At first this did not worry Otto at all, especially as it was rarely, save when Bates’ tone grew unusually acid or Otto happened to meet the bright, twinkling, cruel little eyes, that he knew what the man was talking about. But by the fourth day of what he had gathered was to be an eight day voyage, he was understanding much better—and he did not like what he was hearing.
“’Oo ever ’eard of a nyme like that!” Bates paused in his work.
The Scotsman went on hammering.
“W’erever joo get ’old of a moniker like that?” Bates spoke now directly to Otto. “Tell you wot
Nils went on with the job at hand—an intricate piece of dovetailing which necessitated him lying upon his stomach. ‘Scandanoovian’ had meant nothing to, him, and ‘fiver’ less.
But Bates was warming to his work. “W’y don’t you wash them ears, cockie?” He stirred Nils in the ribs with his toe. “Can’t you ’ear wot I’m assayin’ to yer? I said as ’ow I thought you wasn’t a bloody Scandanoovian at all! And w’y did I say that? Because I think as ’ow yer a bloody German, that’s wot I think! I think yer a German masqueroodin’ as a Swede! I think yer in the fifth bloody column!”
“Och, leave the boy be!” grunted the Scot.
Possibly, had his victim remained impervious, the Cockney might have paid heed. But, on repetition, Otto had grasped ‘Scandanoovian.’ And the words ‘German’ and ‘fifth column’ were plain enough. He was badly startled. He set down the chisel he was using and sat upright and stared at Bates. He hoped that his face was not betraying him by pallor. Half his mind knew that this was a clumsy, malicious joke—but the other half told him that such jokes can be deadly. He said nothing, wondering what to do.
The Cockney, encouraged by this reaction, rose to histrionic heights. His beady little eyes were cruel and twinkling. He began to gesticulate. He said:
“Didn’t fool me for a minute, you didn’t! I knew yer the minute yer set foot aboard; I reckernized yer by the shipe of yer ’ead. ‘Oh-oh!’ I says to meself, ‘A German, eh? Boche, eh? A bleedin’ fiver!’”
Otto decided what Nils would do.
“Don’ be a dom fooil!” he said, grinning and using his broadest accent.
The Scotsman looked up, studying the pair with lacklustre interest. “Gin I waur you, London, I’d be leavin’ yon laddie bide.” He spoke quietly, as if it were small matter to him whether his words were heard or not.
They certainly had no effect upon Bates, now playing to a gallery of three deck-hands who had stopped to listen appreciatively.
“So yer don’t like bein’ rumbled, eh?” He came a step nearer and stood directly over the half-prostrate Otto. “Don’t worry, cockie, they proberly won’t shoot yer—they’ll jest shove yer in a ’ternment camp f’r about six mumffs—till we’ve settled ’Itler’s ’ash! . . .”
Otto did not look up again—but neither did he continue his work. He was still desperately wondering what to do; striving to make no mistakes with Nils Jorgensen’s reactions.
“An’ by the bye——” Bates was lashing himself to yet greater efforts—“’Ow
The three deck-hands drew closer, all smiling broadly. The Scotsman, more intently now, watched Nils Jorgensen.
Bates worked swiftly to his climax—an imitation which he had rendered with unvarying success in many fo’c’sles and more bars. “I c’n jest picture the touchin’ scene when ’e gives you yer orders. . . .” He had whipped out a little black pocket comb and, while he was speaking, had combed down over his bony forehead a lank streak of dark, greasy hair. “Somethin’ like this, it must of bin.” He now held the comb in his left hand with only an inch or so of it visible, and he suddenly pressed this inch to his upper lip, where it showed beneath his nose like a smudge of moustache. As, simultaneously, he thrust out his right hand in the Nazi salute, the resemblance to cartoons and even photographs of Adolf Hitler was undeniably strong. And the harsh, whining shout in which he began to render double-talk German completed a parody of very considerable effect.
The deck-hands clutched each other in an ecstasy of mirth—and the Scot set down his hammer.
Each muscle in Otto Falken’s body was like a coiled spring: Nils Jorgensen was fast fading into the machine-made limbo from which he had sprung. . . .
But Bates—even if he sensed danger—was too much enamoured of his own performance to stop.