Fo'castle Waltz

If I thought those three on the pilot boat were tough—huh— those were violets compared with this gang who glowered back at us. A description of one will suffice for them all, since outside of a few minor details every one of those hundreds of black-mustachioed cutthroats looked like the bogy that mamas scare their children with. The one I pick is a vicious-looking, triangle-faced guy with the national big coal-black whiskers standing out straight from his face—those mustachios. He is capped by a beret pulled forward on his head. He wears a big-sleeved, cocoa-colored heavy shirt tight at the cuffs. His throat is wrapped in a black scarf. Around his belly is wound some heavy folds of cloth. His trousers are loose and he's shod in those trick, rope-soled, canvas slippers that the French, too, think is a bargain in footwear—and one of the reasons middle-aged Argentinians and Frenchmen take to holding themselves up with walking sticks so early in life.

The horrible few hundred—all of them, every last man— had an immense cargo hook slung around his neck with the round handles of them resting on their chests like huge lavalieres, but the vile points of those hooks were no ornaments...

Their ominous silence as they stood glowering back at us was, to say the least, just a mite inhospitable. They might have given us a wave of the hand, a smile or even a good-natured wink to indicate they were glad to see us. After all, we were bringing them business—unloading our ship—since they were longshoremen and that was their business. Or were they dissatisfied and all yearned to express themselves and be a lot of wild Apache dancers which they looked like? Anyway, they were not cheerful and I was a little apprehensive as I stretched out and looked along the rail at our own good-natured crew smiling down at this gang. We seemed too little and too few compared with that bunch.

Our ship was almost in place before I realized there was nothing to worry about—nothing would or could happen. For right in front of this murderous-looking mob of a couple of hundred cutthroats with their rapier-tipped cargo hooks stood the Port Police of Rio Santiago, Argentine, to maintain order.

He was a ruddy-faced stocky little man (with the traditional black mustachios). His uniform, a dark-blue worsted sailor suit with white piping, was complete with a fine white braided cord that draped into his breast pocket attached to—yes, you guessed—a silver whistle: the same kind of sailor suit (with a whistle) they used to dress us up in when we were young and we wore it proudly because we didn't know how silly we looked. And the arm of the law grasped firmly a ten-inch length of white policeman's club. Thus he was prepared for any emergency. We threw a short rope ladder over side. Then the Bos'n tapped me.

"All right, kid, over the side. We'll toss you a line."

I wasn't too sure I could be trusted with so important a mission, but I didn't hesitate, not any longer than to ask, "Me—you mean me?"

"Yeah, sure—over you go. We'll toss y'a line from the prow."

So over I went. After all, we did represent the Estados Unidos. We were in a sense sort of ambassadors of good will, and it would never do to show we didn't trust a few hundred citizens of Argentina with knife-edged cargo hooks as big as scythes at our back as we tried frantically to catch the Bos'n's line which he intended to throw at us from the prow—now, could we?

It felt good to step on dry hard earth again, and when I got on the river bank I stamped my feet on the ground a few times after I'd landed. I grinned hopefully around with a grin which plainly said (I hoped): Look, I'm happy. I'm delighted to be here on your fine, solid lump of earth—your Argentine. Look, I come as a friend... But there was no answering grin from that mob. Only the Port Police of Rio Santiago grinned back at me. And I suspect that grin of his was perpetual and perhaps a defense mechanism.

I quickly walked (not ran) along the side of the ship toward the prow and miraculously caught the line the Bos'n threw at me—or rather picked it up out of the dust where it had become entangled with my feet—and I pulled in the hawser attached to it, the noose of which had splashed down into the river, and I tugged it out sopping wet and cold from the dirty water and nervously twisted and bent it on over the niggerhead—and I was up and back on our ship, which guaranteed me the protection of all the resources of the U.S.A., before you could recite the first three chapters of Robinson Crusoe—phew!