C H A P T E R F I V E Animals often play a larger part in maintaining morale aboard ships than any other factor. Each animal aboard the Scapa Flow was made over extravagantly by all the men in the crew, with the exception of the Egyptians. The Egyptians were much distressed by the cats and would pick purring cats off their laps with all the jealous disdain of a feline society woman. But all the others aboard were fonder of the ship's animals than little children would have been. When the Scapa Flow left New York there were two cats on board. One cat had gone to West Africa with the ship on its previous trip, and simply stayed on for another voyage. He was called the Bum by the crew, because he would go anywhere on the ship and would fraternize with anyone, even the gunners who lived at the stern. Despite his name and wanderings, the Bum was a very well-mannered kitty and was popular with the men in the fo'c'sle. Even more popular, however, was a tiny kitten--tiny at the beginning of the voyage, anyway--which was brought aboard the Scapa Flow just before the ship left New York. The kitten was brought on shipboard by Alabama. Alabama gave the kitten the name of Mickey, and this name was accepted without protest by the men on board. Technically, Alabama always remained the owner of the kitten, but actually Mickey became the common property of the men in the fo'c'sle. He was.more popular with the men up forward than the Bum because he stayed true to the men of the fo'c'sle. Mickey was only about three weeks old when he came on the [ 137 ] Scapa Flow, and the men amidships and aft thought he was entrancing and cute. Many attempts were made by the officers, amidships, and the gunners, aft, to wean the kitten, from his loyalty to the fo'c'sle. But these attempts were never permanently successful, Mickey's loyalty to the crew and coolness toward the officers aroused the jealousy of the first mate, and he struggled everlastingly to win Mickey by keeping a dish of cream outside his cabin, which was situated on the main deck amidships. He never really had a chance, although he never quite gave up and was always very fond of Mickey. The men going by the first mate's cabin during the change of watches usually managed to kick over the dish of cream, and on more than one occasion the stokers or coal passers dropped bits of coal into the dish as they came forward after leaving the firing room. The Brazilian messman up forward had standing orders to keep a dish of cream on the floor of the fo'c'sle messroom. Moreover, the nicest piece of meat or chicken was always given to the kitten, a practice which continued throughout the voyage, right through the day that our store of meat and fowl was exhausted completely. Nonetheless, to the great distress of the men in the fo'c'sle, on a few occasions Mickey did wander back amidships to play there. Mickey. had his own reasons for going amidships, and they must have seemed good ones to him. There were nice chairs amidships, all soft and leather-covered, which of course were never to be found up forward. Moreover, Mickey and the Bum were good friends, and Mickey liked to play with the older cat; they would chase each other round the decks and even up the companionways to the bridge. Whenever Mickey was caught amidships by one of the men of the fo'c'sle, he was tucked under an arm and brought forward, chided meanwhile in any one of half a dozen languages. Sometimes the fo'c'sle men were a bit rougher and spanked the cat for his own good. Sometimes a Portuguese stoker would find Mickey somewhere amidships and would run his grimy, coaly hands over the kitten's brown-and-white fur, so that Mickey would associate the concept of amidships with the concept of laborious self-bathing. Eventually he learned, and toward the end of the voyage his trips amidships were very few. [ 138 ] Although Mickey was loyal to the fo'c'sle, he played no permanent favorites among the men there. He seemed, however, to prefer to concentrate on one man for a few days at a time. Purring for attention, he would follow this man around the fo'c'sle, and at night would find and occupy his bunk, always sleeping near the pillow. After a few days, he would choose another man, and so on. One of the reasons the captain was unpopular with the men in the crew was that he didn't like cats. The captain was clever enough to realize that he couldn't conveniently get rid of the cats on his ship--not in wartime, at least--but he wasn't discerning enough to realize that he would have got along a lot better with the men if he had masked his natural feelings long enough to make over the cats a bit, as any baby-kissing politician would have had sense enough to do. One day, while the captain was on an inspection trip up forward, Mickey got in his way, and, in an attempt to avoid stepping on the kitten, he tripped. Immediately he cursed. And what he did next caused almost no end of discussion among the men in the fo'c'sle. The more tolerant ones-or perhaps the ones who had actually seen the incident-claimed that the captain only moved Mickey aside with his foot. Others maintained, however, that the captain had kicked Mickey. Still