CHAPTER XXX
Martin went into the large main room of the Institute, found a vacant chair, sat down and looked at the men. He couldn’t recognize a single face although the seamen were going through the usual formulas. Some of them were lined up before the marble bar, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. Others stood in groups, talking to each other; while a few, like himself, sat quietly, knowing themselves on the fringe of the stream. Some of these few were regarding their history—pressing their falls and errors out of the past. Some were rubbing the small change in their pockets, wondering whether to buy “smoke” and for a brief period drift into the senseless drunkenness and blindness of the poison, or to try again—to use this precious remnant of their money for getting to a pier already lined with men as desperate to ship out as themselves.
A man walked in, brown-skinned, alert. He went, in turn, to several groups of seamen. They welcomed him and he shook their hands. “I wonder how long he’ll last,” thought Martin. “A week, I guess, if he’s paid off.” He heard the men question the newcomer about theship—the food. Had he seen Ella in Coconut Grove?... Was Charlie’s Punch Bowl as alive as ever?... Had he paid off?... The man grinned when they mentioned Ella, nodded his head vigorously about Jamaica; but said “No!” about paying off.
“I can’t get that way again, boys.” He pointed to a few deadheads, snoring in their chairs. His finger swung to Martin. “For Christ’s sake,” he said, walking rapidly to him. For a moment he stood in front of him, shaking his head, his hands on his hips. “You look like one of them crawlers we used to swat in Morocco. Is your short-arm jammed?”
Martin managed a thin smile.
“I’ve spent a winter in New York—that’s all.”
The sailor bent over him.
“Listen—I been up at the Hall. I heard what you done the other night. There’s two ships in you can make. One is your old pal, theVerda. We need two men. Can you get Rio? I still got his oilskins.”
“What happened to the little ordinary, Al?” Martin asked.
The sailor looked puzzled.
“The ordinary?” Al thought a moment. “Oh—you mean that little screw that was aboard when you and Rio piled off. Damned if I know. He only made one more trip. Say,” he said, looking at Martin queerly, “we sail at five. There ain’t no time to lose. Git hold of Rio and beat it to the Hall.”
“All right,” said Martin, getting up. He went outquickly, nodding to the policeman by the entrance, then hurried to Rio’s room and knocked on the door. Rio opened it. He looked half-asleep.
“What’s up?” he asked, rolling back on the bed. “James don’t bring coffee till eleven.”
“I’m shipping on theVerdathis evening. Do you want to come along?”
“Nuts again, eh?” said Rio, yawning.
Martin turned to go.
“Wait a minute,” called Rio, sitting up. “How do you know we can make her?”
“We’re the fair-haired boys after the other night. Al told me about the ship. But we have to hurry.”
“Are you leavin’ Deane?” asked Rio incredulously.
“Don’t ask me that,” said Martin, his face turning white.
“But I don’t want the damnedVerda. I’m going to Santa de Marina.”
“Rio,” Martin opened the door, “this is the last trip we can ever make together. I don’t want theVerdaeither, but she’ll get me to Panama. From there I can make it to the East Indies. And as far as Santa de Marina is concerned, theVerdagoes to Puerto Colombia. You can swim from that point.”
Without a word Rio got up and began to put on his clothes. His bag was packed and Martin didn’t ask him why. When he was dressed they went to the Hall and saw the agent again. This time he greeted them more cordially.
“I was hopin’ you boys would come. That was great stuff,” he said, looking significantly at the end of his own nose. “You earned this jelly.” He made out two forms for the mate of theVerdaand gave them to Martin and Rio. “Get there by three P.M. drunk or sober.” One of his eyes twitched nervously.
“O.K.,” said Rio.
He and Martin put their slips in their pockets and left the Hall.
“Is your gear ready, Martin?”
“It won’t take long. But I have a note to write, so we’ll make it fast.”
Once in his room, Martin packed his clothes with Rio’s help, saw that his sneakers were rotten and threw them away. Then he sat down at his desk, folded his drawings and put them in an envelope addressedMRS. IDARA. For a few moments he sat there, staring at the name, a shameless grief upon his face. After a little, he took a piece of paper and a pen and wrote:
“Dearest....”
