Fo'castle Waltz

Recently, I have reread Montaigne's essay "Of Smells" wherein he contends that "to smell though well, is to stink," and further on, after a passage on the profound barbarism of Scythian women, he reveals his belief that "all sorts of odors cleave to me and how apt my skin is to imbibe them," and that, if he but strokes his full mustachios with his glove or handkerchief, "the smell will not out a whole day."

In a way, though I lay no claims to any other similarity with the great Michel, I'm like that too, and I stank—for not only one day—and so did Al, Mush, and the old fat Sailing Man—to such a degree, that no one aboard that ship could stand any of us around, and we couldn't stand each other. Of course, we had more than merely stroked our mustachios with the scent of the bilge for only one day. We cleaned bilges for three weeks—every day except Sundays.

The A.B.'s on watch would stand around in their big hip boots waiting for us to fill those big pails with the putrid slop, and as they tried not to breathe, they'd tie a line to them only using their finger tips to make their fancy knots, and the Bos'n up on deck would pull the pails up through the open hatch and empty them over side, killing every fish in our wake, I'm sure, from Brazil to Staten Island. Watching those dripping filth buckets ride upwards toward the sparkling blue sky always seemed to dirty it up for me. It seemed it took a few minutes after their passage before that square blue shape looked clear and clean again.

We stank—

Every noon and evening for those three weeks in the bilges we pulled our glittering, slime-covered bodies out of our bilge and would climb the long, thin iron ladders up to the deck oozing big filth drops down on the guys on the lower rungs. Only once did the Fat Man get to that ladder before the rest of us bilge rats. He not only oozed; he spattered the stuff down in gobs. Up on deck a big metal drum of kerosene was set out near the hatch for our use. They didn't want us to stink any worse than we had to, and we swabbed ourselves down with wads of rope yarn. That cut most of the black grease away and left our bodies a streaky grayish color. Then we took our bucket baths and tried to scrub away our skins. No go—we still wore them and they stunk. We dressed and climbed up to lunch or supper...

Our entrance always created a stir in the mess. Everybody wanted out. There'd be calls for Flip to hurry up, or never mind—they didn't want any tapioca. That from the regular deck crew pained us, but not too much. They looked clean and sunny. But to have the goddam black gang cringe—that got us and it griped us so we could hardly swallow our food. Anyone coming to meals a bit late would stick his head in the door, see us, and then holler to Flip—they'd eat later. Even Flip, who used to greet our entry into his mess with a welcome grin—he enjoyed Mush's wisecracks, he could understand them—now carried a faintly lifted eyebrow and kept his nostrils taut as he stretched across the table to serve us our slops.

Yeah, Al, Mush, and I who had been the social lights of the ship were ostracized. We had gumbriosis, halitosis and all the other social handicaps—and our best friends told us so: we smelled. We were lepers.

Up on the poop one of those evenings Perry, from a good distance and on the windward side of the ship, gave us the low-down on the Maritime Law and its particular relation to us and our lives in the bilges. He gleefully whispered across to us:

"Oh boy, this time that goddam Swede Mate stuck his neck out. Oh boy, this time he done it good."

"Done what?" I asked grabbing at a straw. Perry's reasoning was always flimsy stuff.

"Why, he can't do that—he can't work deckhands down below the water line out at sea—it ain't legal. It says in the Maritime—" and Perry quoted a book, chapter, paragraph, and line to prove the Mate was breaking a law of the sea—the Maritime Workers Union or the Free Trade Inter-American Pact—I couldn't make out which.

"He's doing it, ain't he?"

"Yeah, he's doing it. But I'm telling you he can't get away with it."

"What about—in cases of emergency involving life and welfare of personnel, ship and cargo—how about that?" grumbled Mush.

Perry was stumped. So were we all. That guy Mush had a book—he'd been checking up on his rights. I never remembered seeing him reading anything, but he must have had a book.

After Perry had swallowed he rolled his tongue around in his cheek, screwed up his eyes, and studied the problem in a corner of the sky. Then he took off again.

"Emergency—that's it. There was no emergency. For a fact, he made the emergency. See what I mean?"

"No."

"Sure—lissen. I know those bilges ain't been cleaned for six years. I got that from the Second. Now"— Perry recrossed his legs, his arms, pointed a lumpy forefinger at us— "did he at any time order them bilges cleaned back in port when we was tied up and he had a right to? No. He kept us painting overside this lousy tub as if she was a lousy millionaire's yacht."