ROBERT SMITH, "YANK"
PADDY
LONG
MILDRED DOUGLAS
HER AUNT
SECOND ENGINEER
A GUARD
A SECRETARY OF AN ORGANIZATION
STOKERS, LADIES, GENTLEMEN, ETC.
SCENE—The firemen's forecastle of a transatlantic liner an hour aftersailing from New York for the voyage across. Tiers of narrow, steelbunks, three deep, on all sides. An entrance in rear. Benches on thefloor before the bunks. The room is crowded with men, shouting,cursing, laughing, singing—a confused, inchoate uproar swelling into asort of unity, a meaning—the bewildered, furious, baffled defiance ofa beast in a cage. Nearly all the men are drunk. Many bottles arepassed from hand to hand. All are dressed in dungaree pants, heavy uglyshoes. Some wear singlets, but the majority are stripped to the waist.
The treatment of this scene, or of any other scene in the play, shouldby no means be naturalistic. The effect sought after is a cramped spacein the bowels of a ship, imprisoned by white steel. The lines of bunks,the uprights supporting them, cross each other like the steel frameworkof a cage. The ceiling crushes down upon the men's heads. They cannotstand upright. This accentuates the natural stooping posture whichshovelling coal and the resultant over-development of back and shouldermuscles have given them. The men themselves should resemble thosepictures in which the appearance of Neanderthal Man is guessed at. Allare hairy-chested, with long arms of tremendous power, and low,receding brows above their small, fierce, resentful eyes. All thecivilized white races are represented, but except for the slightdifferentiation in color of hair, skin, eyes, all these men are alike.
The curtain rises on a tumult of sound. YANK is seated in theforeground. He seems broader, fiercer, more truculent, more powerful,more sure of himself than the rest. They respect his superiorstrength—the grudging respect of fear. Then, too, he represents tothem a self-expression, the very last word in what they are, their mosthighly developed individual.
VOICES—Gif me trink dere, you!
'Ave a wet!
Salute!
Gesundheit!
Skoal!
Drunk as a lord, God stiffen you!
Here's how!
Luck!
Pass back that bottle, damn you!
Pourin' it down his neck!
Ho, Froggy! Where the devil have you been?
La Touraine.
I hit him smash in yaw, py Gott!
Jenkins—the First—he's a rotten swine—
And the coppers nabbed him—and I run—
I like peer better. It don't pig head gif you.
A slut, I'm sayin'! She robbed me asla