Rat Trap

by JOSEPH WHTTEHILL

CHIEF ENGINEER BAKER was comfortably settled in a canvas chair by the head of the gangway, peering down at the watch cap he was knitting and proudly counting to himself the rows he had just added, when the Third Male emerged from the deckhouse and thumped down his seabag. Four minutes after that event, Chief Baker’s gentle content had been irreparably destroyed, the destruction commencing with the Third Mate’s tight remark: “Hey, Chief, guess who I saw up in the town this afternoon.”

Baker thought, twelve — thirteen — fourteen, nodded his heavy gray head to secure the figures, pushed his glasses back up his nose to where they had to be for seeing anything five feet away, and asked, “Who?”

“The Liar,” said the Third Mate, with mischief in his grin. “You remember him. Otto Fount. He just made one trip with us, from Balboa to Shanghai. About ten years ago.”

“Oh,” said Chief Engineer Baker. “Oh, no. Not him.”

“Sure, He asked if you were still aboard.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him. yes you were. He was glad to know it. I think he remembers you better than any the rest of us.”

“Why me, for heaven’s sake?” Chief Engineer Baker let his knitting fall to his lap.

“ I dunno. I suppose because you thought to have him searched when we threw him off the ship at Shanghai. A fella don’t forget that too shortly, He’s the same old Liar, boy! He banged my ear about all the money he was just about going to make, but if seems he left his wallet in his other trousers — you know the way he used to talk — so I had to buy the drinks to celebrate. What a guy.” The Third Mate bent over the log desk and signed out, then moved his brass chit on the Ship’s Company Board from Aboard to Ashore. As he heaved his scabag to his shoulder he said, “Well, be seein’ you,” and he marched down the gangway.

Baker was so stunned by the news he had just heard that he was a full minute coming aware of the Third Mate’s departure. When he struggled to his feet and looked down the wharf, the man had already disappeared. Baker cried plaintively and softly into the empty air, “Hey, wait”; then he hurried off in near panic to find the Captain.

The Captain was in his cabin packing his shore clothes into a canvas suitcase. Baker knocked on the steel jamb of the open door to call the Captain’s attention.

“Yes, Mister Baker?” The Captain’s wan face wore an unpleasant expression, as though he grievously resented even the smallest delay in getting ashore.

Chief Baker licked his lips before he said, “I just now saw the Third go ashore with his sea bag, Captain, but he’s down on the watch list to stand gangway tonight. I thought you ought: to know.”

The Captain resumed his packing, rolling each article of underwear and each pair of socks as tightly as possible, then wedging it securely into his suitcase with nervous, hurried hands. “I was going to see you about that, Able. (By the inevitability of marine vernacular, Chief Engineer Baker had long ago been nicknamed “Able.”) “Red had to leave tonight to make it to Buffalo on the train. His wife lives there, you know.”

“Well, all right, but with everybody else ashore too, who’s going to stand gangway watch tonight?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to do it.”

“Oh, no, Captain.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I was going ashore. Sorneoi the men from the old Dolly Burgess are in town and we were going to gel together.”

“I’m sorry about that,” the Captain said handily. “But you’ll see them tomorrow. . . . Look, with the First Mate and the Second Mate in the hospital with the fever, you”re the only one left that knows the ship’s compartmentation. So you’II have to stand gangway. It s just for tonight. \ You’II have a couple of seamen back tomorrow mot rung, and then it’ll be all right for them to take over. But tonight we’ve got to have a responsible officer of the ship aboard.” The Captain laid a pair of blue cotton trousers out on the bunk and rolled each leg separately from cuff to crotch; then, pairing the two leg-rolls, wiapped them lightly in the seat material of the trousers and put the finished piece in his bag. “I’m sorry, Able, but you see how it is.”

Able Baker was not one capable of altering a long-planned course so abruptly, He remarked quasi-conversationally, “We were all going to have a big steak dinner.”

The Captain snapped his bag shut. ” Look, Able, they’ll be there tomorrow night, too. You can have your dinner then.”

Able wiped his hands on the full seat of his khakis. “All right, Captain, all right. But would you do me a favor, then ?”

The Captain said, ” What is it?”

“Call over to Peter Mai’s or drop in there and tell them I won’t be able to make it tonight, but that I’ll be there tomorrow night.”

“All right. Glad to.

Chief Lngineer Baker nodded by way of saluting and aimed his podgy bulk down the dim passageway toward the watertight door which gave on the main deck.

