Chapter THREE: The Lower Deck

If you clamber down the accommodation ladder on to the well-deck amidships, you will find yourself in a world which will enable you to contemplate War from yet another angle.

For a guide and director I can confidently recommend Mr. Al Thompson, late of Springfield, Illinois—“No, _sir_, not Massachusetts!” he will be careful to inform you—now a seasoned ornament of a Trench Mortar Battery.

“We sure are one dandy outfit,” he observes modestly. “Two hundred roughnecks! I’ll make you known to a few. There’s Eddie Gillette: you seen him box last night, out on the forward deck there? Yep? Well, you certainly seen something!”

We certainly had. Boxing is an ideal pastime for a large, virile, and closely packed community, for several reasons. In the first place, it requires very little space. A twelve-foot ring will do: indeed, towards the end of an exciting bout the combatants can—or must—make shift with mere elbow-room. In the second, the novice extracts quite as much exercise and excitement from the sport as the expert—possibly more. Thirdly and most important, boxing fulfils the cardinal principle of providing for the greatest good of the greatest number, because it affords far more undiluted happiness to the spectators than to the performers. Last night, for instance, when Mr. Hank Magraw (weight two hundred pounds), a gladiator mainly conspicuous for unruffled urbanity and entire ignorance of the rules of boxing, growing a trifle restive under the cumulative effect of three consecutive taps upon the point of the chin from an opponent half his size, suddenly gathered that gentleman into his arms and endeavoured to stuff him down one of those trumpet-mouthed ventilators which lead to the stokehold, the spectators voiced their appreciation by a vociferous encore.

A wonderful sight these spectators are. They are banked up all around the well-deck, forming a deep pit, in the bottom of which two boxers gyrate, clash, and recoil like nutshells in a whirlpool. Tier upon tier they rise—with their long, lean, American bodies, and tense, brown, American faces—seated in concentric circles on the deck itself, perched on hatches and deck-houses and sky-lights, clinging to davits and ventilators, or hanging in clusters from the rigging—all yelling themselves hoarse.

The “announcer”—one Buck Stamper—stands for the moment at the bottom of the vortex. With each of his muscular arms he encircles the shrinking figure of a competitor, and introduces the pair to the audience.

“Boys,” he bellows, in a voice which must be easily audible in the surrounding transports, “one of the English officers up there has come across with—with—a ten-shilling certificate”—he releases one of his _protégés_ in order to display a pink-and-white British treasury note—“to be awarded to the winner of this bout.”

There is a little polite applause. Then a stentorian voice enquires:

“How much is that—in money?”

There is a great roar of laughter. The announcer retires, to seek an expert financier. A British marine enlightens him, and he announces:

“’Bout two dollars-and-a-half. On my right I have Ikey Zingbaum, of the Field Ambulance—”

The immediate conjunction of Ikey Zingbaum and two-and-a-half dollars appeals to the crowd’s sense of humour. When they have recovered, Buck Stamper proceeds:

“On my left”—he thrusts forward a smooth-chinned, pink-cheeked, lusty, country lad—“Miss Sissy Smithers, what has got in among the boys by mistake!”

Amid yells of delight the blushing Sissy shakes hands with his tallow-faced opponent, and falls promptly upon his neck. The pair, locked in a complicated embrace, circle slowly round the ring, feebly patting one another on the back. At the urgent suggestion of the spectators the referee separates them, caustically observing that this is a fight and not a fox-trot. For a short time they stand uneasily apart; then Ikey Zingbaum, stimulated possibly by his supporters’ constant references to the ten-shilling certificate, leans suddenly forward and boxes his opponent’s ears. Miss Sissy, stung into indignant activity, lunges out with all his strength and counters fairly and squarely in the pit of Ikey’s stomach. Mr. Zingbaum shuts up like a footrule, and shoots stern-foremost into the thick of the audience. He is extracted amid shouts of laughter, groaning horribly, and receives first aid from a dozen willing but inexperienced hands. Presently he recovers sufficiently far to be informed that he has been awarded the match—on a foul. Miss Sissy, not ill-pleased with himself, modestly disappears.

“Yes,” continued Al Thompson, “you seen something. Was you there when Eddie Gillette fit that duck what we call Coca-Kola? No? I’m sorry. Coca-Kola’s a Turk. Comes from Turkey, I mean. Las’ winter, when he was fighting around the Bowery, he would eat raw meat whenever he could get it. Said it kept him kinder fit. Anyway, he was put up las’ night against Eddie Gillette. We picked on Ed because he was the best man in the Trench Mortar Section, and Coca-Kola had been winning out all the time for the Machine Gunners, where he belonged, and they was blowing some. Ed was giving away more than seventeen pounds of weight, besides which the Turk was the sort of guy that if he was short of money he would go up to a person an’ say: ‘You give me two bits and I’ll let you hit me on the jaw any place you like!’ That was the kind of lobster Coca-Kola was, and gives you some sort of an idea what Ed was up against!