others were sure that the captain had attempted to kick Mickey to death. Nearly all the men were agreed on one point: that if the captain ever harmed Mickey, they would ambush him and beat him--ashore. Incidentally, the threat of a shore beating is a favorite of seamen against officers: it serves to let off steam. Except in the rarest instances, though, when the men get ashore they don't think of revenge, as they are diverted by other projects. Howwever, the very knowledge that it is possible for them to make good such a threat enables the men in the Merchant Marine to get along better with their superiors than the men in the military services. For, after all, the seamen on merchant vessels are civilians, as are their officers, and it makes a seaman feel better to know that he can deal with any of his officers on equal terms while ashore, it also serves to keep the officers more humane to realize that if they ride a man too unmercifully on shipboard they may one day encounter him on the beach, their only re- [ 139 ] course the police, who might not be around. In the military services, of course, the officers retain titular superiority always, afloat or ashore. 2 As I see it, there are at least two reasons why the cats were so popular aboard the Scapa Flow. In the first place, it was a matter of superstition. It seems to be one of the traditions of the sea that some idea of the fate of a ship can be deduced from the actions, or fate, of the ship's pets. Almost all seamen believe in stories in which disaster is forecast by some accident that befalls a ship's pet. A story told by our chief cook is typical. It was about a mother cat on a coastwise collier of which he had been the cook. The seamen of the collier always took the cat ashore when the ship touched an American port, and left her to wander by herself around the dock area, knowing from experience that she always came back to the ship in plenty of time to avoid being left behind. The idea was to let the cat have her chance at romance on land, even though she was a ship's pet and forced to spend most of her time at sea. On occasion, she met a tom and later had kittens aboard the collier. When the cat was near her time, the men would watch her closely to try to prevent her from having them in too embarrassing a place. But one time she had them in the worst possible place: right on the bed of the second mate, who didn't like cats. The mate came into his cabin to find his clean counterpane covered with blood, the mother cat, and a litter of newly born kittens. In a rage, he simply wrapped the whole bunch in the counterpane, stepped out on the deck, and heaved the bundle into the sea. When the chief cook told us this story there was, of course, muttering against the son-of-a-bitch who would do such a thing, but each of the listeners seemed to know that there was a more important part of the story still to come. The chief cook did not disappoint us: he said that within two weeks a storm drove the collier aground and broke her up, and a number of seamen lost their lives. During this last voyage of the Scapa Flow there were several incidents which showed how superstitious our crew was about our pets. [ 140 ] On the day we were ready to leave our first West African port the Bum decided to leave the ship. He was seen walking up the dock by Red, the gunners' messman. "The mother ----er was movin' right along, makin' awful good time," related Red defensively, trying to excuse himself to an accusing crew for not having chased and retrieved the Bum. There were still several hours before sailing time, but as the time passed the cat did not show up. A half dozen of the crew members went down on the dock and searched for the Bum, covering the entire dock area and a good deal of the warehouse district as well. It was touching to hear some of the men, knowing little English, trying to coax the Bum out of presumed hiding places. "Come, Bum, son beech," they would say, supposing, though without evidence, that the Bum would be more responsive to such phrases in English than in their own languages. But still the Bum didn't show himself. The men in the searching party and on the ship gradually became more anxious. The entire regular crew grew infected with concern, and eventually so did the officers. The gunners didn't. As the crew strolled about the ship, hands in pockets, muttering unhappily, the naval gunners would ask such questions as, "Why are you so worried about the Bum ? Isn't Mickey still safe on board? We can understand that you might be worked up if Mickey were lost, but you didn't care so much about the Bum. How come you're so worried?" Almost all of the gunners were first-trippers; they didn't realize that the crew's concern had little direct relation to our affection for the Bum. This cat was one of the ship's pets, and he had gone ashore just as we were ready to sail: an evil omen if there ever was one. The men on the dock were still hunting for the cat when the Scapa Flow had to leave. The captain began to bawl out the first mate for having allowed anyone off the ship, and a group of men were dispatched ashore to round up the first group. The