"B

UT listen," I stared around at the clanking winches, swinging booms, yelling stevedores and the welter of boxes, bales, bags, barrels, crates, "how can this ship get away before next week?"

"Oh, yes," the third mate grinned, "we'll sail in an hour or so. Watch yourself!"

Above our heads dangled on the end of a boom a gigantic motor-car labeled "G. Xanthopoulos, Famagusta via Beirut." We leaped for our lives.

The steward, coming at that moment from the alleyway of the midship deck-house, led us up to our cabin on the bridge-deck 'longside the skipper's sanctum. We dumped our baggage down and hurried outside to watch the ceremony of departure. Instead of slackening, the clangor of loading seemed to mount higher and higher. As soon as a lighter was empty of its last barrel of lubricating oil, a tug urged it away into the gray tide of East River and another tug maneuvered another lighter piled high with sacks of flour into the slip. Flour for Salonica, lubricating oil for Damascus, tin plate for Port Saïd, tinned macaroni for Jerusalem, Ford cars for Syria, limousines for Iraq, windmills for Cyprus. We hung

over the rail of the bridge-deck, peering down into the yawning hatchways forward. The holds seemed to be full to the brim, yet cargo still arrived by lighter and motor-truck, was swung up on the booms and disappeared below to be stowed away into unseen recesses. The windy January afternoon drew on to dusk.

Then, suddenly, we saw that stevedores were swaying I-beams into the slots of the near-by hatchway. On top of them deck-hands placed the plank hatch-cover and over that stretched a tarpaulin and clamped it down with wooden wedges. The last lighter edged away from our flank. The skipper shouted an order from the bridge. Lines were cast off. The telegraph clanged. Our ship, the freighter Blue Triangle, quivered from stem to stern and backed slowly out into the stream. With a tug under our bows, we slipped beneath the black roaring arch of Williamsburg Bridge. The cliffs of lower Manhattan glittered tall and brittle against a lowering sky.

Down below a supper-bell was ringing. In the mess-room, the only other occupant of the long table was the Third, a young man with tousled yellow hair, who gave us a hurried

"Good evening" and went on devouring baked beans at a devastating pace. Presently he jumped up and vanished. From the pantry door the mess-boy watched us anxiously. Passengers were, it seemed, an oddity on this ship. "When do the others eat?" I asked. "Oh," he nodded to the chair at the head of the table, "the cap'n don't hardly ever eat down here. The Chief and the Second and Sparks have already eat, and the mate won't get down till eight bells." Outside an icy wind from the black Atlantic whipped sharp spray across the bridge-deck. For a while we faced it, then went to our bunks. But not to sleep.

We dozed off only to be awakened every half hour by the bell on the bridge and by the lookout's cry quavering through the night from the fo'castle head: "All's well, lights burning clear!" Up and down, up and down, went the restless tramp of the officer on watch. Ceaselessly came the soft clank-clank of the steering mechanism and the clicketyclickety-click of the revolution-recorder. And at intervals a clatter of feet on the ladder outside our portthe wheelsmen going on and off watch.

20

In the morning, when at last we fell off to sound sleep, we were awakened at six bells-seven o'clock -by the mess-boy hammering on our door with the summons: "Breakfast!" At the table, crowded with mates and engineers, we found ourselves plunged into the life of the ship. The good-natured banter between navigating and engine departments flew up and down the table we recognized its authenticity. It

was much like any good sea story. And with it all the trivial and weighty matters of the moment-Mike, the deck-hand, who had pinched his thumb under a strong-back; the hallucinations of Antonio, the oiler; the comparison of this cook's "wheats" with those of the cook we had last trip; the ventilation of the apples in No. 5; and the speculation whether the skipper would take the northern or the southern route. Pat and I stole delighted glances at each other. We had chosen a freight ship in the hope of getting the genuine flavor of sea and ships. Surely we had found it!

