1919 by John Dos Passos Read Free Book Online

struck a man yet in thirty years at sea but if he let another word out he’d damn well knock him down. Joe felt burning hot but he stood still with his fists clenched without saying anything. For several seconds Mr. McGregor just stared at him, red as a turkey gobbler. Two of the watch passed along the deck. “Turn this fellow over to the bosun and put him in irons. He may be a spy. . . . You go along quiet now or it’ll be worse for you.”
    Joe spent that night hunched up in a little cubbyhole that smelt of bilge with his feet in irons. The next morning the bosun let him out and told him fairly kindly to go get cookee to give him some porridge but to keep off the deck. He said they were going to turn him over to the aliens control as soon as they docked in Liverpool.
    When he crossed the deck to go to the galley, his ankles still stiff from the irons, he noticed that they were already in the Mersey. It was a ruddy sunlit morning. In every direction there were ships at anchor, stumpylooking black sailboats and patrolboats cutting through the palegreen ruffled water. Overhead the great pall of brown smoke was shot here and there with crisp white steam that caught the sun.
    The cook gave him some porridge and a mug of bitter barely warm tea. When he came out of the galley they were further up the river, you could see towns on both sides, the sky was entirely overcast with brown smoke and fog. The
Argyle
was steaming under one bell.
    Joe went below to the focastle and rolled into his bunk. His shipmates all stared at him without speaking and when he spoke to Tiny who was in the bunk below him, he didn’t answer. That made Joe feel worse than anything. He turned his face to the wall, pulled the blanket over his head and went to sleep.
    Somebody shaking him woke him up. “Come on, my man,” said a tall English bobby with a blue helmet and varnished chinstrap who had hold of his shoulder. “All right, just a sec,” Joe said. “I’d like to get washed up.” The bobby shook his head. “The quieter and quicker you come the better it’ll be for you.”
    Joe pulled his cap over his eyes, took his cigarbox out from under his mattress, and followed the bobby out on deck. The
Argyle
was already tied up to the wharf. So without saying goodby to anybody or getting paid off, he went down the gangplank with the bobby half a step behind. The bobby had a tight grip on the muscle of his arm. They walked across a flagstoned wharf and out through some big iron gates to where the Black Maria was waiting. A small crowd of loafers, red faces in the fog, black grimy clothes. “Look at the filthy ’un,” one man said. A woman hissed, there were a couple of boos and a catcall and the shiny black doors closed behind him; the car started smoothly and he could feel it speeding through the cobbled streets.
    Joe sat hunched up in the dark. He was glad he was alone in there. It gave him a chance to get hold of himself. His hands and feet were cold. He had hard work to keep from shivering. He wished he was
dressed decently. All he had on was a shirt and pants spotted with paint and a pair of dirty felt slippers. Suddenly the car stopped, two bobbies told him to get out and he was hustled down a whitewashed corridor into a little room where a police inspector, a tall longfaced Englishman, sat at a yellow varnished table. The inspector jumped to his feet, walked towards Joe with his fists clenched as if he was going to hit him and suddenly said something in what Joe thought must be German. Joe shook his head, it struck him funny somehow and he grinned. “No savvy,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s in that box?” the inspector, who had sat down at the desk again, suddenly bawled out at the bobbies. “You’d oughter search these buggers before you bring ’em in here.”
    One of the bobbies snatched the cigarbox out from under Joe’s arm and opened it, looked