When the Captain emerged a few minutes later, he found Able standing by the rail holding his knitting in his hands and looking at it as though he could not understand it. After the Captain moved his brass chit across the Ships Company Board, only Able’s remained in the Aboard column. The Captain put. down his suitcase by the head of the gangway while he worked his hands into his white dress gloves. When the gloves were on, he said, “It s all yours now, Mister Baker. The fender boards have been belayed on fleck, so you won t have to tend anything except maybe the springlines. There’re three men in the starboard watch whose liberties are up at eight hundred. Crunk or sober, don’t let t hem go below .”

“Aye, sir. . . . Say, Captain, did you hear about the Liar being in this town now?”

“The Liar.?”

“Otto Rount. We threw him off in Shanghai.”

The Captain smiled. “ You threw him off, as I recollect. Well, if he shows up around here, send him off. He might steal the jolly boat. . . . Well, good night. Alister Baker.

“Good night, sir.”

2

BAKER remained by the rail abstractedly chewing his full underhp as he watched his Captain stride briskly down the wharf swinging his suitcase. Not once, Baker saw with sadness, did the Captain look back at his ship standing high and sharply drawn in the failing smoky light of the city evening. When the Captain had disappeared around the side of the long gray warehouse at the landward end of the wharf. Able Baker, plump and lonely, shuffled to the deck station under the awning and sat down heavily in the canvas watch chair. He tipped it back against the bulkhead of the deckhouse where, just above his head, the live speaking tubes snaked down from the overhead and ended in a row of bell mouths beside the watch desk.

When you turn off everything in a ship, linker mused, you kill it. It might just as well be hard aground or waiting for the scrappers. . . , Only at a time like this, with his ship moored in a still dock, the auxiliary shut down and the main engine silent, when the ventilators all had ceased their rushing sound and even the ticking bilge pump was dead; only at a time like this did Baker sense the fundamental deadness of a steel vessel. It isn’t fair, he thought. Making me stand this watch. Suppose the Liar comes down here tonight.

The stillness and lack of motion made Able Baker uncomfortable without his knowing why, so he rose with a protesting grimace and fussed around his watch station doing things of little need and less consequence, just to be moving. He snapped on the floodlight which was strung up over the head of the gangway. He felt about with his blunt hand in the wedge-shaped space under the lift lid of the watch desk, shoving aside the wads of cotton waste until he found the holster and belt of the guard pistol. He withdrew these and after lengthening the belt, which some slimmer man had lately worn, he buckled on the gun. With his rigging knife he sharpened t he string-hung pencil and w rote in the deck log, “Captain ashore — 2015. Set the gangway watch.”

Now wait a minute. I don’t want any trouble. Either giving it or getting it. And he could make me just that mad, too. Able took the guard pistol out of its holster and snapped the clip out into his palm. After only a little pause he closed his fingers over the clip and put it back in the watch desk.

With nothing further handy to do, Able Baker hitched up the lopsided weight of the heavy pistol and strolled to the rail. The memory of that old, horrible voyage thrust itself upon him with all its earlier painful clarity. The tubby and smiling Otto Rount had appeared on board the ship at Balboa, C.Z., telling of having been set upon by bandits while leading a pack train across Nicaragua, He thus claimed to have been set adrift in Balboa penniless and without recourse, and begged the Captain for the chance to earn his passage back to the United States. When he was told the ship was headed for Shanghai, he thought a moment, then said well, it was rather the long way round, but never mind, he would sign on anyway. As they said of him later in the forecastle, Otto could talk an anchor clean through a hawsehole if he just set. his mind to it.

Otto was put in Able Raker’s division, starboard watch, and was told to learn diesel lubrication. Otto, smooth-skinned and symmetrically rounded, had for three days bustled about in the roaring, hot engine room carrying a long-spouted oilcan and, with great enthusiasm and wonderful ineptitude, had oiled everything that moved. Then he had collapsed from the heat, and Able, feeling to blame, had nursed him with sugar cubes and brine while listening in rapt fascination to the exciting tales of Otto’s adventures on the Upper Amazon. For the good of the engines, the Captain had transferred Otto into the deck gang on the sixth day.

On the seventh day, the men in the deck gang hung the name “Liar” on Otto, for it was evident to them that nobody mortal could have been all those places and done all those things and made all that money and won all those fights — “without it showed on him someplace.” Otto seemed not at all disturbed by the nickname, and continued in his tale-spinning and his regretful avoidance of work. (A rust chip Hew into his eye from the edge of his chipping hammer, hesaid, so he was obliged to use hot compresses and wear a black patch for two days. Able Raker, sincere and believing, had heated the water for the compresses and defended Otto from the calumny of the deck apes.)

