Authors: B. TRAVEN
Rat-watch. The most horrible watch that was ever invented to punish rebellious sailors. You come to the foc’sle at four, tired. You wash your face as well as you can. Then you have to get the supper for the whole outfit. After having had supper you wash the dishes, since there is no mess-boy to do it for you. The cook does not care how dirty the kettles are; he throws in your grub, dirty or not dirty. Now you lie down in your bunk to get some sleep. You have to eat all that your belly will take, because there is no other meal until eight in the morning. On this full belly, full of potatoes and a thin greasy soup, you cannot sleep right away. You just turn round and round. The other guys off duty are sitting there playing cards and telling stories to each other. You cannot yell at them to be quiet because you want to sleep. They might lose their ability to talk. Knowing that you need sleep, they are already only whispering. But whispering is more annoying than talking in a loud voice. Close to eleven you fall asleep. All the other boys have turned in meanwhile. Precisely at the minute you take the first deep breath in a profound sleep, it is twenty to twelve and the drag of the other watch is waking you up as roughly as he is able. Out of your bunk, down below into the stoke-hold. At four in the morning you return from your watch. You wash your face. Maybe you don’t. You are too tired. Like a stone you fall into your bunk. At about a quarter past six the noise starts on deck; the day-hands are chased around, here hammering, there sawing, yonder shouting and commanding, rattling of chains and squeaking of winches. At eight somebody shakes you out of your sleep. “Breakfast is ready,” he yells into your ear. All during the forenoon there is not one minute without that hard noise of work on deck. It beats into your brain without pity. Twenty to twelve nobody comes to call you, because no one on a ship would expect anyone to be asleep at that time. The little sleep you might be favored with is also taken away from you because you have to be on time for your watch, and you must not oversleep or you will start your watch with such a row from the second engineer that anger eats you up, and your work will be twice as hard. You stagger drowsily below, and you almost fall against the furnace doors. No pity. The ship must go on, because a ship is under control only when under steam, just as an airplane is out of control when it has lost its minimum flying speed. So you go to your watch and work worse and harder than a Negro slave until four. And so it goes, on and on.
“Who washes the dishes?”
“The coal-drag.”
“Who cleans the shit-hold?”
“The drag.”
Cleaning privies and such things is, absolutely, an honorable work. Provided one hasn’t got anything else to do. In this case it was what a Mexican would call:
la porqueria y la cochinera mas grande del mundo entero
. Or something which cannot be explained well in good English with dames listening in. Anyone who would have come close to see would have said: “This is the filthiest and dirtiest cave I have ever seen in all my life.”
From my experience on a decent farm, and from experiences in tropical countries, I know that pigs are cleaner in fact than hundreds of thousands of human beings ever try to be. So it would do pigs, when left alone and not interfered with by miserable small farmers, an injustice if I had said this here looked like a pig-sty. I could not blame the skipper for never wishing to inspect the foc’sle, as was his duty. He sure would not have been fit for two full weeks afterwards to eat a single meal. We had to look at it every day, and we had to eat also. No excuse for anything when there are only two points around which you revolve: Live or die. Yesser.
My punishment for having left sunny Spain is hard.
On ships like the
Yorikke
it is the coal-drag who has to do any work that comes along that no one else will undertake. No matter if the work is the lousiest, the filthiest, the most dangerous, the drag is called upon to do it. He has to do it. He has no right to refuse. Suppose there are three drags, one for each watch, when the crew is complete; the lowest of these three drags is the drag of the rat-watch. And suppose the two other drags refuse to do a certain job, the last called upon to do it is – yes, sir, you guessed right is the drag of the rat-watch. He has to do it. If he prefers rather to go overboard or knife himself, he doesn’t get any chance to do so until he has completed the job to the full satisfaction of the skipper or the chief; I mean the chief engineer.
As to dangerous jobs, it went like this: The chief told the second engineer, the second told the donkey, the donkey told the greaser, the greaser told the fireman, or the stoker if you want.