This cargo ship, the Blue Triangle of the American Export Lines, was a vessel of 7800 tons, 400-foot overall length and 54-foot beam. If you looked down upon our decks from the high promenade of the 59,000-ton Leviathan, you might shiver with pity and wonder how we had the temerity to dare the roaring January Atlantic in such a tug-boat. Yet she was considerably larger than the average cargo ship of the seven seas. She, like her sister ships of the line, was of the socalled Hog Island type, built bulldog-square, for seaworthiness and capacity and not for beauty. These Hog Islanders are turbine oil-burners. The reciprocating-engined coalburner with its big expensive crew of stokers is a passing ship. The turbine oil-burner, with a flexible fuel, smaller crew in the fire-room, is the dominant ship of the day.

The most striking feature of the Blue Triangle to the outward eye was the tall was the tall deck-house a little forward of midships, crowned by the flying bridge. This house contained,

in addition to the captain's quarters and our own, the mates' quarters, the officers' mess-room, the pantry, the chart-room and pilot-house. Standing at the rail of the bridgedeck outside our door, we gaze across the gulf of the forward welldeck, crowded with hatches, winches, ventilators, steam-lines, to the fo'castle-head at the very bow, upon which sits the massive anchor-winch; and we learn that the space underneath, though still called the fo'castle has lost its aura of romance. No longer does it house the crew. It is merely a store-room for paint, oil, grease, bolts, nuts, ropes.

Turning round and facing aft, we gaze across the smallish midshipdeck to the midship deck-house, a long low affair divided longitudinally by narrow alleyways; it houses the engineers, the oilers, the wireless man, the kitchen and crew messroom; up through it thrusts the funnel, blazoned by a big red "E." Beyond it, the aft well-deck. And at the stern, the poop-space, where the deck-hands and firemen live amid the clank of the steering machinery and the rumble of the screw.

All this we had discovered and explored in the first hours of our first morning. It was a day of keen wind and flashing seas. Toward dusk the wind swung into the east and freshened to a half-gale.

22

A little after eight bells, I was up in the chart-room with the skipper. Bent over the table, he was pointing out our course on the chart of the North Atlantic. Suddenly the ship quivered from stem to stern as if she had struck a rock. I jumped to the door of the wheel-house.

The ship had put her nose square into a solid sea that had gone clean over the fo'castle-head, filling the forward well-deck brim-full from rail to rail. For a few moments the ship staggered, then as the water slowly cleared through the scuppers, her bow rose and she rode the next wave. Just then the Chief came up the ladder into the chart-room.

"I think we'll cut her down to seven nozzles, Chief," said the Captain. "There's no sort of use banging into those seas. It doesn't do the ship any good and it just uses up fuel-oil for nothing."

"Yes, sir," the Chief agreed. He strode to the engine-room telephone.

"Cut her down to seven nozzles, Harry," he ordered.

Under ordinary conditions the most economical operation of a ship of this type is on ten of the twelve nozzles which admit steam from the boilers to the turbine. This gives a speed of about eleven knots. Twelve nozzles are used only for emergencies. Cutting down to seven meant reducing speed to seven or seven and a half knots.

That night we had to wedge ourselves in our bunks to keep from being thrown out on the floor.

For a night and a day we headed into the blow. Then it passed over, and there followed endless days of gorgeous sunshine and empty sea.

22

Possibly we had imagined that once the hatches were down and the ship on her way, there would be peace and quiet on deck. Not so. Every working hour of every day was crowded with such an activity of oiling decks, greasing winches,

chipping rust with the clattering pneumatic hammers, painting deckhouses, life-boats, booms, ventilators, that the principal deck game might be called dodging for your life. But we did not mind. It was all in the life of the ship.

Day by day we became more involved in the routine. Compass variation, the idiosyncrasies of currents, the propeller slip for the day, the consumption of fuel-oil, the terrific domestic problem of Goggins, the Third-all became of intimate concern to us. We learned of the perversities of foreign pilots, of the difference between Particular and General Average, of the peculiarities of Consuls, of what a wild happy place Genoa used to be before the Black Shirts got control, and of the fantastic Stamboul adventures of bos'n Borg. I sipped Turkish coffee and played cribbage up in the skipper's den. I sat in a poker game back in the poop-space-a room walled with bunks, a swinging light overhead, like a scene out of Eugene O'Neill-while Pat with her sketchbook down in the engine-room was immortalizing the Third at his throttle. Sunday afternoon I drowsed flat on my back on No. 5 hatch, among the deck-hands, while in his cage, dangling on the boom above, a canary madly sang. "I bought him in China," said Mike, the oiler, "and now I'm taking him home to Greece, and he's all excited about it."

