U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [279]
After they'd anchored, the bosun took Joe and a couple of the youngsters in the dingy and they went over to see what they could do aboard the tanker. The stern was way up out of water. So far as they could see there was no one on the ship. Some wops in a motorboat came up and jab-bered at them but they pretended not to understand what they meant. There was a fireboat standing by too, but there wasn't anything they could do. "Why the hel don't they scuttle her?" the bosun kept saying. Joe caught sight of a ropeladder hanging into the
water and pul ed the dingy over to it. Before the others had started yel ing at him to come back he was half way up it. When he jumped down onto the deck from the rail he wondered what the hel he was doing up there. God damn it, I hope she does blow up, he said aloud to him-self. It was bright as day up there. The forward part of the ship and the sea around it was burning like a lamp. He reckoned the boat had hit a mine or been torpedoed. The crew had evidently left in a hurry as there were al sorts of bits of clothing and a couple of seabags by the davits aft where the lifeboats had been. Joe picked himself out a nice new sweater and then went down into the cabin. On a table he found a box of Havana cigars. He took out a cigar and lit one. It made him feel good to stand there and light a cigar with the goddam tanks ready to blow him to Halifax any minute. It was a good cigar, too. In a tissuepaper package on the table were seven
-233-pairs of ladies' silk stockings. Swel to take home to Del, was his first thought. But then he remembered that he was through with al that. He stuffed the silk stockings into his pants pockets anyway, and went back on deck.
The bosun was yel ing at him from the boat for chris-sake to come along or he'd get left. He just had time to pick up a wal et on the companion way. "It ain't gasoline, it's crude oil. She might burn for a week," he yel ed at the guys in the boat as he came slowly down the ladder pul ing at the cigar as he came and looking out over the harbor packed with masts and stacks and derricks at the big marble houses and the old towers and porticos and the hil s behind al lit up in red. "Where the hel 's the crew?"
"Probably al cockeyed ashore by this time, where I'd like to be," said the bosun. Joe divvied up the cigars but he kept the silk stockings for himself. There wasn't any-thing in the wal et. "Hel ofa note," grumbled the bosun,
"haven't they got any chemicals?""These goddam wops wouldn't know what to do with
'em if they did have," said one of the youngsters.
They rowed back to the Appalachian and reported to the skipper that the tanker had been abandoned and it was up to the port authorities to get rid of her. Al next day the tanker burned outside the breakwater. About nightfal another of her tanks went off like a roman candle and the fire began spreading more and more over the water. The Appalachian heaved her anchor and went up to the wharf. That night Joe and the bosun went out to look at the town. The streets were narrow and had steps in them leading up the hil to broad avenues, with cafés and little tables out under the colonnades, where the pavements were al polished marble set in patterns. It was pretty chil y and they went into a bar and drank pink hot drinks with rum in them. There they ran into a wop named Charley who'd been
-234-twelve years in Brooklyn and he took them to a dump where they ate a lot of spaghetti and fried veal and drank white wine. Charley told about how they treated you like a dog in the Eyetalian army and the pay was five cents a day and you didn't even get that and