Said the fireman: “Blast me somewhere, but that’s not a fireman’s job, I don’t care a bitch who does it, but I am the one who of all the cracked nuts plumb sure won’t do it, and not for twenty bucks either.”
Goes the second to the drag of the noblemen-watch, that is the watch from eight to twelve, where only stranded princes and dukes are on watch. Says the drag of this palace-watch: “Not me, sir, and never mind the double pay and fourfold ration of rum. My great-grandmother is still alive and she is dependent on me.”
Goes the second to the drag of the golden middle watch; that is the watch from four to eight. “Me?” he answers. “Don’t come to me that way, sweety, I don’t want to be the father of a never-born child. No, sir, my dame is still expecting something from me which I have to furnish and not leave her in the cold. Thank you just the same.”
Goes the second to the drag of the rat: “Hey, you guy, hop on it and make it snappy. Steam is dropping like hell. No, you cannot leave now, no going out from here until it is fixed. Get at it and hell if you don’t. Stinking son of a filthy beachcomber.”
After half an hour or so the drag of the rat-watch comes out bleeding all over, knuckles broken, bones freed of skin and flesh, body scorched and burned and scalded in fifty places, and he drops like dead.
Goes the fireman to the greaser and says: “I have fixed it.” Goes the greaser to the donkey and says: “I have done it.” Goes the donkey to the second and says: “Sir, I did it, it is working fine now.” Goes the second to the chief and says: “Well, sir, I wish to report I have done it, all is shipshape.” Goes the chief to the skipper and says: “Sir, I wish to have the following reported in the ship’s journal, please: Chief engineer risked his life in repairing bursted steam-pipe, while boilers were overheated and the ship was falling off schedule; and by doing so saved ship from serious disaster. Yes, sir, that is right. Will you please sign it? Thank you, sir.”
One day, when the board of directors of the company are reading the ship’s journal, the president will say: “Gentlemen, I think we ought to give this chief engineer from the
Yorikke
a more responsible position. He deserves it.” The chief gets it.
As a matter of fact, it is less responsible than the position he had on the
Yorikke
, because these engines are almost new. But the higher responsibility means a higher salary, and that is the point which counts.
The drag has the report on his body and in his body; he is crippled for life, and the twenty or more burns will leave their marks in his face, on his hands and arms, on his breast and on his back. Now, of course, one should not take it so hard, because why did he do it? He could have said: “Hell and devil alive, I won’t do it.” But the answer is ever ready: “Why, you man, you do not mean you are going to let the ship go to the bottom and have all your mates drowned and fed to the fish? You wouldn’t do such a thing, would you? A brave and courageous man like you? You are not yellow, are you? Could you bear it on your conscience to have a ship with its men aboard go to the bottom and never come up again? There’s a fine fellow, brave and smart, the true sailor.”
The chief would have to do it. It’s his business to know something about boilers, and about repairing broken steam-pipes on the high sea. He has to know them and he has to know how to fix them; that’s why he was made chief engineer and why he gets the pay for it. But he cannot throw his life away, can he? The life of a filthy coal-drag is no life at all. What does such a man know about life and responsibility and the welfare of the country and of economic competition?
Don’t let us speak about it. Oh, honey, fish him out, that dear little fly in the milk-pot; he might get drowned; please save his little life. A coal-drag? He is not like a fly who has fallen into the milk-pot. He is a filthy, dirty, lousy fellow, no soul, hardly human. He is just good enough for shoveling coal on a ship. He ought to do it just for the fun of it and for three square meals a day.
Yells the chief: “Hey, coal-drag, come up here for a minute. Like a shot of rum?”
“Yes, sir, thank you.”
But he cannot have it, because the glass falls out of his hand, and the rum is over the floor. The hand is burned and cannot hold anything; yes, sir.
Supper was on the table. Right in front of me. I felt hungry. So I thought I might just as well eat the supper.
I looked around for the mess-gear; I mean for spoons, forks, knives, plates.
“Hey, you bird,” somebody cried at me, “leave that plate alone, it’s mine.”
“All right, all right. Where do I get a plate and a spoon?”
“If you haven’t brought any, you will have to do without, son.”