Rio walked up and down, smoking one cigarette after another, stopping at intervals to glance somewhat anxiously at Martin.
When Martin finally got up, his eyes were red; but he looked straight at Rio.
“That’s that, my bonny friend. We’re going to theVerda.”
On the deck of theVerdathey found the mate. Helooked at the papers sent from the Hall and at the men’s discharges and lifeboat tickets.
“You can take the eight to twelve, Martin. And you, Rio, the four to eight. The bos’n won’t mind. He’s sleeping some of it off. We sail at five and if you go ashore, for God’s sake don’t get too drunk. Somebody has to handle those derricks. Al and Pete’s ashore, and the ordinaries came from Mr. Fizz in the office. They won’t know a block from a winch.”
“I’m not going ashore,” said Martin.
“Me neither,” said Rio.
The mate looked at them in some astonishment as they went aft. Then he shook his head.
It was like all ships at sailing time. The sailors cursed the lines and the mates cursed the sailors. The ordinaries didn’t know what to do, but they hopped gallantly from one side of the deck to the other in a cold sweat of pretense. Pete’s arm was nearly pulled from its socket when Al gave the winch too much steam. A linesman on the dock shook his fist at the ship and the captain walked up and down the bridge, saying little, but looking at his watch frequently. A longshoreman got his finger caught, working at one end of the hatch, and yelled frantically in Italian.... But finally it was done, as it is, always. And theVerdabacked into the current with a tugboat pushing against an impossible weight and barking angrily through her whistle. It was almost eight when the last hatch had been battened and the lines coiled. Martin went back to the fo’c’sle and washed his hands andface. Then he rubbed his back and chest, put on a clean shirt and was on the ladder to the bridge in time to hear eight bells struck.
Martin grew into the relativity of time. Was it a day?—a month?—a year that he had been in these warm waters?... The stars grew deeper in the night; the constellations spread their tails above the ship; the moon, more arrogant than ever, called from the sky and filled his eyes with dust. It was the same. The dark, fast knife of cloud that ran at him was welcomed as a friend. This monster might blot out, in mercy, the silhouette of Deane.... When pressure, rain and cracked, dry lightning burned his eyes, he held his hands—his arms into the wind, that it might bring him solitude from dreams.... And when the squall had passed he turned to Rio.
“That entity was beautiful and clean. It swept out all the clammy, dirty things.... You see that cloud?” He pointed to the swift, retreating sky. “It had more tears in one brief moment, Rio, than both you, and I, and all our comrades in a lifetime. And once again, when life is sticky—seminant with lies, we’ll find a ship, and find that cloud and hold it....”
Rio sighed.
FOOTNOTES[1]Dynamic Symmetry, by Dr. J. Hambidge (Yale University Press).[2]Stravinsky.[3]Music by Charles T. Griffiths, based on the poem by William Sharp.[4]“How long, how long, in Infinite PursuitOf This and That endeavor and dispute?”—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.[5]Allusion to mood ofPortrait of a Lady, by T. S. Eliot.
FOOTNOTES
[1]Dynamic Symmetry, by Dr. J. Hambidge (Yale University Press).
[1]Dynamic Symmetry, by Dr. J. Hambidge (Yale University Press).
[2]Stravinsky.
[2]Stravinsky.
[3]Music by Charles T. Griffiths, based on the poem by William Sharp.
[3]Music by Charles T. Griffiths, based on the poem by William Sharp.
[4]“How long, how long, in Infinite PursuitOf This and That endeavor and dispute?”—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
[4]
“How long, how long, in Infinite PursuitOf This and That endeavor and dispute?”—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
“How long, how long, in Infinite PursuitOf This and That endeavor and dispute?”—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
“How long, how long, in Infinite PursuitOf This and That endeavor and dispute?”—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
“How long, how long, in Infinite Pursuit
Of This and That endeavor and dispute?”
—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
[5]Allusion to mood ofPortrait of a Lady, by T. S. Eliot.
[5]Allusion to mood ofPortrait of a Lady, by T. S. Eliot.