U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [248]
By the time they got into the channel opposite the
town of Vigo, the water was gaining on the pumps in No. 2, and there was four feet of water in the engineroom. They had to beach her on the banks of hard sand to the right of the town.
So they were ashore again with their bundles standing around outside the consul's office, waiting for him to find them somewhere to flop. The consul was a Spaniard and didn't speak as much English as he might have but he treated them fine. The Liberal Party of Vigo invited offi-cers and crew to go to a bul fight there was going to be that afternoon. More monkeydoodle business, the skipper got a cable to turn the ship over to the agents of Gomez
-161-and Ca. of Bilboa who had bought her as she stood and were changing her registry.
When they got to the bul ring half the crowd cheered them and yel ed, " Viva los Aliados,
" and the rest hissed and shouted, " Viva Maura." They thought there was going to be a fight right there but the bul came out and everybody quieted down. The bul fight was darn bloody, but the boys with the spangles were some steppers and the people sitting around made them drink wine al the time out of little black skins and passed around bottles of cognac so that the crew got pretty cockeyed and Joe spent most of his time keeping the boys in order. Then the officers were tendered a banquet by the local proal ied society and a lot of bozos with mustachlos made fiery speeches that nobody could understand and the Ameri-cans cheered and sang, The Yanks are Coming and Keep the Home Fires Burning and We're Bound for the Ham-burg Show. The chief, an old fel ow named McGil icudy, did some card tricks, and the evening was a big success. Joe and Glen bunked together at the hotel. The maid there was awful pretty but wouldn't let 'em get away with any foolishness. "Wel , Joe," said Glen, before they went to sleep, "it's a great war." "Wel , I guess that's strike three," said Joe. "That was no strike, that was a bal ," said Glen.
They waited two weeks in Vigo while the officials quar-reled about their status and they got pretty fed up with it. Then they were al loaded on a train to take them to Gibraltar where they were to be taken on board a Ship-ping Board boat. They were three days on the train with nothing to sleep on but hard benches. Spain was just one set of great dusty mountains after another. They changed cars in Madrid and in Sevil e and a guy turned up each time from the consulate to take care of them. When they got to Sevil e they found it was Algeciras they were going to instead of Gib.
-162-When they got to Algeciras they found that nobody had ever heard of them. They camped out in the con-sulate while the consul telegraphed al over the place and final y chartered two trucks and sent them over to Cadiz. Spain was some country, al rocks and wine and busty black eyed women and olive trees. When they got to
Cadiz the consular agent was there to meet them with a. telegram in his hand. The tanker Gold Shell was waiting in Algeciras to take them on board there, so it was back again cooped up on the trucks, bouncing on the hard benches with their faces powdered with dust and their mouths ful of it and not a cent in anybody's jeans left to buy a drink with. When they got on board the Gold Shell around three in the morning a bright moonlight night some of the boys were so tired they fel down and went to sleep right on the deck with their heads on their seabags.
The Gold Shel landed 'em in Perth Amboy in late October. Joe drew his back pay and took the first train connections he could get for Norfolk. He was fed up with bawling out that bunch of pimps in the focastle. Damn it, he was through with the sea; he was going to settle down and have a little married life.
He felt swel coming over on the ferry from Cape
Charles, passing the Ripraps, out of the bay ful of white-caps into the