3

OTTO’S eye mended just in time to let him be the first to sight land as they raised Diamond Head, outside Honolulu harbor. The ship remained in port there for three days, taking on water and fuel and trading light farm equipment for pumice and soda ash. All hands had liberty and made the most of it. Otto went ashore whenever he could and, because he was not invited to buddy along with the rest, went alone about his own affairs.

It was not until the second day oul on the way to China, after the crew’s spirits had settled down and the men had outlived their shore-bought crapulence and had tidied up their lockers and sea bags, that they came to believe that Otto’s business ashore had been more of their concern than they had believed. Among the missing items were four tax-free wrist watches the coxswain had intended to peddle in China, three carved salad forks an old seaman had bought in Cuba and forgotten to mail home from Balboa, two new pea jackets belonging to snipes in the port watch, and one solid gold fountain pen.

The fountain pen was Abie’s, He wandered in a hurt daze for two days, telling no one, while he tried to decide what to do. For no one aboard but Otto would have taken it. lie had shown it to Otto one day while trying to persuade him to make a career of the sea. (The pen had been given him by the ship line upon completion of Able’s twenty-fifth year with ihe company.) Able had kept it in a slim chamois bag hung from satin twine beside his bunk, where he could look at it. before he went to sleep. It had never had ink in it, for Able Raker was a pencil man himself. Now just the chamois bag was left.

At length, Able had gone to the old seaman who had lost the three salad forks, and who was totting up the missing items, to report the loss of his pen. Because he enjoyed the lies so much, Able was unwilling to believe Otto was a liar; but because be enjoyed the thievery not at all, he was ready to admit that Otto might be a thief. Lying for entertainment is pleasant for both the liar and the listener; lying to avoid work is quite tolerable and customary. Rut stealing from one’s shipmates is unforgivable.

Late that night, while the Liar was on forward lookout watch, a solemn conference was held in the forecastle and decisions were reached in rough parliamentary fashion. A Council of five were ranged before the scuttlebutt, and the rest of the crew were watching from their bunks by the time the Liar was due off watch. Able was in the Council and the old seaman was their spokesman. The Liar seemed to sense, when he came in out of the cold night wind, that something concerning him was afoot, for lie made no silly diversionary maneuvers. He just took off his pea jacket and watch cap and stepped out of his waterproof overalls; then he draped his plump, womanish arm around a bunk stanchion and waited.

The old seaman made it short. He cleared his throat with a whiskery growl and said, “Otto Rount, known hereabouts as the Liar, we think you’re a goddamned midnight smallstoresman. We think you sloled a bunch o’ gear off’n this ship at Honolulu, which was our last port, an’ tuk it ashore an’ sold it. That’s what we think, isn’t it, boys?” The wise heads of the Council nodded together. “Therefore, Otto Rount, seein’ as we think that way, here’s what we expect you to do. We expect you to go to the Skipper when we get to Shanghai an’ have him scratch you of In the articles. Then we expect you to lash up an’ get the hell ashore an’ slay there. Isn’t that what we expect, boys?” Again the Council nodded. “An’ if you don’t do what we expect, Mister Liar, there’s eighteen on us’ll make your life hell clear from Shanghai to Frisco. That right, boys?” Nods. “All right. Liar, you got anuhthin’t’ say?”

Smooth-faced Otto started, as though wakened from a bland dream of peace, and said, “Ah. . . . Well, now, boys, I just didn’t do it. None of it. But okay. You got your minds made up, okay. I leave you at Shanghai. I’d like to see your faces when you find out who the real thief is, that’s all.” Then he turned and set about hanging up his foul weather gear. To cover their embarrassment the members of the Council formed a closed game of Reilly’s Eye, playing for toothpicks.

4

A WEEK later the ship ascended the yellow, bankless Whang Pu, swung in the garbage-tilled current, and moored alongside the outer wharf of the Shanghai waterfront. Inside, between the quay and the wharf, was a log jam of moored living-sampans, whose residents poked their heads out from below the mat-thatched cuddies to watch. By the time liberty was announced, virtually the whole crew of the ship was loitering promiscuously about the head of the gangway, waiting to jeer good-by to the Liar.

