Command Part 17

Something told Mr. Spokesly, though he did not understand at all, that money was money. The man was straight anyhow, he thought, taking the pen. He'd watch that old Rannie didn't try any monkey tricks. Very decent of him. He signed. He took the money in large, blue and purple denominations, crisp, crackling, delicious.

"And you don't forget," said Mr. Dainopoulos, turning towards the safe again. "By and by I'll have some more business, big business, and you'll get a big piece o' money if you work in with me. When you come back, eh?

Out here, plenty business but n.o.body honest, to manage." He paused, looking down at the floor, hampered by his deficient English to explain what he meant. He was rather moved, too, because he saw, right there in his own continuing city, opportunities for business undreamed of by the tall blond officers in their shining brown harness down at headquarters.

He saw buildings going up which would be sold for a song, a floating dock which might be acquired for a purely nominal sum when the war was over. He saw jetties and rolling-stock and launches which would be sold at hurried auctions for knock-down prices, a score at a time. But one must have somebody one can trust, a partner or a manager. Mr.

Dainopoulos wanted no partners. His temperament was to feel his way along alone, making sudden rushes at his objective or sitting down to wait. A partner was of no use to him. But he figured that someone like Mr. Spokesly would be of great a.s.sistance in his business as he planned it later.

He put his cash-box away, slammed his safe shut, and began to open his shop for his ostensible business of money-changing.

"Now you get out to the ship as soon as you got your gear," he said, "and that young feller'll go with you in the boat."

Mr. Spokesly was startled to see how close the _Kalkis_ was in sh.o.r.e, opposite the house. Without a gla.s.s he could see the balcony and the window within which Mrs. Dainopoulos lay watching the sunlight on the sea. As he came nearer to the ship, however, sitting in the row boat with the trembling young Hebrew beside him, he became preoccupied with her lines. And indeed to a seafaring man the _Kalkis_ was a problem. She resembled nothing so much as the broken-down blood animal whom one discovers hauling a cab. Mr. Spokesly could see she had been a yacht.

Her once tall masts were cut to stumps and a smooth-rivetted funnel at the same graceful rake was full of degrading dinges. A singularly shapely hull carried amidships a grotesque abortion in the form of a super-imposed upper bridge, and the teak deck forward was broken by a square hatchway. All the scuttles along her sides, once gleaming bra.s.s and crystal, were blind with dead-lights and painted over. Another hatch had been made where the owner's skylight had been and a friction-winch screamed and scuttered on the once spotless p.o.o.p. As Mr. Spokesly once phrased it later, it was like meeting some girl, whose family you knew, on the streets. A lighter lay alongside loaded with sacks and cases, and the friction-winch shrieked and jerked the sling into the air as a gang of frowzy Greeks hooked them on.

They came round her bows to reach the gangway and Mr. Spokesly gave way to a feeling of bitterness for a moment as he looked up at the gracile sprit stem from which some utilitarian had sawed the bowsprit and carefully tacked over the stump a battered piece of sheet-copper. It affected him like the mutilation of a beautiful human body. What tales she could tell! Now he saw the mark of her original name showing up in rows of puttied screw-holes on the flare of the bow. _Carmencita._ She must have been a saucy little craft, her snowy gangway picked out with white ropes and polished bra.s.s stanchions. And now only a dirty ladder hung there.

Leaving the little Jew to get up as best he could, Mr. Spokesly climbed on deck and strode forward. He was curious to see what sort of mate it could be who came into port with a ship like this. His professional pride was nauseated. He kicked a bucket half full of potato peelings out of the doorway and entered the deck-house.

Garlic, stale wine, and cold suet were combined with a more sinister perfume that Mr. Spokesly knew was rats. He looked around upon a scene which made him wonder. It made him think of some forecastles he had lived in when he was a seaman, forecastles on Sunday morning after a Sat.u.r.day night ash.o.r.e on the Barbary Coast or in Newcastle, New South Wales. It was the saloon, apparently, and the breakfast had not been cleared away. A large yellow cat was gnawing at a slab of fish he had dragged from the table, bringing most of the cloth, with the cruet, after him. On the settee behind the table lay a man in trousers and singlet, snoring. He was wearing red silk socks full of holes, and a fly crawled along his full red lips below a large black moustache. In a pantry on one side a young man with a black moustache and in a blue ap.r.o.n, spotted with food, was smoking a cigarette and wiping some dishes with an almost incredibly dirty cloth.

"Where's the cap'en?" demanded Mr. Spokesly in a voice so harsh and aggressive he hardly recognized it himself. The young man came out wiping his hands on his hips and shrugging his shoulders.

"Where's the mate?"

The young man pointed at the figure on the settee. Mr. Spokesly went round the table and gave the rec.u.mbent gentleman a shake. Uttering a choking snort, the late chief officer opened his eyes, sat up, and looked round in a way that proved conclusively he had no clear notion of his locality. Eventually he discovered that the shakings came from a total stranger and he focussed a full stare from his black eyes upon Mr.

Spokesly.

"I'm the new mate," said the latter. "Where's my cabin?"

"Ai!" said the other, staring, both hands on the dirty table-cloth. "Ai!

You gotta nerve. What you doin' here, eh?"

"All right," said Mr. Spokesly, "I'll see to you in a minute. Here, you!

Where's the mate's cabin, savvy? Room, cabin, bunk."

