U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [176]
somewhere. He fol owed him into the shadow. Tiny put his mouth against his ear,
"There's bleedin' tarts 'ere, Yank, come along." They went up the bow and slid down a rope to the wharf. The rope scorched their hands. Tiny spat into his hands and rubbed them together. Joe did the same. Then they ducked into the warehouse. A rat scuttled past their feet. It was a guano warehouse and stank of fertilizer. Outside a little door in the back it was pitch black, sandy underfoot. A little glow from street-lights hit the upper part of the warehouse. There were women's voices, a little laugh. Tiny had disappeared. Joe had his hand on a woman's bare shoulder. "But first you must give me a shil ing," said a sweet cockney West India woman's voice. His voice had gone hoarse, "Sure, cutie, sure I wil ."
cutie, sure I wil ."
When his eyes got used to the dark he could see that they weren't the only ones. There were giggles, hoarse breathing al round them. From the ship came the inter-mittent whir of the winches, and a mixedup noise of voices from the women loading bananas. The woman was asking for money. "Come on now,
white boy, do like you say." Tiny was standing beside him buttoning up his pants. "Be back in a jiff, girls."
"Sure, we left our jack on board the boat." They ran back through the warehouse with the girls
after them, up the jacobsladder somebody had let down over the side of the ship and landed on deck out of breath and doubled up with laughing. When they looked over the side the women were running up and down the wharf
-29-spitting and cursing at them like wildcats. "Cheeryoh, lay-dies," Tiny cal ed down to them, taking off his cap. He grabbed Joe's arm and pul ed him along the deck; they stood round a while near the end of the gangplank. "Say, Tiny, yours was old enough to be your grandmother,
damned if she wasn't," whispered Joe. "Granny me eye, it was the pretty un I 'ad." "The hel you say . . . She musta been sixty." "Wot a bleedin' wopper . . . it was the pretty un I
'ad," said Tiny, walking off sore. A moon had come up red from behind the fringed hil s. The bananabunches the women were carrying up the
gangplank made a twisting green snake under the glare of the working lights. Joe suddenly got to feeling dis-gusted and sleepy. He went down and washed himself careful y with soap and water before crawling into his bunk. He went to sleep listening to the Scotch and British voices of his shipmates, talking about the tarts out back of the wharfhouse, 'ow many they'd 'ad, 'ow many times,
'ow it stacked up with the Argentyne or Durban or Sing-apore. The loading kept up al night. By noon they'd cleared for Liverpool with the Chief stoking her up to make a fast passage and al hands talking about blighty. They had bananas as much as they could eat that trip; every day the supercargo was bringing up over-ripe bunches and hanging them in the gal ey. Everybody was grousing about the ship not being armed, but the Old Man and Mr. McGregor seemed to take on more
about the bananas than about the raiders. They were al-ways peeping down under the canvas cover over the hatch that had been rigged with a ventilator on the peak of it, to see if they were ripening too soon. There was a lot of guying about the blahsted banahnas down in the focastle. After crossing the tropic they ran into a nasty norther that blew four days, after that the weather was dirty right along. Joe didn't have much to do after his four hours at the wheel; in the focastle they were al grousing about
-30-the ship not being fumigated to kil the bugs and the cock-roaches and not being armed and not picking up a convoy. Then word got around that there were German submarines cruising off the Lizard and everybody from the Old Man down got short tempered as hel . They al
began picking on Joe on account of America's not being in the war and he used to have long arguments with Tiny and an old fel ow from Glasgow they cal ed Haig. Joe said he didn't see what the hel business the States had in the war and that almost started a fight. After they picked up the Scil y Island lights, Sparks said they were in touch with a convoy and would have a destroyer al to themselves up through the Irish Sea that wouldn't leave them until they were safe in the Mersey. The British had won a big battle at Mons. The Old Man served out a tot of rum al round and everybody was in fine shape except Joe who was worried about what'd hap-pen to him getting into England without a passport. He was chil y al the time on account of not having any warm clothes. That evening a destroyer loomed suddenly out of the foggy twilight, looking tal as a church above the great wave of white water curling from her bows. It gave them a great scare on the bridge because they thought at first it was a Hun. The destroyer broke out the Union Jack and slowed down to the Argyle's speed, keeping close and abreast of her. The crew piled out on deck and gave the destroyer three cheers. Some of them wanted to sing God Save the King but the officer on the bridge of the de-stroyer began'