As the Liar emerged from the forecastle companionway lugging his hammock roll and his seabag, Able Baker said softly, more to himself than to the others, “I wonder how much of our gear he has in that bag right now.” The thought spread with such malicious contagion that by the time the Liar reached the head of the gangway, eight ready pairs of hands reached out and relieved him of his duffel. Someone spread a boat tarpaulin out on the deck and the contents of the bag were shaken out on it. The Liar retreated halfway down the gangway, reluctant to leave his goods yet equally reluctant to remain within arm’s reach of these angry men.

On the tarpaulin, well mixed among the Liar’s own things, was a regular slop chest of his shipmates’ belongings: identification bracelets, lockets, pens, pencils, a beaded belt, one earring, the ship’s barber clippers, and a pair of jade cuff links. Even the poker deck was there. There were shouts of “That’s mine! . . . That, too! . . . Reach me that ‘ere belt,” while the men scrambled about on the larp like children at a piñata party. After everyone had recovered his goods, Able quietly suggested they check the lashed-up hammock too, just in case. When they unrolled it, the men found three blankets and a silk shawl that did not belong there. As the excitement died to a wondering mutter, the crew turned to the Liar, still standing undecided halfway down the gangway. The old seaman said, “You sure are a one! You oughter get hung. Come on. If you want what of this is yours, you’d better get up here an’ get it.”

The Liar licked his pale lips. “ What’re you going to do to me?”

“Nuthin’. Get on up here.”

But the clever little carpenter had found a pot of red lead and a stiff little brush. When the Liar finally decided the men meant him no further harm, he came cautiously back aboard, passing through a narrow space in the line of glowering, happy men. The carpenter held up his paint pot and cried, “Look what I got, boys!” At this signal the group closed around the Liar. There was a slight scuffle at the center of the pile, and when the men parted and stepped back, the Liar was there stripped to his skivvies, wearing “THIEF” painted boldly across his firm, plump chest. His face wore a set, bored expression as he began to repack his seabag to the roars of laughter of the crew. As a period to their entertainment, one of the snipes discovered how jolly it was to toss loose clothing over the rail onto the wharf, and soon everyone joined in the game. The Chinese on the wharf held their backsides and cheered, while their children ran out and side What they dared. Everyone bad a fine time.

The Liar, with some trouble, assembled a kit of wearable clothes and, carrying his much shrunken seabag, stalked ashore in silence and disappeared in the direction of Bubbling Well Road. When he was gone and the men were beginning to sink into their separate thoughts, the carpenter giggled and held up a fat money belt. “I guess we’d better cut this up square. He don’t seem t’ be comin’ back after it.” But, though most of the men participated in the division of the money, Able Baker withdrew and went to sit alone on the Number Three hatch, wondering whether they had been too severe.

Even now, ten years later, he was still wondering. A man of peace pushed too far, Able Baker was still unaccountably disturbed by his old rage and loathing for this nasty Liar.

Able shrugged and left the rail. Having had no supper, he took his square electric lantern and entered the stuffy, tunnel-like passage to the galley. He was not very hungry, but because the Captain had made neither mention of nor provision for his nourishment. Able fell that it was his duty as an undefeated man to forage on his own initiative. At the door to the galley he snapped the light switch twice before he remembered that all the ship’s electrical circuits were dead, and that even to get light over the gangway he had had to tap power from the transformer on the wharf. So, circling his light cautiously before him, Able entered the galley, treading carefully on the wooden deck gratings which were strange to his feet. He moved past the spectral Humpty Dumpty shapes of the steam cookers and around the bulk of the wooden meat block, and took from the tall, gray-painted refrigerator a quart of milk, in a waxen cardboard container, and two small, hard peaches, He broke off a brittle chunk of margarine, shouldered the refrigerator door shut, and set everything on the greased steel lop of the serving table, doing for bread, he opened the tin-lined bread drawer and shined his light inside. Crouched there in frozen terror, ojpen-eycd and whiskers working, was a large black rat.

“Hoo!”

Hastily, and in profound revulsion. Able slammed the drawer in and backed away from it. With fumbling fingers he gathered up the food from the slippery table and hurried out along the airless passage, tripping once over a small black hose which lay on deck.

5

BACK at his watch desk, Able thought about all the rats on the ship now. He haled rats. “Comes of carrying grain, he muttered. Rats could live for years, and live fatly, on the bidden spillage in the tiny spaces around the holds. Able sighed and sat down in the watch chair with his food. He had gracefully peeled half a peach, and was about to bile into it, when a human voice of eerie nearness startled him, and the fruit fell from his hand. Before it had rolled to the scupper, Able was rising from his chair with both hands planted on its arms, his scalp taut in alarm. He went to the rail and looked down to find what he had feared. It was the Liar come to pay a call. The Liar was fatter now, and his skin looked tight and smooth and ready to split like a sausage. The Liar smiled and waved.

