The cruel light of the sun exploded all over the place. Again, I protested petulantly the glaring white paintwork all over the ship that blinded my eyes and sent red-hot pain searing through my long-suffering head. I laid my course for the messdeck and took off. A steaming, bitter cup of black coffee I'd been told works wonders, or the skin of the dog that bit you, or a pickled herring was good for a katzenjammer too. Since none of the latter were available, I knew where there was black coffee and I made for it.
In checking my tack I risked my precious retina and blinked up at the messdeck. There I saw a large, violet-colored, orange-whiskered nanny goat!
I rockily swung out, made the ladder and climbed up to face this apparition. She was there all right, accompanied by a swarthy, slender boy—one Argentinian without mustachios—and surrounded by admiring members of our crew.
"Howya feelin', kid?" Perry greeted me. "Bad, huh? Ya know what's d'best ting for dat—d'very best? Goat's milk."
"I don't feel good—"
"Dis is d'stuff for ya, den."
"You sure, Perry? My stomach's a little—"
"I'm tellin' ya, ain't it?" And Perry whirled his head around the circle of those others who stood there so fast, if they had said no he couldn't have seen it. Nobody said anything. Perry continued.
"See, what'd I tell ya? It's de healthiest stuff in d'woild." And he said something to the boy which must have meant "Fill 'em up." If my tongue hadn't been so thick and unco-operative, I'd have argued that "the healthiest stuff in the world" part. I mean, since I know—in fact, I have first-rate authorities who maintain that kumiss, mare's milk, supersedes any liquid lactic food in protein, vitamin and mineral content, and it's well known that invalids and infants among the central Tibetan tribe have been known to—
But before I could gather my scrambled, scattered wits about me, he'd ordered the boy to draw me a measure and he generously dug down into his jeans to pay for it. The young fellow sat a little can under the goat and squatted on his heels and squirted some of the old gray nanny goat's (it was a trick of the sun that keyed up her color scheme to violet and orange) milk into the little can with a sharp tinkling sound.
He straightened up and placed it into my hands and I carried it to my innocent mouth with no thought—g-g-g g-u-g.
Now as one who has experienced that I warn all in similar circumstances against imbibing from a greasy can any such libation fresh, warm, and smelly from any and all gray or violet-colored nanny goats. It's disastrous, and does not appease your misery—it intensifies your suffering. With a grievous hurt look at this guy Perry who had been my friend I stumbled, crawled, and rolled toward the bathroom back aft.
And I almost made it through that stretch of afterdeck with the rope cradles laden with case oil popping out of the open hatch and threatening to sweep me over side, when I heard a shout and someone calling me from the messdeck I'd just left. I turned. That renegade Perry was enthusiastically pointing me out to a pompous little man clad in an olive-green, brass-buttoned uniform. One look was enough. In desperation I tried to think quickly—shall I just jump over the side and swim the river or try to outrun this?
With these untabulated numbers of varied police uniforms, how did I know what law I'd broken? Under whose jurisdiction and what branch of the Argentine Police Department—federal or local—lay the crime I must have committed during one of those black vacuums in my memory of last night?
I scrambled up on the poop, with a vague plan to slide down the hawser, but about the time I reached the rail the little man in olive-green was already coming up the ladder to the deck. In one hand he held a folded blue paper. I've seen court summonses before—blue seemed to be a favorite color. Or was this a warrant? I looked down and a fit of vertigo kept me from going over the side, so I whirled and stumbled to the other side of the ship and tumbled down the ladder on the black gang's section of the deck. The little guy was taking short cuts and gaining on me. My head was beginning to clear now—the rush of air that swept by helped, I guess. I doubled back with some fancy broken field running I'd never believed I was capable of and made the shelter deck of the ship and beat it for the prow. This was getting me. I was breathing hard. I definitely smoked too much. I resolved then and there if I ever got out of this mess I'd quit smoking and burn a candle to St. Christopher...