members of the second group were warned that all had to be back on the ship in fifteen minutes. A good part of the crew now being ashore, there was no danger that the ship would go off and leave them, so as soon as the second group made contact with the first, all the men looked for the Bum. It did not seem to occur to any of them that from an economic [ 141 ] point of view this search was ridiculous. The Bum was just an alley cat and not particularly popular with them, and for the offense of returning late to the ship each man might well be logged several days' wages. Even the Portuguese stokers, the most penurious men on the crew list; were unimpressed by the possibility of a fine. Back on the ship, after the fifteen minutes were up, the furious captain was forced to blow the Scapa Flow's whistle to recall the men. This proved to be very embarrassing to him, and later gave the crew many laughs at his expense. Our ship was a member of a convoy which was forming to move up the African coast, and the whistles of the various ships were to be blown only when the captains wished to signal for convoy purposes. When our captain signaled to the men ashore, each ship in the harbor interpreted the whistle as a convoy signal, and each, apparently, in a different way. Soon a dozen freighters and tankers were stewing aimlessly about in the harbor, some going ahead, some going astern, and nearly all drifting broadside. A British corvette hustled about the harbor like a sheepdog, rounding up the ships. Then she came over to the dock where the delaying offender, the Scapa Flow, still lay moored. The corvette was equipped with a public-address system, and its commanding officer commenced to bawl out our captain. "You should know better than to use your whistle," said the Britisher sarcastically. "Why don't you stop whistling and leave the dock ? You're delaying the whole convoy. Come on, man, get a move on, we haven't got all day." Our captain must have felt that he had to make some defense, He shouted through a megaphone to the corvette that he was whistling to round up his men on the dock. "What in heaven's name are they doing on the dock ?" boomed out of the public-address system on the corvette, Our humiliated captain had to confess, through his megaphone, that his men were ashore looking for one of the ship's cats. Not another sarcastic word came from the Britisher. "I quite understand," he public-addressed. "But try to get a move on, captain. Try not to delay too long. We have to assemble outside [ 142 ] the breakwater before dark, you know, or we'll not be able to leave here tonight." Of course, later at sea, the Britisher made up the lost time by an uneconomical, and even dangerous, sweating of the slower ships. Not until he had accomplished this did he reduce the speed of the convoy to that arranged beforehand, one which all the ships could make conveniently. Soon after the corvette left the side of the Scapa Flow, the searchers began to come aboard with glum faces. No luck. Perhaps because the men were so moody, the captain did not punish any of us. He vented upon us the sarcasm which the corvette's commander had first used on him, but he fined no one. The Scapa Flow left the dock without incident, but immediately she got out in the harbor everything seemed to go haywire. Our ship was Number Two in the convoy, and was supposed to thread her way second through the maze of mines and antisubmarine nets which guarded the harbor entrance. The captain simply couldn't get the ship to make turns properly, and on two occasions we had to drop anchor during bad turns, to snub the ship around. Even with this precaution, we once came very near to not making it, and for a few dreadful moments it seemed to a terrified crew that we were going into one of the minefields. Many of the crewmen standing round the decks, watching the attempts of our captain to get the ship out of the harbor, traced our difficulties directly to the evil sign the Scapa Flow was now under because the Bum had deserted her. Each time the captain was forced to drop anchor to make a turn he was delayed and had to give an emergency signal for "full speed astern" to the ship just behind us. Otherwise we might have been rammed while we tried to up anchor. The ship behind had to pass on the signal by whistle, and so on down the line of ships. The Scapa Flow was making a grotesque spectacle of herself. After our second bad turn the corvette came bouncing up to us, the little warship seeming to indicate remonstrance by her very manner of approach. The voice of the corvette's commanding officer came again through the public-address system, disgracing us before the entire convoy: "This won't do, you know, [ 143 ] this won't do at all." The tone of voice was precisely that of an indulgent teacher with an unruly child, The corvette's officer made the Scapa Flow heave to in a pocket formed by the twisting channel through the nets and fields. One by one the other ships filed past us, swinging jauntily around the turns we had so much trouble in making, while the Scapa Flow sulked, like a dunce in a corner. When all the ships had gone past, we followed along in