they look in the mirror the dark streak of hair on the top looks as it always has. They never get the side and back views we do. Captain Brandt's coiffure was unique. The flattened stripes of his hair were arranged around his bald pate in an equal-spaced design, and with a curve ending in a spit curl high over his right eye.

It looked exactly like some species of wild ass I'd seen in the Zoo—a black and tan zebra's buttocks of a head.

With a rasping voice he was saying, "An' I won't ship any goddam deck boys—they're all a bunch of little bastards—the last two I shipped are still down in South America. One got dosed up in Montevideo, and we dumped him in a hospital in Santos . . . and the other skipped ship in Rio. No, sir, I won't have my ship fouled up. . . ."

Captain Flint, who had been sitting back square in his chair, flicked his eyes on me and then leaned forward, resting his big fist on the polished surface of his desk. He thrust his head forward and said, "Captain Brandt, this is the young man Mr. [that Shipping Board man's name again] spoke of." His voice rumbled through the office like a distant storm.

It was evident my sponsor's name had weight.

Captain Brandt turned and looked at me over the tops of his horn-rimmed pince-nez. He wore them low on his nose bulb, and then, as he brought his head completely around, I saw they were attached to, and trailing, a length of black cable so heavy that his pince-nez were a bit askew.

He said something that sounded like "Ugh."

"How d'ya do, Captain Brandt," I said.

His nod of recognition sent his pince-nez trembling and lifted his spit curl in the breeze. I wondered how a sharp wind would affect his long, plastered-down top hairs.

Things happened quickly after that. It seemed that Captain Brandt was impressed with my gold-rimmed glasses and my deceptive gentility.

I could come aboard the S.S. Hermanita as a tryout.

A young clerk was dispatched with me in tow, and we dashed down to the Shipping Board agency to have certain papers filled out.

The clerk, a young man with a good plain face, gently but firmly led me from office to office all over the lower tip of Manhattan on that broiling hot day—and I remember a cool pause in a brick building at South Ferry. I was to take the lifeboat test. In a darkened room I was confronted with a dainty white and tan model of a little rowboat held up by some white cords that were run through some pretty little pulleys suspended from two curved metal units (davits). It was a charming little scale model, and I told my guide and the man behind the counter that I thought so. So far that day, that fine little scale model was the only thing I recognized as something I knew anything about—everything else was a misty pink chaos. I began to discuss scale models in general, since I'm pretty well-informed on the subject.

The man behind the counter exploded, "What's this—is he gonna start working them davits and swing that boat out or ain't he?"

My young clerk reddened and gave me a little talk on what was expected of me. Then, after a little study of the model to get the hang of it, I worked the davits.

As the man scribbled on some papers, I leaned over the counter and suggested a few things that could be done to perfect this little model—perhaps a little carving on these inner surfaces and a touch of oil in those pulleys. The man rolled his eyes up at me and glared at the clerk, who grabbed my elbow with one hand as he slipped the paper from under the man's pen with the other and whirled me out of there without saying a word.