The ship had no secrets from us, and we learned in time that it was difficult for us to have any secrets from the ship.

Our Blue Triangle took us from New York to Gibraltar in fourteen days, an average time for a ship of

Gibraltar, then the coast of North Africa-red-plowed fields, green hills, snow-capped peaks, white villages. And then, late one afternoon, I saw Sparks going the round of the ship asking deck-hands, oilers, mates, water-tenders and engineers: "How much shore money do you want for Alex?"

He shows me his list.

"The less they have coming," he grins, "the more they want of it."

The Chief, at $260 a month, has earned $195 in the three weeks out of New York. By law, he can draw half of that, which would be $97.50. But he is asking for only $5 shore money for Alexandria. The second mate, at $165 a month, has earned $123.75. He has had $4.10 worth of stuff out of the slop-chest-cigarettes, smoking-tobacco, matches— which leaves $57.78 due him. He asks $10 shore money. Santo Gonzales, fireman, at $57.50 a month, has earned $42.90. He has had $8.20 in stuff from the slop-chestwhich leaves just $13.25 due him. He asks for all of it.

It is quite easy to see why the men with the hardest, most monotonous, lowest-paid jobs need the most shore money.

"It's always so," says Sparks. Next morning, at dawn, a long low strip of sand, a file of authentic palms, the pilot-boat crowded with oriental faces under white turbans, a harbor of incredible azure, ships, warehouses, a thicket of tall, curved, sky-pointing antennæ of canal-boats and, beyond, haphazard rows of houses, faded pink and blue, with green shutters dangling on one hinge. Then police and custom-house inspection. Then a curious ritual. Two officials in red tarbooshes, garden sprinkling-cans in hand, come solemnly up the gangway and proceed casually to sprinkle down the decks with a whitish liquid which the mate says is probably water slightly mixed with goat's milk. Oddly enough, this ceremony is called sterilizing the ship.

Steam is on the winches. The hatch-covers are off. The lighters longside. The agent, who has come aboard in a boat flying a flag bearing a red "E" and who stands on the bridge with the skipper, shouts the skipper, shouts something down over the side, and up the gangway swarm a whiteturbaned gang of stevedores in long yellow robes or in queer tight-legged trousers with voluminous seats.

When I watched the cargo coming on in New York, with stuff for Piræus and then Jaffa and then Beirut and then Alexandria following over the side in quick succession, I wondered how it ever could be unloaded without inextricable confusion. Now we saw the cargo for Alexandria going off with surprising smoothness and speed. Here was the triumph of the art of stowage. Even though merchandise for the last port of discharge comes aboard

last-and that often happens-the cargo must be stowed in such a way that the consignments for each successive port can be discharged without shifting cargo bound for a later port. Other rules must be observed, too. All wet cargo-gasoline, oils, syrups must go into the wet hold. Merchandise, such as flour and rice, which absorbs odors easily must be kept far away from apples, for example, which readily contribute their odor. I have always thought apple odor rather pleasant, but it seems that Levantines do not care to have it perfume their cereals.

It was interesting to watch how our little world of ship, our entity of interrelations and routine, maintained itself calmly and stubbornly against the deluge of jabbering stevedores, soldiers, policemen, peddlers, which swarmed across our deck. Somehow that observation took me back to all the narratives I had read of early trading-ships adventuring into strange portsthe silent, prejudiced, self-righteous world of the ship set sharp against the clamor and color and doubtful practices of an unknown civilization. It is a thing you would never be aware of on a modern passenger-ship and it seemed to me another evidence that the freighter is a more direct inheritor of the traditional life of the sea.

But at five o'clock, shore life and ship life cease. The winches stop. The stevedores vanish over the side. Officers and crew gobble supper, hurry to their quarters, scrub, jump into shore clothes, then singly or in groups of half a dozen slip down the gangway and bargain with a boatman. Presently the ship is utterly