can’t say later you have not been warned. Because we don’t know what to do with you. Bums and unemployed and other thieves we have aplenty. We don’t need any more.”
I didn’t want to leave these Belgian officers with a bad impression about a stranded American sailor. So I said: “Maybe my consul could —”
“Hang your consul,” he broke in. “Have you got a passport? You have not. Have you got a sailor’s card? You have not. What could your consul, y our consul, do with you without a sailor’s card? He would kick you in the pants, and we should have you again to support at the state’s expense. Don’t try your consul. You have been warned properly — life imprisonment. So you’d better cut this consul business.”
I shook hands with them again and again, and said: “You are right, gentlemen. I promise solemnly never again to set foot on Belgian soil.”
“That’s a good boy.”
“Because,” I added, “I am really happy to leave Belgium. I haven’t got anything here. I suppose you are right, Holland is far better for me. I worked for a while in Pennsylvania. That’s why I know I’ll understand at least half of what the Dutch say, while here among you Belgians I never know what’s wanted of me.”
“Don’t talk so much nonsense,” the interpreter said. “You’d better be going now. Be smart. Should you hear somebody popping up while on your way to the depot, you just lie down quietly until the danger has passed. Don’t let them get you. Never forget the life imprisonment. We would make it tough for you, sailor, believe me. I mean well. Good-by.”
They went like shadows.
I started off on my way to the depot.
5
Rotterdam is a beautiful city. If you have money. If you haven’t any, you are better off in New Orleans. Besides, New Orleans is just as pretty, and more interesting.
I hadn’t any money. So I found Rotterdam just a city like all others. To be sure, it is a great port. But there was no ship in dire need of a deck-hand or a plain sailor or an engineer. I would have taken the job of engineer at once if there had been an opening. The joke would have been on the ship as soon as she was out at sea. The skipper would not throw me overboard. That would be murder. Something in the line of painting or brass-polishing can always be found aboard, and you take it even if you have signed on as a second engineer. I would not have insisted on the pay for a second; no, sir.
I would have taken any job on any ship, from kitchen-boy to captain and everything between. As it happened, not even a skipper was missing.
In these European ports it is hard to get a ship. To get one that crosses over to the home country is impossible. Everybody wants to go across to God’s own great country. I simply can’t get it into my head what all these guys are looking for there.
They must have got the crazy idea that everybody lies on his back and needs only to open his mouth and in goes the roast turkey with cranberry sauce and all the trimmings; and no one has to work, everybody gets high wages just for doing nothing, sitting around watching baseball games.
What with hundreds of mugs hanging around waiting to take a job on a ship without pay, there was no chance for an honest, home-made sailor like me to get a bucket sailing home.
The Belgian cops had talked about my consul. Yes, why not? Why, hadn’t I thought of my consul before? My consul. The American consul. Good idea. Splendid. He, my consul, he clears scores of American ships. He makes out all kinds of papers for them. If there is any man who knows every American ship coming or going, it is he. He is asked to supply sailors when the skipper is short of hands. There are always guys who would rather stay in a wet country with low wages than live in a dry country with heaps of dollars a week. If you get the heaps of smackers, I mean.
The whole affair passed by quicker than the time it had taken me to get the idea about seeing His Holiness