American Front

"I will give you for six hundred kilos of fish forty pfe

O'Do

The first mate got a faraway look in his eyes. His lips moved in silent cal culation 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'Do

"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 rimes, 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'Do

"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'Do

"I should not anything say," the petty officer answered, and he didn't anything say, either. Instead, he gave O'Do

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 pfe

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 fuss. They were sailors, but they weren't fishermen. Their boat rode appreciably lower in the water when they cast off from the Ripple's rail and rowed back to the cruiser from which they'd come. The Yorck's crane lifted them out of the water and back on deck.

More flags broke out on the signal lines as the Yorck began steaming toward Boston once more. "Thank you," Captain O'Do

"Sure will, Captain," the mate said, and did.

George wished he had a good tall tumbler of Cookie's rum. Moving better than half a ton of fish out of the hold was hard work. With that on his mind, he asked Lucas Phelps, "Ever hear of a sailor turning down the jug?"

"Not when you stand to get away with it clean as a whistle, like them squareheads did," Phelps answered. "Wonder what the hell was chewin' on their tails. That's good rum Cookie's got, too."

"How do you know?" Enos asked him. Phelps laid a finger alongside his nose and winked. By the veins in that nose, he knew rum well enough to be a co

They hauled in the trawl full of flipping, twisting bottom fish. Once the load had gone into the hold, Captain O'Do

Nobody argued with him. Nobody would have argued with him if he'd decided to stay out another day or two and fill the hold right up to the hatches with haddock. He made his pay by having the answers.

Enos went into the galley for a mug of coffee. He found Fred Butcher in there, killing time with the Cookie. By the rich smell rising from Butcher's mug, he had more than coffee in there. Enos blew on his own mug, sipped, and then said, "Bet we'd be out longer if that petty officer hadn't got the captain nervous."

"Bet you're right," the mate said. "Captain O'Do

The Ripple puffed back toward Boston. At nine knots, she was most of a day away from T Wharf and home. Supper, near sunset, was corned beef and sauerkraut, which made the sailors joke about Charlie White's being a German in disguise. "Hell of a disguise, ain't it?" the cook said, taking the ribbing in good part. He unbuttoned his shirt to show he was dark brown all over.

"You must be from the Black Forest, Charlie, and it rubbed off on you," Captain O'Do

They rigged their ru

On the north side of the Charles River, over in Charlestown, lay the Boston Navy Yard. Enos looked that way as soon as he got the chance. So did Captain O'Do

Fred Butcher had his eye on profit and loss: he was looking ahead to T Wharf. "Not many boats tied up," he said. "We ought to get a good price at the Fish Exchange."

They tied up to the wharf and came up onto it to get their land legs back after more than a week at sea. An old, white-bearded man awkwardly pushing a fish cart with one hand and a hook mounted on the stump of his other wrist folded his meat hand into a fist and shook it at Charlie White. "You go to hell, you damn nigger!" he shouted in a hoarse, raspy voice. "Wasn't for your kind, we wouldn't have fought that war and this here'd still be one country."