their wakes, and, instead of being Number Two, we were now the last ship in the convoy. Of course some ship had to be the last one, but the Scapa Flow had originally had a good number, and our demotion to be the last ship in the line was interpreted by the men as being an exceedingly sinister omen. Ordinarily our demotion would have been blamed eagerly upon the captain, whom we disliked anyway and who had really been at fault. But for a time, and for a wonder, the captain escaped blame. Our position as last in the line, dangerously exposed to submarines, was blamed on the Bum, at least at first, But soon the men began to recall that while we had been in the port no cats or dogs had been seen on the streets, no pets of any kind. Because of the extreme meat shortage caused by the war, the natives had eaten all their pets. This idea spread among the crew as rapidly as a rumor. Of course. The Bum had been a fine cat, a wonderful cat, with only one fault: he made friends too easily; had even consorted with the naval gunners. And this fault had been his undoing. The Bum had been so friendly that he had allowed a native to get hold of him, and probably the poor cat already was being cooked for the native's supper. Obviously the Bum had just gone ashore for a walk and had been unable to get back to the ship, although of course he had intended to. In a surprisingly short time this theory had been adopted eagerly by a majority of the crew. This majority declared happily, too happily, that their fears were now at rest: there was no ill omen; the Bum had not deserted us; he would have come back to the ship had it not been for the hungry wogs ashore, A few die-hards among the superstitious men refused to accept this naturalistic explanation for a while, and the fury with which they were argued down by the majority showed how [ 144 ] desperately the majority itself wanted to accept its own explanation. And eventually all the blame for our tail position in the convoy was placed where it belonged, on the captain. I have said that there were at least two reasons for the popularity of our cats on the Scapa Flow. The second one, I think, was that while they were living things, like the men, they were completely impervious to torpedo nerves. Life on shipboard, particularly in wartime, is enough out of the ordinary so that it was a perpetual tonic to see our cats comporting themselves normally, no matter how badly we felt. During the terrible few minutes before we went to sleep at night--the worst time for torpedo nerves--it was the most soothing thing imaginable to see or stroke a cat. Late at night, in the Scapa Flow's messroom, sometimes a dozen men would silently watch Mickey lap some cream from his saucer. At other times they might play with him, offer him rope yarns to chase or bat at, but in the evening such play was rare. It was soothing, and yet invigorating, to watch him gracefully and unconcernedly wash himself, or lie down with the exquisitely smooth collapse of a cat. Things couldn't be so bad as we imagined if something alive were behaving so normally. 3 At our last West African port one of the seamen bought a tiny monkey--one only about half as large as the now grown-up cat, Mickey. Had the owner of the monkey not died in the torpedoing, he might easily have been killed by the survivors during the days we spent in the lifeboat, because of his treatment of the pet. The monkey was owned by the older of the two Puerto Rican A.B.s. Puerto Rico senior originally was fairly well-liked by the crew; this quiet dark-hued man of forty-five or so had given no trouble up to this time, and caused only minor exasperation when he and Puerto Rico junior--Romeo and Juliet--concertized too long with their guitar and concertina. Puerto Rico senior bought the monkey from a native for about a dollar. The native who brought the monkey aboard doubtless caught him in the bush to be sold to a seaman; other- [145] wise the animal would surely have been eaten. It is said that the hunters now have to go deep into the bush for monkeys because, due to the war-caused meat shortage, so many have been killed to form the main dish for the natives. In a couple of months' time, while visiting four towns along the West African coast, I didn't see more than three or four monkeys, and these were all in comparatively well-to-do homes. The little monkey--named Chico by Puerto Rico, senior--was a bundle of fear vhen he came aboard the Scapa Flow. He had a cord tied to a small leather thong which fitted around his waist, but he didn't have to be led by the native who offered him for sale. He clung to the native's chest like a baby, whimpering, his tiny eyes darting with terror at the sight of so many strange--and some of them white faces. When put on the deck, the monkey instantly would leap into the native's arms and resume his whimpering. Puerto Rico senior bargained for the monkey and got him, but he could not win his affection. After the native went ashore, the man dragged the monkey down the deck, Chico squealing with fright all the while. We huddled about the monkey, fascinated with this new pet, each of us trying to calm him by poking articles