We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [49]
Duck him and splash him,
Torture him and smash him,
And don't let him go!
He sailed south around Cape Horn, where he heard penguins squawk in the pitch-black night and was finally made able seaman. He called at Callao and Lobos, the guano island, just south of the equator. He sailed back to Europe and signed on to a three-masted Nova Scotian full-rigged ship headed for New York. There he went ashore, looking for a job on an American vessel, where the wages would be higher. Perhaps papa tru's dreams of America haunted him.
But it wasn't his papa tru he met on board the Emma C. Leithfield. It was something else: Isager and his rope, all over again. And this time the battle would have to be settled.
Later, he told us that he would never forget the moment he first set foot on deck.
But, we asked him, had he really not heard about conditions on board American ships? Didn't he know that the crews would often mutiny, and that first mates were chosen not for their sea skills, but for their physical strength and their fighting prowess? And that the fist or the revolver gave the orders more often than the captain? Had he not known this?
Albert looked away and chuckled a little, as if deep down he had known, but couldn't bring himself to admit it.
He looked us in the eye.
"No," he said, "I didn't know it could be that bad. It was ten months in hell. I'd been there before. But finding the exit was one thing that blasted Isager never taught us."
THERE WERE SEVENTEEN men before the mast of the Emma C. Leithfield, of whom six were Scandinavians—and in Albert's opinion, the only decent sailors on board. It didn't seem odd to us that he felt this way because we always prefer our own. But he based his opinion on a single observation: they were the only ones who didn't keel over when they boarded the ship.
When the launch brought the newly shanghaied sailors alongside the Emma, a bunch of dead-drunk Frenchmen had to be forcibly shoved onto the deck, an operation performed by two brutal-looking crimps—land sharks in cahoots with a boardinghouse, where the Frenchmen had already been relieved of their cash. A party of boozy Italians and Greeks followed, while a third boat brought some drunken English and Welsh. Each sailor bore under his arm a small parcel of clothes. That was all he owned. Their hair was unkempt, their faces scarred, and half-empty bottles of whiskey poked out of their pockets. They may have jabbered and shouted in a chaos of languages, but they all came from the same place. They were the dregs of every port on God's earth.
They were all incapable of doing any work that day. They stared at the anchor chains but clearly hadn't the slightest idea where they led, and after gazing up at the rigging and grinning dizzily, they simply staggered to their quarters. Disappearing down the ladder to the fo'c'sle, they threw themselves on their berths or on the bare floor, where they fell asleep, snoring.
Captain Eagleton was a young man with bushy whiskers and shifty eyes. As soon as he ordered Albert down to the sleeping quarters to bring back the men's half-empty whiskey bottles and throw them overboard, Albert knew he'd never gain the crew's respect. Eagleton should have thrown out the whiskey himself, and in front of the whole crew, rather than behind their backs while they slept it off: it was obvious. Albert eyed the bottles as they bobbed up and down on the waves. He'd already noticed the big solid armchair bolted to the deck, like the throne of an absent king. Albert knew enough about seamen to recognize Eagleton as the type who'd stay clear of the deck and isolate himself from the crew, so it wouldn't be his. It might belong to the first mate, he speculated, but for now there was no way of telling, as the man had yet to make an appearance.
Meanwhile a terrible racket had started in the fo'c'sle and the captain ordered Albert to investigate. From out of the darkness came angry shouting.
"You've nicked my whiskey, you bloody dog," yelled an English voice.
A reply came in Italian, followed