“Able Baker,” be called. “It’s me, Otto.’

“The Liar,” Able said stupidly.

Still smiling, the other said, “Oh, no. Not any more. I don’t do that any more, Able.”

“How’ve you been?” asked Able, for lack of anything better to say.

“Me? Fine, Able, just fine, thanks. Never better. Hey, I brought us something.” Otto drew a half pint of whiskey from inside his tight suit. “They told me over at Peter Mai’s you’d be here, so I brought us a little something for old times’ sake,” He started up the gangway.

“You can’t come aboard. Nobody can come aboard.” Able sidled over to bar the head of the gangway.

The Liar stopped. “Nobody? Nobody can come aboard?” He paused in thought a moment, then fished in bis pocket and brought out a scrap of white paper. He waved it toward Able. “I got a note here for you, old boy. From the Skipper. I met him in Mai’s and he said as long as I was coming down to see you to take this along.”

Able pulled at the lobe of his ear. “A note? Well, here, hand it up to me.”

Otto came part way up the gangway, then stopped to look up over Abie’s bead at the towering superstructure and bridge wings of the freighter. He seemed to plunge suddenly into a nostalgic, reverie, and a look ol sentimental sadness came over his round face. “The old ship,” he breathed. “Hasn’t changed hardly at all. Why, I remember every pieee of her. That cargo mast there . . . those hatches . . . that fo’e’sle head where I used to stand watch. . . .” The Liar began to climb the gangway again as ho spoke, walking with slow, unsure steps, as if his feet had come to a separate life of their own and were leading him on without his knowledge. “And over there in the lee of the jolly boat; that’s where we used to sit around and chew the fat. . . .” Able’s hand was still outstretched for the note as Otto reached the head of the gangway. But Otto, with his eyes fixed in the air on some point near the radio antenna, brushed by Abie’s extended arm and walked out upon the main deck.

Able said, “The note. . . . You’re not supposed to be aboard, I told you. Let’s have the note.”

Otto’s eyes came down out of the rigging. “The note? Well, now, old boy, 1 hat’s just a little joke. Here’s the real note. From me to you.” He plopped the half pint of whiskey into Able’s hand. “Go on, open it.”

Able’s rage was rising. “You know I can’t drink on watch! You said you bad a note. Now, let’s see it or get off my ship!”

The Liar raised his wispy eyebrows and said softly, “Your ship? Your ship? You forget . This is partly my ship, too. At least, I left a good deal of money an’ clothes on her when I left. Don’t you think that buys me a look around?”

“That was a long time ago.” Able was in anguish. “You deserved whatever you got then. Now, please, Otto, just be a good man and get on off. I don’t want to have to get tough.”

Otto stood by the rail in relaxed fashion, looking seriously at Able. “No, Able. You weren’t ever that kind. You weren’t ever one of the tough ones. You never bullied me like 1 he rest of ‘em. . . . You wanta see something? Look here, I’ll show you something you can tell the rest of ‘em about.” Otto unbuttoned his coat, then his shirt, and pulled up the front of his undershirt. There, written faintly across his smooth, hairless chest, was the word THIEF. “Isn’t that something? The brush that little carpenter used was very stiff. Able, and my skin is very thin. The red paint got in and stayed.” Otto pulled down the undershirt, and as he bill toned bis outer shirt. Able caught sight of a small revolver in a holster at Otto’s belt.

Fear drums were beginning to beat in Abie’s head. He said, “Well, I’m sorry about that, Otto, but I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“No, I recollect you didn’t. That’s what I said. You were never one of the tough ones. . . . Why, I see a big hole in the butt of your gun there. There isn’t any clip in it. Did you forget to put one in? No. You did it on purpose. You never did like a loaded gun, even, did you? You’re a good man. Able. Really too good for the rest of these monkeys.”

Able suddenly fell very stupid and ineffeetual. “Otto, please get off the ship. I’m not supposed to let anybody aboard. Now, just go, would you?”

