Fo'castle Waltz

That hat aroused some controversy aboard and in a sense split the ship into two distinct factions. Conservative, muscle-bound mentalities who sneered at my black sombrero contended Pd crossed over and had gone native. These unimaginative provincials laughed with cruel sarcasm whenever I dressed up to go ashore. There were even vague threats, and I kept my hat hidden lest it be burned by those Ku Kluxers.

Then there were the Liberals, Joe, Perry (when he got out of the clink), Birdneck, and a few others who found my hat dashing and very provocative. Perry, on occasion, tried to borrow it. They were happy to go ashore with me and seemed proud to be seen with so debonair and cosmopolitan a deckhand.

Mush—naturally—and Al (he of the untrustworthy short upper lip) sided with the rightwing. I felt their companionship was no loss. Their sartorial tendency was completely collegiate —a fad prevalent in the ginny twenties and still preserved in the offices of some publishers and a few architectural ateliers (where my ideas on hats and sundry aesthetic matters are still not acceptable) to this day.

17. Joe, the Maestro

IN ONE SENSE RIO SANTIAGO WAS A CLEAN PORT, there was a semi-weekly inspection by the medical authorities that kept it that way. Not the harbor or sewerage—that was what it was. I mean the houses with the high lighted doors.

These examinations took place on Mondays and Thursdays, I was told—and I wondered if that elegant aristocratic savant with the handsome white beard was the medico who performed the rites. And did the sailor-boy cop with the black mustachios guard his shiny black walking stick with the silver knob at each doorway as he had at our gangplank?

Since Perry and the Polack had been jugged, we hadn't seen much of that cop either. Maybe Perry had talked him into a game of Seven Up or some other time-killer to while away the long hours. Perry was a very persuasive guy.

After that first wild night ashore, there was never again a mass stampede for the Elysian fields below the main street. On occasion some of the guys would wander down that way singly or in pairs.

Early one morning I recall Chips climbing up the gangplank still dressed in his going-ashore clothes with a gentle, satiated smile on his face. He'd invested ten pesos and spent the night. An eye-opener of mate, the native herb tea which is sipped through a metal tube, was thrown in for the same price. Chips said it (the mate) was very good, healthy, and invigorating. He considered his ten pesos well spent.

At breakfast each morning those individuals who couldn't resist the charm of the ladies and had the pesos to spend would bring the latest reports on the personnel and conditions behind the large lighted doors. But those reports were often confusing and misleading.

For example, if one said, "Hey, remember that big blonde wit' d'red ribbon around her hair—in d'Paris Bar? She ain't dere any more."

And someone would sputter into his oatmeal:

"Ya mean d'one with d'gold toot' in front?"

"Yeah, dat one. She ain't dere any more."

And everybody would try to remember if his relations with the lady in question had ever advanced beyond the stage of a cordial good evening.

But that type of reporting was inaccurate for this reason. The lady in question might have been absent from her particular tramping ground not because of any edict passed by our suave friend, the port medico. There was another handsome diplomat who might have been responsible for tapping the inmates of half the houses within a hundred-mile radius of Buenos Aires.

I mean his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

During the couple of weeks we were tied up in Rio Santiago there were big doings in Buenos Aires just twenty miles away and every girl in the district planned to take time off, get dressed up, and go up to see the handsome blond young prince who was touring the world at the time, spreading good will and slipping in occasionally a word for Manchester's cotton goods.

He was being feted everywhere he went and I had seen the ticker-tape parades in his honor in New York. Now he finally had reached Buenos Aires and set all the passionate, feminine hearts of our Latin sister republic aflutter. And those girls in Rio Santiago fluttered with the rest of them and that was all they talked about—their planned visit to Buenos Aires.

So that big blonde dame with the red ribbon around her head and the gold tooth in front might just have gone to stand on a crowded street curb and sigh as the boyish Crown Prince dashed by in an auto. So a lot of guys who might have known her too well may have had nothing to worry about, if they could only be sure which of the two handsome diplomats were responsible for her absence, the young blond one or the older bearded one.