American Front Read Free Page B

the Navy. He turned to Enos. “Let down the rope ladder, George.”
    “Right.” Enos hurried to obey. He liked extra money as well as anybody.
    Dapper in their summer whites, alarmingly neat, alarmingly well shaved, the German sailors looked out of place on the untidy deck of the
Ripple
, where some of the haddock and hake and cusk and lemon sole that George hadn’t yet gutted still flopped and writhed and tried to jump back into the ocean. Blood and fish guts threatened the cleanliness of the sailors’ trousers.
    “I will give you for six hundred kilos of fish forty pfennigs the kilo,” the petty officer said to O’Donnell in pretty good English.
    O’Donnell scowled in thought, then turned to Butcher. “Would you work that out, Fred? You’ll do it faster ‘n’ straighter than I would.”
    The first mate got a faraway look in his eyes. His lips moved in silent calculation before he spoke. “Two hundred forty marks overall? That makes sixty bucks for…thirteen hundred pounds of fish, more or less. Nickel a pound, Captain, a hair under.”
    “
Herr Feldwebel
, we’ll make that deal,” O’Donnell said at once. Everybody on board did his best not to light up like candles on a Christmas tree. Back in Boston, they’d get two cents a pound, three if they were lucky. Then O’Donnell looked sly. “Or, since it ain’t like it’s your money you’re playing with, why don’t you give me fifty pfennigs a kilo—you can tell your officers what a damn Jew I am—and we’ll throw in a bottle of rum for you and your boys.” He turned and called into the galley: “Hey, Cookie! Bring out the quart of medicinal rum, will you?”
    “I’ve got it right here, Captain,” Charlie White said, coming out of the galley with the jug in his hand. He held it so the German sailors on the
Ripple
could see it but any officers watching from the
Yorck
with field glasses couldn’t. The smile on his black face was broad and inviting, although George expected the rum to be plenty persuasive all by itself. He was fond of a nip himself every now and then.
    The petty officer spoke in German to the seamen with him. The low-voice colloquy went on for a minute or two before he switched back to English: “Most times, I would do this thing. Now it is better if I do not. The bargain is as I first said it is.”
    “Have it your way,
Feldwebel
,” O’Donnell answered. “I said I’d make that deal, and I will.” His eyes narrowed. “You mind telling me why it’s better if you don’t take the rum now? Just askin’ out of curiosity, you understand.”
    “Oh, yes—curiosity,” the petty officer said, as if it were a disease he’d heard of but never caught. “You have on this boat, Captain, a wireless telegraph receiver and transmitter?”
    “No,” O’Donnell told him. “I’d like to, but the owners won’t spring for it. One of these days, maybe. How come?”
    “I should not anything say,” the petty officer answered, and he didn’t anything say, either. Instead, he gave O’Donnell the 240 marks he’d agreed to pay. O’Donnell handed the money to Butcher, who stuck it in his pocket.
    The captain of the
Ripple
kept on trying to get more out of the German sailor, but he didn’t have any luck. Finally, in frustration, he gave up and told George Enos, “Hell with it. Give ’em their fish and we’ll all go on about our business.”
    “Right,” Enos said again. Had he got the extra ten pfennigs a kilo, he would have worked extra hard to make sure the
Yorck
got the finest fish he had in the hold. Some of the haddock scrod down there, the little fellows just over a pound, would melt in your mouth. When Charlie fried ’em in butter and bread crumbs—he got hungry just thinking about it.
    But the young fish would also bring better prices back at the docks. He gave the Germans the bigger haddock and sole the trawl had scooped up from the bottom of the sea. They’d be good enough, and then some.
    The Germans didn’t raise a