Otto seemed not to have heard. He said, “I’ve got something else to show you, too. From an inside pocket of his coat he drew a Hat, Manilabound bundle of papers. After looking around for a place to spread them out and finding none close by, he thrust the bundle out before him in his fat hands and, looking over his shoulder at Able, followed the bundle to the log desk as though it were pulling him. He untied the dirty string which held it together and spread the contents out on the open deck log.

Able stood unmoving by the rail, weakened to immobility by the horrifying course events had taken. His ears felt to him as though they were blushing at the lobes, and his stomach was watery. For want of something more positive to do, Able walked stiffly over to the log desk when the other had retreated from it, and bent over the newspaper clippings spread out on the log.

Each of the clippings detailed a wharfside ship robbery. “Mueller Lines Shift Looted — Guard Bound” . . . “Anot her Waterfront Looting”. . . . Able finally managed to arrange his throat for speech: “ What’s all this stuff?”

Otto smiled. “That’s my references, you might say. Just like as if I was coming to you for employment, you see. I pitched all those jobs myself, Able. All by myself.”

Able fell a chilling cramp in his bowels. “Is that why you came down here now?”

Otto returned to the log desk and drummed on the clippings with fluttering, ataxic fingers. “Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.” He pointed at the clippings. “Look here, now. Says all them watchmen an’ guards was overpowered an’ tied up. Well, just between you an’ I, they wasn’t tied up till after I’d cleaned out the cabins! See? Every one of’em helped me, more or less; then I tied ‘em up afterwards to make it all look right. Now ah — I’m no tightwad. Able, Aon know me. I split fair, I do. Fifty-fifty, that’s what it’ll be for us. Half for you an’ half for me tomorrow night, after I turn the stuff. You can’t be fairer than I hat, now can you?”

Able Baker’s head felt light and he clung to the edge of the log desk while he regarded Otto with a dumbly opaque look. I’m the biggest fool in Christendom, he thought. Wonder if I could get the clip out of there and in the gun in time.

I ncannily, Otto chose that very moment to say, “By the way, Able old boy, where’s the clip for that gun of yours?”

Nearly fainting, Able pointed to the log desk. Otto reached in and found it and casually dropped it over the side. Just two men in this silent, dead world heard its soft, far splash.

Able said in a choked voice, “I h — how much d’you make doing something like this/”

Otto’s eyes quoted his anticipatory greed, and he bit his fat thumb knuckle while he speculated, “Oh, let’s see. Ship like ibis. . . . Prolly get. eight, nine hunnerd for everything; that’s the navigation instruments an’ the chronometer an’ stop watches an’ the barometer, plus all the little junk in the officers’ cabins like watches an’ rings an’ so on. Half for you makes four hunnerd, four fifty, for not doin’ nothing but watehin’ while I’m inside, an’ warnin’ me if somebody comes by, an then lettin’ me tie you up afterwards. That’s all.”

How come, Lord? Able thought. How conic it’s me in this fix? “I don’t like it,” he said. “Suppose somebody comes. Then what? It’s both our necks.” Able Baker, floating as he was in a world that had to he unreal, marveled at how easy it was to say these things; he, an honest man until now.

“Okay, somebody comes. You ring the bell there, the one that repeats in all the compartments, an’ I lay low till it’s safe lo get. ashore again. Simple, see?”

Able went on in a strangely dull voice, “I probably would have to go up and get the instruments for you. You wouldn’t know where to find them, and you’d mess the chart room all up hunt ing around.”

“Great! Thal’d be a real help. I might say that’s a fine idea. I’ll wait just inside this door here while you go up an’ bring down all the stuff.”

Able Baker turned away, then hesitated and said, “Are you sure you want to go through with t his?”

“Am I sure? Whadda you think I’m here for?”

“All right,” Able sighed, and he lumbered aft toward the ladder leading up to the bridge deck.

6

WHEN Able had climbed up to the wing of the bridge he leaned on ihe rail and paused to catch his breath. Fora moment he thought he was going to be sick. No one could help him now.

He undogged the watertight door and stepped over the flange into the gloom of the wheelhouse. He switched on his lantern and walked aft through the wheelhouse, past the silent, dark radio room and into the chart room. Hunting with the beam of the light, he found a chart chest of appropriate size and emptied its contents of rolled charts onto the big, high table. Then, moving tiredly, he passed about the compartment gathering instruments as he had been told. Three stop watches, two sextants in their gumwood boxes, the polished brass aneroid barometer taken from the bulkhead; all these Able laid gently into the chart chest. Then he propped his lantern to throw light down on the table, opened the mahogany lid of the chronometer case, slid its cover glass aside, and locked the gimbals which floated the mechanism. Then he closed it all up, and this, too, he put in the chart chest.

