“I’m sorry, sir,” answered the mate, looking away.
“Go and clean yourself up, Mr. Birch.” The captain turned to speak to Rio, but the steady blows of the chipping hammer were sounding by the fishplate.
Rio was standing outside the galley on the Nancy II when she steamed along the South American coast into the harbor of Santa de Marina. Once before, when he had entered the bay, it had been night; and there, tucked at the feet of the Andes, the town was obliterated by the proximity of the moon. This time, by day, he knew that nature had sustained a lasting brilliance to endure around the many-colored houses—beyond, the olive shade of mountain; and before, the whitest line of sand between the elbows of the cliff that closed upon a canvas of blue harbor. Lesser energies surrendered in an atmosphere of light that dominated cooler tones.
It was late morning and Rio saw the ancient, Spanish town suspended. Soon it would be siesta time—a quiet drink and heavy sleep while native children watched the ship and languorously ate their fruit. Rio did not know he had the same pure look of indolence. The shore’s breath and the sound of hidden insects were leeward to the ship; but Rio recognized them all. This was a town so close to him with heat and spiced, familiar odors, its bright mantle turned away the thoughts of other things. New York—its equidistant problems that changed with unexpectedness—was left behind, or so he felt; and just before him was a point of tropics with a sweet demand he understood.
As the Nancy II came alongside the banana docks she pulled up aft of another ship of about the same tonnage. The letters on her stern spelled Swamp Rat.
Rio ran forward to help with the lines. The gangplank was lowered and he went back to the fo’c’sle to wash up. Later, he saw the first mate, spoke with him and went down the gangplank into the heavy glare of the sun. Longshoremen were already unloading No. 4 hatch and the banana machine was being set up. A large gang of peons waited patiently to go to work. A sad-faced one with a skin of pure black saw Rio looking at them. He smiled suddenly, and from his squatting position jumped six feet in the air, clicking his bare heels together rapidly and coming down on one foot, his ragged trousers flapping. The rest of the peons clapped and laughed, shoving each other. But the black was watching Rio; and when Rio smiled, the black clapped louder than all the rest. Then quickly, as though he had just thought of it, he ran to a stack of freshly-cut bananas of a lizard-green. Seizing a huge bunch from the pile, he tossed it in the air and Rio, moving nearer, could see the hard muscles of the man strain as he caught it in both hands before it hit the ground. Some of the peons were chanting now, and some were slapping the boards of the warehouse with a native rhythm. But the black still watched for Rio’s approval and this time, when Rio clapped, the peon squatted down again, rolling his big eyes and making a clucking sound.
Amused, yet abiding by an adolescent impulse to exhibit, Rio walked to the bunch of bananas which the black had returned to the pile and took firm hold of the large stem with one hand. He threw himself forward, then backward and down, till the tip of the bunch was pointing upward and the stem was braced against his neck. Slowly he came up, the veins pulsing in his forehead and sweat trickling into his eyes. For a second he stood at full height. Then the white heat, the black men and the misty, green bananas began to turn. He staggered; but pulling himself together, lowered the bananas to the pile again. The peons laughed loudly and the big black jumped up and down. Easing closer, he examined Rio’s arm. At last, he called out to the others.
“Dos músculos en un brazo!” he shouted triumphantly.
A young oiler from the Swamp Rat nudged Rio.
“What did he say?” he asked.