The bosun went and got cockeyed with a couple of doughboys and came back with a bottle of cognac for Joe, whom he’d taken a shine to, and a lot of latrine talk about how the frogs were licked and the limeys and the wops were licked something terrible and how if it hadn’t been for us the Kaiser ud be riding into gay Paree any day and as it was it was nip and tuck. It was cold as hell. Joe and the bosun went and drank the cognac in the galley with the cook who was an old timer who’d been in the Klondike gold rush. They had the ship to themselves because the officers were all ashore taking a look at the mademosels and everybody else was asleep. The bosun said it was the end of civilization and the cook said he didn’t give a f — k and Joe said he didn’t give a f — k and the bosun said they were a couple of goddam bolshevikis and passed out cold.
It was a funny trip round Spain and through the Straits and up the French coast to Genoa. All the way there was a single file of camouflaged freighters, Greeks and Britishers and Norwegians and Americans, all hugging the coast and creeping along with lifepreservers piled on deck and boats swung out on the davits. Passing ’em was another line coming back light, transports and colliers from Italy and Saloniki, white hospital ships, every kind of old tub out of the seven seas, rusty freighters with their screws so far out of the water you could hear ’em thrashing a couple of hours after they were hull down and out of sight. Once they got into the Mediterranean there were French and British battleships to seaward all the time and sillylooking destroyers with their long smokesmudges that would hail you and come aboard to see the ship’s papers. Ashore it didn’t look like war a bit. The weather was sunny after they passed Gibraltar. The Spanish coast was green with bare pink and yellow mountains back of the shore and all scattered with little white houses like lumps of sugar that bunched up here and there into towns. Crossing the Gulf of Lyons in a drizzling rain and driving fog and nasty choppy sea they came within an ace of running down a big felucca loaded with barrels of wine. Then they were bowling along the French Riviera in a howling northwest wind, with the redroofed towns all bright and shiny and the dry hills rising rocky behind them, and snowmountains standing out clear up above. After they passed Monte Carlo it was a circus, the houses were all pink and blue and yellow and there were tall poplars and tall pointed churchsteeples in all the valleys.
That night they were on the lookout for the big light marked on the chart for Genoa when they saw a red glare ahead. Rumor went around that the heinies had captured the town and were burning it. The second mate put up to the skipper right on the bridge that they’d all be captured if they went any further and they’d better go back and put into Marseilles but the skipper told him it was none of his goddam business and to keep his mouth shut till his opinion was asked. The glare got brighter as they not nearer. It turned out to be a tanker on fire outside the breakwater. She was a big new Standard Oil tanker, settled a little in the bows with fire pouring out of her and spreading out over the water. You could see the breakwater and the lighthouses and the town piling up the hills behind with red glitter in all the windows and the crowded ships in the harbor all lit up with the red flare.
After they’d anchored, the bosun took Joe and a couple of the youngsters in the dingy and they went over to see what they could do aboard the tanker. The stern was way up out of water. So far as they could see there was no one on the ship. Some wops in a motorboat came up and jabbered at them but they pretended not to understand what they meant. There was a fireboat standing by too, but there wasn’t anything they could do. “Why the hell don’t they scuttle her?” the bosun kept saying.
Joe caught sight of a ropeladder hanging into the water and pulled the dingy over to it. Before the others had started yelling at him to come back he was half way up it. When he jumped down onto the deck from the rail he wondered what the hell he was doing up there. God damn it, I hope she does blow up, he said aloud to himself. It was bright as day up there. The forward part of the ship and the sea around it was burning like a lamp. He reckoned the boat had hit a mine or been torpedoed. The crew had evidently left in a hurry as there were all sorts of bits of clothing and a couple of seabags by the davits aft where the lifeboats had been. Joe picked himself out a nice new sweater and then went down into the cabin. On a table he found a box of Havana cigars. He took out a cigar and lit one. It made him feel good to stand there and light a cigar with the goddam tanks ready to blow him to Halifax any minute. It was a good cigar, too. In a tissuepaper package on the table were seven pairs of ladies’ silk stockings. Swell to take home to Del, was his first thought. But then he remembered that he was through with all that. He stuffed the silk stockings into his pants pockets anyway, and went back on deck.
The bosun was yelling at him from the boat for chrissake to come along or he’d get left. He just had time to pick up a wallet on the companion way. “It ain’t gasoline, it’s crude oil. She might burn for a week,” he yelled at the guys in the boat as he came slowly down the ladder pulling at the cigar as he came and looking out over the harbor packed with masts and stacks and derricks at the big marble houses and the old towers and porticos and the hills behind all lit up in red. “Where the hell’s the crew?”
“Probably all cockeyed ashore by this time, where I’d like to be,” said the bosun. Joe divvied up the cigars but he kept the silk stockings for himself. There wasn’t anything in the wallet. “Hellofa note,” grumbled the bosun, “haven’t they got any chemicals?” “These goddam wops wouldn’t know what to do with ’em if they did have,” said one of the youngsters.
They rowed back to the Appalachian and reported to the skipper that the tanker had been abandoned and it was up to the port authorities to get rid of her.
All next day the tanker burned outside the breakwater. About nightfall another of her tanks went off like a roman candle and the fire began spreading more and more over the water. The Appalachian heaved her anchor and went up to the wharf.
That night Joe and the bosun went out to look at the town. The streets were narrow and had steps in them leading up the hill to broad avenues, with cafés and little tables out under the colonnades, where the pavements were all polished marble set in patterns. It was pretty chilly and they went into a bar and drank pink hot drinks with run in them.
There they ran into a wop named Charley who’d been twelve years in Brooklyn and he took them to a dump where they ate a lot of spaghetti and fried veal and drank white wine. Charley told about how they treated you like a dog in the Eyetalian army and the pay was five cents a day and you didn’t even get that and Charley was all for il Presidente Veelson and the fourteen points and said soon they’d make peace without victory and bigga revoluzione in Italia and make bigga war on the Francese and the Inglese treata Eyetalian lika dirt. Charley brought in two girls he said were his cousins, Nedda and Dora, and one of ’em sat on Joe’s knees and, boy, how she could eat spaghetti, and they all drank wine. It cost ’em all the money Joe had to pay for supper.