Lord, tell me what to do. No. Pardon me, that’s not what I meant. Just tell me what I’m doing is okay. Please?

Able Baker closed the lid of this chest he had filled with the ship’s instruments and, taking it by the end handles, lifted it down. As he stepped toward the door he trod on a small rubber hose which lav on the deck, and as it rolled under his shoe he heard a metallic tinkle. He set the box down and traced the hose with his lantern beam until he found the small bronze pedestal nozzle which terminated it. It had upset and was lying on its side, so he righted it. then picked up the chest of instruments again and went out the way he had entered.

Out on the wing of the bridge he had to put down the chest again while he dogged the watertight door. He put all his weight on each dog handle, wrenching it as tightly as he could to make the door take the seal. He was sweating now from his exertion and from the dead closeness of the air in the compartments he had just quitted.

Because the box was heavy, Able had to descend the ladder backwards, bringing the box down one tread at a time. When he finally reached the watch station at the gangway again, the waiting Otto slipped out of the shadows of the passageway and said, “Surely, you took long enough!”

Able Baker was panting: “I had to lock—the gimbals of th’ —chronometer to keep it from spilling out in the case— and breaking.

“Hum . . . Say, what s all those little hoses doing all over the place?”

“Hoses?”

“Sure, hoses. Look there. No. Shine your light over. There. See there?”

Able’s light showed numerous heaps of oxerlapping coils of thin black hose arranged in rough geometry by the hatch of Number Three hold. Squatting among the coils like a chromium-plated spider was a fitting-studded manifold to which all the hoses were connected. Able hesitated, then said, “Oh, those hoses. Ah — it’s some idea of the underwriters to find out how much fuel oil fumes’ll collect inside a ship when the ventilators aren’t going.”

“Huh . . . Well. All right, now, if somebody comes you hit that bell button three times an’ I’ll duck. You’re not lookin’ for anybody back aboard are you?”

“No officers, anyway. The men never go into the deckhouse.”

“Okay, then. I’ll just get going.” Otto wiped his nose with the back of his hand and disappeared in the passageway.

Able Baker followed him to the watertight door. “Look, he said softly into the darkness, “I’d better shut this door just in case.”

“All right,”Otto said, and switched on his small flashlight.

7

ABLE BAKER swung the heavy door shut; then, with a swamper bar which he took from its mounts on the bulkhead, he tightened each of the six door dogs in turn, bearing down with all the additional leverage of the two-fool extension tool. Then, trotting nimbly and silently, lie ran all the way around the deckhouse until he came to the closed watertight door at the opposite end of the passage Otto had entered. He slipped the swamper bar over each of its dog handles, bringing them up gasket-tight. When he was done he stepped back and took off his glasses and began wiping the sweat from his face with a bandana.

His hand hesitated as he gasped in the alarm of sudden remembrance; then he ran aft to the galley service door he had forgotten, and tightened all the dogs on it also.

Then, sxvinging the swamper bar with his stride, he strolled back around the deckhouse trying to remember the words to “ Bill Bailey.” Because all he had oxer learned was the bass part with all its contrapuntal ellipses, he had to fumble in his memory for the proper melody—“Bill Bai — lee, won’t you please come home? Bill Bai—lee, won’t you please come home? I’II do . . . de cookin’, I’ll pay de rent-mah-honey. Dum da dum ti do dee do! Fuff!” His voice was hoarse and t rembling.

As he replaced the swamper bar in its mounts his knees suddenly felt as though they were giving way, and he had to sit down quickly in the canvas chair. He straightened and leaned sideways and tugged at the chain of his heavy gold watch.

2140. Able leaned back in his chair and cocked his head to listen to the speaking tubes. Of the five tubes, one descended to the engine room, one went up to the wheelhouse, and the remaining three went into the officers’ cabins. An occasional small sound of movement came from one of the latter, and by putting his ear to each in turn, Able determined that the Liar was then looting the First Mate s cabin.

Able leaned his head back against the cold bulkhead and tried closing his eyes to make the time pass more swiftly. Then, unable to resist, he looked at his watch again.

2142.

The words began to come back, and he sang them studiously: “Won’ you . . . come home. Bill Bai — lee? Won’t you . . . come home? She moans de whole day lo—ong.

Please, Lord, make them hurry.

Able Baker looked at his watch. 2143. He pushed the watch hack in his pocket, determined not. to look at it again for five whole minutes.