“The match was to be ten rounds of two minutes each. There was five dollars donated by an officer for the winner, and some powerful side-bets. But it was all over in one round. Eddie started by rushing in and giving the Turk a silly little tap on the nose. That seemed to get the Turk’s goat, for he went for Eddie like a cyclone, and rushed him all around the ring for maybe a minute. At the end of that he gave him a blow on the body that laid him flat on the deck. We all thought Eddie was gone for sure. The time-keeper had counted up to five before he come to life at all. Then he began to recover, very slow. At ‘seven’ he rolled over on his face. The Turk, reckoning that Eddie was too dopy to go on any more, just straddled around in the middle of the ring, looking up to the deck above for the officer that was donating the five bucks. But at ‘nine’ Eddie was on his feet again, like a streak. No one hardly saw him get up. All they did see was Eddie _soak_ the Turk under the point of the jaw—which was well up in the air at the time. Coca-Kola fairly knocked a groan out of the deck when he struck it. It took them two hours to bring him round. Gee, but it was some soak! Some of the Machine Gun boys cut open Eddie’s glove after, because they suspicioned he might have a chunk of lead there. But there weren’t nothing there. No, _sir_! Nothing but Eddie’s little old punch!”

We are presented both to the victorious Eddie and the dethroned masticator of raw meat. The latter is inclined to be taciturn; but the former, true to national use and custom, is quite ready to be interviewed.

Yes, this is his first trip across, but he is not seasick, and does not expect to be. Reason; he has spent twelve years on the Great Lakes, and a man that can stand the up-and-down convulsions of, say, Lake Michigan during a winter storm, need not fear the spacious roll of the Atlantic.

“There’s a ten-thousand-ton ship has went down there before now,” says Eddie, referring apparently to Lake Michigan, “just because them twisty seas has sheered the heads clean off her bolts and opened her up. Kinder ripped her, I guess. Every October owners raises the pay of all hands on them ships fifteen per cent—raises it voluntary.”

“Why?”

“Because the whole bunch would quit if they didn’t!”

This does not sound like a very convincing example of the voluntary system; but the great are permitted to be inconsistent. Mr. Gillette, proceeding, considers that life on board this ship is tolerable, but the food monotonous. Another gentleman, chewing tobacco, now joins the symposium. He is introduced as Joe McCarthy, of Oklahoma.

“You said it!” he announces, referring apparently to the food question. “Especially the coffee. The stuff they serve on board this packet ain’t got no kick to it.”

He is reminded that he has passed out of the coffee belt, and that he is approaching a land of tea-drinkers.

“Tea or coffee,” he rejoins, with the dogged persistence of the professional grumbler, “it don’t make no difference to me. And another thing. This yer travelling by sea is a lonesome business. Give me a railroad! There you can look out of the window of the car and see folks waving their hands to you; and presents of candy at the deepo, and everything. While this”—he flings a disparaging glance over the heaving Atlantic—“this is all the same, all the time!”

“Well, Joe,” explains the fair-minded Al Thompson, “I guess we _got_ to travel to Europe this way, seeing there ain’t no railroad across—leastways not at present.”

But Mr. McCarthy refuses to be comforted.

“Europe!” he exclaims. “There y’ are! Europe—four thousand miles from America! Some folks must be darned anxious for war, if they got to send us four thousand miles to find it!”

This last sentiment produces a distinct sensation. It is adjudged by those who hear it to border on pro-Germanism. Heads turn sharply in Joe’s direction. A certain licence is permitted to professional grouchers; but “knocking” the Cause is the one thing that the New Crusaders will not permit.

That simple-hearted American, Al Thompson, conveys the necessary reproof, in a manner which more highly-placed diplomatists might envy.

“Listen, Joe,” he remarks: “that stuff don’t go here. I know you been mighty seasick, and you’re sore on the food, and the monotony, and the other little glooms that come around on a slow trip like this. But whenever _I_ git sore on things just now, like we all do, I just remember them dirty bums over there marching through Belgium with little babies on their bayonets; and then—well, all I care about is _getting_ over there and killing any guy that calls himself a Dutchman. Let me kill a few of them first—and, even if they kill me after, I should worry!”