“Ain’t they supplied here on this tub?”
“All the supplies here have to be your own.”
“How, then, can I eat not having a plate or a spoon?”
“That’s your business, not mine. Invent something new.”
“Listen here, you newcomer,” somebody cried out from his bunk. “You can have my things to eat with, also my coffee-cup. Of course, you will have to wash them and keep them always clean for me in return for me being so kind to you.”
One man had a cracked plate, but no cup; another had a fork, but no spoon. When the grub was brought in, there usually started a fight about who might have the plate and spoon first. Whoever had them was the lucky bird who fished the best pieces out of the kettles, leaving to the others the meager remains.
Whenever the
Yorikke
left a port, there were always spoons, forks, knives, plates, cups missing in taverns. Nothing mysterious about the disappearing of such things when the
Yorikke
was in port.
The liquid called tea was brown water. Usually it was not hot, but lukewarm. And then it tasted like — like — yes, sir, right you are, it tasted exactly like that. Another liquid, which was called the coffee, was served at breakfast and about three in the afternoon. This afternoon coffee I seldom saw, because I was at that time busy at the boilers. When I returned from my watch, there was nothing left of the coffee. Sometimes there was some hot water found in the galley to make your own tea or coffee. But if you have no coffee-beans it is rather tough to make coffee, no matter how good you are at it.
The more your coffee and tea are free from real coffee and tea, the more you wish to improve these wonderful drinks with milk and sugar, so as to liven up your imagination. Every three weeks each man received as his ration one six-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, and every week one pound of sugar. Coffee and tea came from the galley without sugar or milk, just plain.
Upon receiving your can of milk you opened it, took out one teaspoonful, and with it you made a beautiful-looking cloud in your tea. After having done so, being an economical fellow, you carefully stowed away your can of milk to use for your next cup of coffee, because you knew that during the next twenty-one days you would not see another can of milk.
While I was at my watch, my can of milk was not stolen. Nobody stole anything aboard the
Yorikke
. But my can of milk was used up to the last drop by my fellow-sailors, who had used up their milk long before, and they were hungry. No hiding-place was so secret that it could not be detected, and since there were no doors in the wardrobes, you could lock nothing in, even if you had a padlock. Only once did my milk disappear without my assistance. The next time I received my ration of milk I ate it up at one sitting. I did not mind having a sour stomach. I had found out that the only sure and safe hiding-place for all such things was your own belly. Only what was inside your stomach was safe. After I had hidden my milk in this hiding-place I learned that every member of the crew did exactly the same. No one had ever been told to do so. No one had ever lost more than his first can of milk.
We did the same with the sugar. No sooner had you received your pound of sugar than you sat down and ate it up. Once we came to a gentleman’s agreement. The sugar of the whole quarter was to be put together in one box. Whenever tea or coffee came in, each man was allowed to take one teaspoonful of sugar out of the box and sweeten his coffee. The agreement was all right, only the gentlemen were missing. Because it turned out that on the second day after the agreement was signed the entire ration of sugar had disappeared. All that was left was an empty box which I found on coming from my watch with the idea of sweetening my coffee; yes, sir.
Each day fresh bread was made by the cook. Something was always wrong with it. Sometimes it was badly kneaded, usually only half baked, often burned black. Each week every man got a cake of margarine. It was sufficient to last for a week. Yet nobody could eat it, no matter how hungry he might be. For it tasted like bad soap.
There were quite a few days when the skipper made his pocket-money, and then we had to close our eyes and shut out swear-holds and keep mum. On such days each man received a ration of two good-sized glasses of fairly good rum and half a cup of marmalade. Those were the days when some mysterious business was going on.
For breakfast we had a thick barley soup cooked with prunes. Sometimes the breakfast consisted of black sausage with rice. Then again it was potatoes in their skins with salted herring; another course was beans with smoked fish. Every four days the same dish appeared again, beginning with thick barley soup cooked with prunes.
Never before had I known that all such things could be eaten by human beings, and that such strange mixtures could exist anywhere on this earth where ships with steam-engines had been seen.