A sound came over Able’s shoulder. “Sssssst! Say, Able, is that you singing?”

“ Yes,” Able whispered.

“Well, quit it for Chrissakes. It makes me nervous.”

“All right,” Able answered. But, because he had made such a good beginning, and because it somehow had become very important to finish the song, he soon began again sotto voce: “I know I’se to blame. Now ain’t dat a slut — ame? Bill Bailey, won’t you please come ho — ome?”

The Liar’s voice came out of the speaking tube again. “Hey! I’m all done now. Js it till clear out there.””

Able Bilker slood up and looked past the flare of the ship’s bows toward the land end of the wharf. A panel truck had just turned onto the, wharf from the brick street.

“Yes,” Able said, watching the lights of the truck stream down the wharf. “It’s all right.

The Iruck stopped at the foot of the gangway and three men in coveralls got out of the cab. They carried gauntlets and wore plastic skullcaps. They stood a moment by the truck conferring, while one of the men, evidently the Boss, looked from the ship to a clipboard he held on his arm.

Able Baker could hear straining and scuffling sounds on the other side of the watertight door he had dogged so tightly. Then the sounds stopped, and a moment later Otto’s voice came again, breathy and hollow, from the mouth of t he speaking lube. “Say, Able, what’d you do to that door, anyway? I can’t get it open.”

Able went to the mouth of the tube and bent down to it. “You’ll have to wail, now,” he whispered. “There’s some men coming aboard. I think they’re— uh — they’re cargo net inspectors. It won’t be long. I’ll call you when they’re gone.”

“God damn.”

Able Baker left the speaking tube and walked to the head of the gangway to meet the men coming up. Each carried over his shoulder a bulky red and white striped cylinder. The Boss, from whose belt swung the clipboard, said, “Good evening. You Chief Baker.?”

“Yes,” Able said, and he shined his light on the glittering manifold lying among the coiled hoses. “Bight there, you are.”

The men put down their cylinders near the manifold and siraightened up to pull the load aches out of their shoulders. The Boss said, “Everything shut off below? No power on at all?”

Able Baker shook his head. “The auxiliary is shut down. We’re getting power for this light off the pier there.”

“Pilot lights out in the evaporators?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody but you aboard?”

“ N-no.”

“I have to sign the deck log. That it over there?”

Able nodded and gestured weakly toward it. While the Boss went the log desk, Able, powerless to move, remained where he was, wondering whether the speaking lube would say something. The Boss bent and examined the watch list and the Ship’s Company Board. All the little brass discs save Able’s were hanging in the column headed Ashore. The Boss initialed the deck log, noting down the time, and turned away.

The speaking tube had remained silent. Able breathed again.

The Boss went forward to the manifold where the other two men were making up hose and gage connections, and stood to windward watching them tighten the last joints. The Boss spoke over to Able, “Well, you heller ring your alarm. You got power on it ?”

Able nodded. “The alarm is on batteries.”

“Most of them are, I guess,” the Boss said, “Oh. did you get all the navigation instruments out of the ship? Your skipper called me just before we left the shop and wanted me to remind you to get the chronometer out, too. He said he had one ruined once this way.”

With phlegm in his throat, Able said, “Everything is in that chest over there. It’ll be all right there, won’t it ?”

“Sure, that’ll be okay. Well, go hit the bell and we’ll get started.”

Able Baker walked with a stumping gait back to the log desk and pushed the alarm bed I button three long times. The speaking tube said in a tiny voice, “Hey, Able. Hey. What’s going on out there? What’s them cans (hose guys brought with ‘em? I seen ‘em through the porthole glass. What’s going on ?’

Able did not answer. He again pushed the button three times. The whole ship seemed to ring, but mutely.

“Hey, Able, can you hear me?” The Liar’s voice was tense and low.

Able Baker, the podgy, sad, gray-haired old man, took a big wad of cotton waste from the log desk and, tearing it into tufts, stuffed each of the five bell months of the speaking tubes. His shoulders sagged as he stood back to look at his work: then he turned and shuffled forward to where the three men were standing by their cylinders.

Soberly, the Boss said, “Okay,” and each of the coverall-clad men turned his valve smartly. There was a hissing, and the coils of hose all stirred slightly.

. It does not matter how many times they, have done it before; the men in a fumigating crew always fall silent as they turn hundreds of pounds of hydrocyanic acid gas into a scaled, dead ship, out of respect for all the lives they can feel winking out beneath their feet.