of food at him, and thereby naturally frightening him all the more. Puerto Rico senior grew steadily more exasperated at the tiny animal because Chico would not make up to him, and finally, with a snort of disgust, he temporarily let go the cord, releasing the monkey. Chico ran frantically up and down the main deck, and suddenly, with a squeak of delight, he spotted the chief cook. Without hesitation, the monkey hustled to the American Negro and raced up his trousers, clutching his shirt, and laying his tiny head against his chest. Only then did we see why Chico had been so frightened. The Negro cook was the only man among us who looked like a human being to the little monkey. Chico was taken forward and tied to a rail on the foredeck. This was to be his home, and if any of the officers or gunners wanted to see and play with him, which of course they did, they had to come forward. They had no right to take Chico amidships or aft. Now commenced a tremendous campaign on the part of the crew to win the friendship of the little monkey. The men, all [ 146 ] of them, paid him attention with desperate earnestness; you might have thought their lives depended upon winning his friendship. Their lives may not have depended on it, but their peace of mind certainly did. Somehow they seemed to feel that they couldn't rest until the monkey lost his fear of them. I felt this way myself: I tried as hard as anyone to make friends with Chico, and I am judging the other men's feelings by my own. It was inevitable that the very intensity of our desire for friendship with the monkey delayed that friendship, for we tended to frighten him with our strained advances. Eventually Chico began to relent and to accept from our hands the little bits of food we brought him, and even to sit in our arms. Almost without exception, however, he made friends with the men in inverse ratio to the whiteness of their complexions. He made up to the Brazilians, then the Egyptians, then the younger Puerto Rican, then the Portuguese, and so on. It was tough going for the bosun; the Englishman, the Latvian, and me, as we were fair-skinned and blond. I finally made the grade with a gift of some raw rice, which proved to be just what Chico had been looking for to balance his diet. But there was one man the monkey would have nothing to do with, and that was his owner, Puerto Rico senior. There seemed to be no just reason for Chico's dislike of him: the man was as nice as could be to him--in the beginning, anyway. Probably the monkey never really got over his resentment of the fright he got when first he was transferred from the native to Puerto Rico senior. It grew more and more disconcerting to the owner to see his pet making up to others and not to him. After about a week Chico would take food and petting from all the crew members except his owner. We couldn't help but laugh at Puerto Rico senior over his failure to conciliate the monkey, and the man steadily became more jealous of our success. He took it out on the monkey by teasing him, thereby ruining permanently his chances of ever winning Chico's friendship. Chico had become great friends with Mickey, and when the men were off watch they would sit for hours watching the two pets play. The little monkey was the more agile and intelligent [ 147 ] of the two, and would jump up and down stanchions and ventilators, with Mickey following ponderously behind. They always evidenced great interest in each other's tails. Chico once bit Mickey's tail vigorously, as an experiment probably, but he didn't do it again, as Mickey boxed him hard, rolling him over and over. The monkey was endlessly intrigued by the cat's eyes, and had one trick which provided leg-slapping delight to many of us. He would seize the lids of one of Mickey's eyes with his tiny paws, and pull the lids apart. Then he would put his face right up to the eye and peer intently into the pupil. As likely as not, he was captivated, Narcissus-like, by the reflection of his face in the cat's eye. Strangely, Mickey did not particularly resent this indignity; he would let the monkey have a good long look, and then would gently box him loose, as if to say, "That's enough for now." Puerto Rico senior first began to irritate the crew by trying to discourage the friendship between the two pets. Whenever he saw them together he would haul the monkey away, berating him in Spanish. The first time he did this we naturally wanted to know how come. Puerto Rico senior made some remark about wanting to keep his monkey clean and the cat getting him dirty. This fantasy drew immediate raucous sarcasm from the men. Everyone knows, or should know, that a monkey is among the filthiest of animals, and a cat among the cleanest. The Puerto Rican disdained to argue, and hauled the monkey away. There was nothing we could do: the monkey was his. We knew, of course, that the animals would play together again just as soon as he wasn't around. Puerto Rico senior got nastier. In his fits of jealousy, he often teased the animal before our eyes, exerting his rights of private property while we stood by helpless. He would stamp in front of the monkey, creep up silently