Fo'castle Waltz

Somehow, I got myself pulled together—glasses on and buttoned up—before he'd completed the inspection of the white-haired guy's eyes. He was somber and talked to him in Spanish. I was proud of my shipmate's halting response in the same language—I'd written sometime back he was a nice old guy.

The Port Doctor—of course he was that; even I'd guessed it by this time—completed his inspection of the old guy. Then he bent over the Captain's desk and talked to him in a low voice. The old guy was told to sit down in a chair over in the corner of the cabin, and after the doctor had gone over the dirty black-ganger—right down to the same quick loin inspection he'd given me—we were let out of the cabin. But the old white-haired guy with the pink eyelids remained sitting there, sad and forlorn, in a corner of the cabin, nobody talking to him.

Yes, we had been inspected carefully to make sure we brought no foreign germs to contaminate the Argentine, and the white-haired guy was the only one—because of his pink-lidded eyes—who was not a perfectly clean, harmless, physical specimen. They didn't inspect us as we left the last Argentinian port to check up on how many of their domestic bugs we carried away. They gave them away free—there was no tariff on them.

13. Thirty-Two Bridegrooms

BACK ON THE DECK UNDER THE SUPERVISION of the young Third Mate, with the Bos'n as his lieutenant, we began to sledge out the big wooden wedges which locked the long, flat iron bars that had been used to batten down the hatches. We'd begin unloading after lunch.

The Bos'n told us to lock up our stuff—"Lock your lockers, lock your cabin doors, nail down anything that belongs to you before those Spik longshoremen come aboard. They'd pick up anything lying around loose, and if you see any of these guys in 'tween decks where they don't belong, or back there in the fo'castle or in any of the passages, kick 'em the hell out —hard and fast."

That was a long speech for the Bos'n. He spoke it quietly, as if he didn't like Spiks. And sometime later, when I did a drawing of him and he talked a little about himself, I could see why.

The labor boss had come aboard and Philip had been sent ashore to get some cheroots for the Chief Engineer. It looked as if we had established contact with the mainland. I imagine a number of members of the crew would have gone on a toot that afternoon, but there wasn't much money around.

Perry% glistening with his "inside dope" look, grabbed big Joe and me and dragged us off to a quiet spot on the deck after the hatch covers had been neatly piled alongside the open hatches.

"Lissen, y'ain't gonna eat d'slops on dis ship today, are ye?"

Big Joe grimaced. "Yeah, what else? Can't get no money till night."

Perry brought his head down with a wink that screwed up the whole side of his face.

"Don't worry about dat. I arranged a deal—with that hombre," and he snapped his head back, still with that wink in the direction of the labor boss scribbling officiously in his little pad as he talked to the Third Mate.

Joe nodded knowingly and grinned.

Just before we knocked off at noon. Perry with much secretive twisting of his head from side to side disappeared into the fo'castle door and after a few moments appeared dressed in an overcoat which bulged suspiciously in strange places. It was one of those shaped coats, and that strange bulk Perry had hidden under it was as obvious a bit of smuggling as if he'd waved his crime from the masthead. Joe and I crowded around him and we stumbled down the gangplank in a huddle. The smiling sailor-boy policeman at the foot of the plank gave us the same bright smile he'd worn on his face all morning.

We kept our formation as we walked away from the river. Quickly, like an irregular-shaped six-legged crab, we made the shack—the one that had flaunted that intriguing sign Cerveza Chicago Bar.

We entered the door in a lump. The proprietor was standing behind a narrow little bar—need I say he wore mustachios?— and it looked as if he'd been expecting us.

There were three or four small round tables arranged around the room. Perry directed us to pick one, and then, with his coat-tails jutting aft and his newly acquired appendage bosoming for'ard, quickly crossed to the bar. The proprietor signaled him to a door. He and Perry disappeared behind its ragged cretonne curtain.

We'd picked a table and sat there. Joe stretched out his long legs, loosened his jacket, and looked around the unpainted, sparsely furnished room. He smiled happily and said, "Nice, huh, keed? No slops today."

"Yeah. What'd Perry get—? What'd he bring along—?"

Joe shushed me. "Sh-u-sh. Forget it."

Perry rushed back to us, his face all aglow. The curtain to the back room bellowed out in his passing wind. He sat down and rubbed his hands vigorously together with his elbows held high—evidently he'd concluded a fine bit of business.

"O.K., fellers—all fixed. Now lessee what we gonna have. . . ."

"What dey got special?" asked Joe.