Algren at Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t want me to,” I explained. I didn’t want to get the cabman in trouble.
    But the cabman was a regular fellow. He came down off the cab and got the shoe for me. They both watched me putting it on. I tied a neat bow so they would see I was sincere.
    â€œAre you deformed, son?” the officer asked.
    â€œNo, sir. It’s just that one shoe is a British walker and the other is a Ked Gavilan.”
    My friends exchanged glances.
    â€œDon’t take him in, he’s harmless,” the cabman suggested.
    â€œI wasn’t seriously thinking of taking him in,” the officer decided in my favor. “I was just curious about his plans,” and he looked at me inquiringly. The cabman looked curious too.
    â€œWhy, come to think of it, my plans are to sail from Pier 86 in an hour and a half,” I recalled, checking the hour and hopping into the cab.
    â€œTo Pier 86!” I instructed the helpful cabbie, and we were off at a rollicking gallop.
    â€œAre you going aboard without baggage?” he asked me over his shoulder.
    â€œStop at the first hockshop. I’m glad you reminded me,” I thanked him.
    On Eighth Avenue I purchased two traveling bags and a secondhand electrified typewriter the salesman assured me was a real bargain. “And I’ll throw in an electrified tie,” he offered.
    â€œI’m traveling first class,” I demurred. “I don’t want to be conspicuous.”
    â€œNothing conspicuous,” he reassured me. “Something in a dark blue with a gray pencil stripe.”
    He snapped a vermilion tie around my neck, one with two Chinese-red polka dots which lit up gloriously at the touch of the battery in my pocket.
    â€œAnd I’ll throw in an extra set of batteries in case the salt-air damages the set attached,” he told me.
    And he was as good as his word.

DOWN WITH ALL HANDS
    THE CRUISE OF THE SS MEYER DAVIS
    At Pier 86 a blue-uniformed baggage-hustler took both bags and the typer off my hands, and I took the elevator. “How much does a baggage-hustler get per bag?” I asked the elevator guy.
    â€œHe gets what you want to give in your heart,” the guy instructed me.
    â€œI don’t want the man to work without shoes,” I explained. “How much does he get per bag?”
    The elevator guy stopped the lift between floors. “Let me tell you something,” he reproved me; “the intelligence you breathe, that you were born with, let that be your guide.”
    Then we continued going up.
    I gave the bag-hustler a two-dollar bill and stood waiting for change. “That was a deuce I just gave you,” I reminded him.
    â€œIt’s mouse eat mouse,” he informed me.
    â€œEasy come, easy go,” I warned him, glad to get my bags back. But were I going to keep count of people who were out of their minds and those who were in them on this trip, the kooks would already be lapping the field.
    However, I wasn’t dismayed to learn it was mouse eat mouse and every man for himself now, more than it used to be; because whatever we have lost in brotherly feeling I am confident we have made up in spitefulness. Things work out best for everybody in the end if you just look at things right. Prospects for mice are particularly bright.
    I had never crossed the Atlantic first class before. It was my first time.
    My ticket assigned me to Stateroom S-1, meaning sundeck and first to chow, but a fellow in a seafaring cap told me to go to U-68. United States Lines had put me on a submarine was what I assumed. But the gangplank led up to some sort of seagoing department store that had three decks
below water level, so I went down. What traveling first class means, I gathered, is that you may be sent to the galleys but you still don’t have to row.
    I kept going down until I hit the engine room. As long as I was there I figured I might as well inspect the turbines and the rest of that crazy stuff. It