“Why should they? Its the coin they’re after. They dont want to fight people; they want to do business with them.”
Congo did not answer.
The cabin boy lay on his back looking at the clouds. They floated from the west, great piled edifices with the sunlight crashing through between, bright and white like tinfoil. He was walking through tall white highpiled streets, stalking in a frock coat with a tall white collar up tinfoil stairs, broad, cleanswept, through blue portals into streaky marble halls where money rustled and clinked on long tinfoil tables, banknotes, silver, gold.
“Merde v’là l’heure.” The paired strokes of the bell in the crowsnest came faintly to their ears. “But dont forget, Congo, the first night we get ashore ...” He made a popping noise with his lips. “We’re gone.”
“I was asleep. I dreamed of a little blonde girl. I’d have had her if you hadnt waked me.” The cabinboy got to his feet with a grunt and stood a moment looking west to where the swells ended in a sharp wavy line against a sky hard and abrupt as nickel. Then he pushed Congo’s face down against the deck and ran aft, the wooden clogs clattering on his bare feet as he went.
Outside, the hot June Saturday was dragging its frazzled
ends down 110th Street. Susie Thatcher lay uneasily in bed, her hands spread blue and bony on the coverlet before her. Voices came through the thin partition. A young girl was crying through her nose:
“I tell yer mommer I aint agoin back to him.”
Then came expostulating an old staid Jewish woman’s voice: “But Rosie, married life aint all beer and skittles. A vife must submit and vork for her husband.”