The young man, wiping his hands again on his hips, went over to an opening which led down a stairway and beckoned. Mr. Spokesly followed.

What he found was very much of a piece with the saloon. One side of the ship was occupied by a large room marked "Captain." On the other side were two cabins, the forward one of which he was given to understand was his. To call it a pigsty would not convey any conception of the dire disorder of it. The delicate hardwood panelling of the yacht had been painted over with a thick layer of greenish-white paint; and this was coated, at each end of the bunk, with a black deposit of human origin where the oiled head and neglected feet of the late inc.u.mbent had rubbed. The walnut table was marked with circles where hot cups had been set down, and the edges were charred by cigarette-ends left to burn. The basin was cracked and half full of black water. Mr. Spokesly gave one glance at the toilet shelf and then turned away hastily to the young man, who was watching him in some curiosity.

"You speak English?" he was asked curtly.

"Oh ya.s.s, I spick Ingleesh. Plenty Ingleesh."

"Right. Get this place clean. You savvy? Clean all out. Quick, presto.

Savvy?"

"Ya.s.s, I savvy."

"Go on then."

"I finish saloon...."

"You let the saloon alone. Clean this place out _now_."

There was a footfall on the staircase and the late chief officer, Caesare Spiteri by name, came slowly down, holding by the hand-rail fixed over the door of the alleyway. There was a dull smoulder in his large bloodshot black eyes which seemed to bode trouble. He came forward, elaborately oblivious of Mr. Spokesly, his shoulders hunched, his large hand caressing his moustache. He spoke rapidly in Greek to the nervous steward, who began to edge away.

"Hi!" called Mr. Spokesly. "Do what I tell you. See here," he added to Mr. Spiteri, "you finished last night, I understand. You get your gear out of this and get away ash.o.r.e."

"Yah! Who are you?" snarled Mr. Spiteri in a quiet tone which made the steward more nervous than ever.

"I'm mate of this ship, and if you don't get out in five minutes...."

He had no chance to finish. Mr. Spiteri made a circular sweep with one of his stockinged feet, which knocked Mr. Spokesly off his own, and he fell backwards on the settee. The effect upon him was surprising.

Reflecting upon it later, when he got away to sea, Mr. Spokesly was surprised at himself. He certainly saw red. The filthy condition of the ship, the degradation of the yacht _Carmencita_ to the baseness of the _Kalkis_, and his own spiritual exaltation, reacted to fill him with an extraordinary vitality of anger. Mr. Spiteri was not in the pink of condition either. He had been drinking heavily the previous evening and his head ached. He went down at the first tremendous impact of Mr.

Spokesly's fleshy and muscular body, and Mr. Spokesly came down on top of him. He immediately sank his large white teeth in Mr. Spokesly's left hand. Mr. Spokesly grunted. "Leggo, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, leggo!" And at short range mashed the Spiteri ear, neck, and jaw hard and fast. Mr. Spiteri let go, but his antagonist was oblivious until he saw the man's face whiten and sag loosely under his blows, while from his own head, where the plaster had come off in the struggle, blood began to drip over them both.

Mr. Spokesly got up, breathing hard, and pointed into the room.

"Get busy," he said to the steward, "and clean all up. Shift this out of the way," and he touched the redoubtable Spiteri with his foot. Quite unwittingly, for he had been in a pa.s.sion for the moment, Mr. Spokesly had struck hard on one of the vital places of a man's body, just behind the ear, and Mr. Spiteri, for the first time in his life, had fainted.

Out on deck, the new mate realized what he had let himself in for, and clicked his tongue as he thought, a trick he had never been able to abandon since he had left school. Tck! Tck! He saw his young Jew friend making expressive motions with his hands to the boatman who was waiting for his money. Mr. Spokesly had an idea. He whistled to the boatman.

"You wait," he called and held up his hand. Then he beckoned to the youth.

"What's your name?" he demanded. The youth laid his hand on his breast and made a deep obeisance.

"Yes, yes!" shouted the exasperated chief officer. "What's your name?

Moses, Isaac, Abraham, eh? Never mind, come on." He led the way into the saloon and waved his hands. The cat rushed out of the door, followed by a kick.

"Now you clean up, understand?"

To his unalloyed delight the youth did understand. The latter's nervous prostration had been due chiefly to the fact that he was entirely ignorant of what was expected of him. He took off his deplorable coat and grasped a bucket.

Mr. Spokesly went downstairs again.

Mr. Spiteri was resting on one elbow watching the steward take his simple personal effects from the drawers under the bunk and stow them in an old suitcase.

"Get up on deck," ordered Mr. Spokesly. "I wouldn't have a swab like you in the forecastle. Don't wonder the Old Man complained."

Mr. Spiteri rose half way, coughed and spat, rose to his feet, and wavered uncertainly towards the stairs.

"Come on, stuff 'em in! That'll do. Now take it up and pitch it into the boat."

The steward hurried up with the bulging and half-closed suitcase and Mr.

Spokesly followed with his predecessor's boots.

"Down you go," he said, dropping the boots into the boat and following them up with the suitcase. "That's it," as he saw Mr. Spiteri step from the ladder and topple against the thwarts. "Now we'll see who's in charge of this ship."

He walked to the bridge-rail, put two fingers in his mouth and blew a shrill blast. Presently out of the little forecastle emerged a stout man in a canvas ap.r.o.n and sporting a large well-nourished moustache. Mr.