We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [50]
One thing was clear: the fight was over the missing whiskey. Albert heard the sound of a blow and then of a body crashing into a bulkhead. Glancing down the hatch, he saw a knife flash in someone's hand; it was followed by groaning and the kind of labored breathing you hear when men are raising the anchor. But it was something else they were hauling up. It was dark and terrifying and it came from the depths within.
Though Albert was still safe on the deck, he took a few steps back. There was nothing he could do down in that dark hole, and the brawl would eventually exhaust itself. He'd seen fights like that before, and they rarely ended in a killing. The men would emerge from the fo'c'sle the next day, bruised and cut and severely hung over, and begin work, mute and reluctant, with bloodshot eyes. Today they were animals. But tomorrow they'd be sailors again.
It wasn't the savagery down in the fo'c'sle that worried him. It was the captain's lack of authority.
"Out of the way!"
Someone grabbed Albert's shoulder and shoved him violently aside; he turned to see a monster of a man towering over him. His face was dominated by a bulbous red nose and disfigured by scars that crisscrossed it as if his head were a pumpkin someone had slashed at. Half-drowned in this mass of battered flesh sat his eyes, their pupils like black stones on the bottom of a deep lake. Underneath a filthy, torn shirt, his vast muscular body too was riven with scars, as though someone had gone for the giant's heart with a sharp knife but given up—it would be like trying to stab a steam train.
Albert instantly understood who was standing in front of him. This was the man to whom the throne belonged, the true ruler of the ship.
The first mate had made his appearance.
The giant didn't use the ladder but jumped straight down into the fo'c'sle, his huge body tumbling directly into the midst of the brawling men. There came another crash and some roaring from below, and the tumult intensified, with intermingled howls and groans of pain, the e thudding of punches, and a strange whimpering that seemed quite unrelated to fighting. It went on for a while before starting to subside, until only one voice—that of the first mate—could be heard.
"Have you had enough? Have you had enough then?"
More of that whimpering sound. Then the thud of a few more blows—or were they kicks? Then silence.
The first mate emerged from the fo'c'sle, panting. He'd acquired the makings of a few more scars down there in the darkness. There was a deep cut to his forehead, and blood ran from his neck, but he wiped his face absent-mindedly, as if the blood that welled in one dense eyebrow was no more inconvenient to him than sweat.
Albert hadn't shifted from the spot where the giant had first thrust him, but now he was swept aside once more, as the bleeding first mate shoved past him again to scrutinize the rest of the crew, as if contemplating how to continue the punishment he'd begun below deck.
"The name's O'Connor."
At this, the men on deck nodded as if responding to an order.
O'Connor went to his throne, sat down heavily, and belched. The blood that he'd smeared across his forehead gave him the look of a heathen idol that demands nothing but human sacrifices. Albert wondered if O'Connor would call for soap and water to clean his injuries, but he just sat there while the blood congealed, as though his scars were tattoos and he'd just added fresh details to the gruesome work of art that was his face and body.
Then he gave a sudden whistle, and a long-haired black monster of a dog that no one had seen before padded over with the skulking gait of a wolf and hunkered down at his feet. Pulling a heavy-caliber revolver out of the pocket of his nankeens, O'Connor started spinning the barrel pensively.