on him from behind to boo at him, and snarl like a dog while the two were face to face. He would get the animal beside himself with fright and anger, and then would walk off, looking at us defiantly and laughing unpleasantly. He never tortured the monkey physically; he was bright enough not to do that. If Puerto Rico senior had hurt the tiny animal--it couldn't have weighed more than two pounds, [ 148 ] we would have instantly thrown property rights aside for monkey rights, and hurt Puerto Rico senior to at least an equal degree. His treatment of his monkey finally made us despise the man thoroughly. The situation came to a head when we were five days out in the Atlantic, alone, and headed for home. It was early afternoon. Most of the men off watch were still in the messroom, smoking after lunch. We heard a clear cry of alarm from the lookout in the crow's nest, high up on the forward mast, and a couple of seconds later another cry, this one from a gunner in a turret on one of the flying bridges. "This is it!" we bawled at each other. In a hurry, but without panic, the men in the messroom dived into their respective bunkrooms for their life jackets. We were all sure that a submarine had been sighted, and that we would soon be attacked. We were pouring across the well deck and up onto the main deck when explanations of the cries began to come through. Puerto Rico senior had thrown his monkey over the side. The lookout in the crow's nest had seen him do it. And the gunner had seen the tiny animal struggling in the water. With mingled feelings of rage and quivering relief, a great bunch of men raced up on the foredeck, from which the monkey had been thrown, to confront his owner. The man was small and older and less spry than most of us, but he was no coward. He was sneeringly defiant. The monkey was his; he had grown tired of it; he had killed it. We asked him furiously why he hadn't offered to sell Chico to one of us; any of us would have given him several times the dollar he paid for the monkey. The most benighted intellect among us knew why he had killed his monkey rather than sell him to one of us; he couldn't bear the thought of the jealousy he would continue to feel over the monkey's friendship for us and enmity to him. We formed a menacing ring around the man as one of us--a Portuguese stoker, I think--said one word which fired us all with a desire to settle all issues instantly with Puerto Rico senior. That word was "Mickey." At once, all of us were overcome by the notion that the man had also thrown our cat overboard. The idea was completely [ 149 ] silly. Mickey liked him as well as any of us, and he liked Mickey. But the idea took hold of us, nonetheless at least twenty men began to scream at him, in various languages, the equivalent of: "Did you throw Mickey over the side, you bastard ?" He denied the charge volubly in Spanish, and, lest there be some boggle in translating his denials, he shook his head violently. "Then where is Mickey?" we all wanted to know. He wasn't on the foredeck. The hot heads instantly concluded that this was proof that he had been thrown overboard. A concerted jam pushed Puerto Rico senior against the rail, and he was within a whisker of following his monkey into the sea. But some of us managed to stave off too precipitate action. After all, Mickey might be below in the messroom, or in one of the bunkrooms, or might even have wandered amidships. It was close, but the cooler heads prevailed upon the rest of the crew to make a cursory search for the cat before we threw the man over. Puerto Rico senior protested continually, sometimes angrily and sometimes as if laboring under an intolerable sense of injustice, that he had the greatest affection for Mickey, and that it was unthinkable that he would kill or hurt the cat. Mickey was found asleep on one of the bunks. In the next few minutes the Puerto Rican must have been told a score of times that if he ever laid a hand on the cat, for any reason, he would instantly be dispatched. Aside from this warning, the man was completely ostracized. Nobody would have anything to do with him. Even the Egyptians, who didn't like cats, kept him in Coventry. The first mate came storming up to the fo'c'sle. He had been pretty well licked in his attempts to entice Mickey away from the fo'c'sle, but he still liked the cat a great deal and played with him whenever he came forward. The mate had heard from the men what had happened to the monkey. He stamped up to Puerto Rico senior and said with icy clarity: "If you ever lay a hand on Mickey, you Puerto Rican bastard, I personally will beat the ---- out of you, even if I lose my license for it." Two days later the Scapa Flow was torpedoed and sunk. [ 150 ] Mickey was drowned in the sinking. His technical owner, Alabama, was one of the first men off the ship. Puerto Rico senior lost his life because he gave his life jacket to his younger countryman. At least a dozen of the twenty-seven survivors were convinced that the U-boat never would have found and sunk us if Puerto Rico senior hadn't thrown the little monkey over the side. [151]
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