“They never swear on Pitcairn, Skipper,”_The cradle of the deep

her. On Pitcairn gentleness rules, and cursing is against their law. I

couldn’t see how people could express themselves without cussing—but

anyhow I watched myself with a terrific strain in my following

conversations.

The young native girl in my overalls asked me:

“Have you any books to give to us?”

I was surprised that “white natives” could read, but I was anxious to

make amends for my swearing, and asked her and Miss McCoy to come down

in the cabin and help themselves. The only books we had on board at that

time were books on navigation, a doctor book, and a partial set of the

Encyclopedia Britannica with those volumes from N to S missing.

“You can take all of these,” I told them, “and the books on navigation

and the charts if you want them.” Miss McCoy grabbed for the doctor

book.

“My people are being wiped out by lockjaw,” she said, “and I am studying

medicine from books that passing ships give me, so that I can cure

them.”

That was why she was so revered by the natives. She was to save their

lives!

“For years our people have begged nails and canvas and ropes from ships

so that we can get enough material to make a ship to sail away in to the

mainland. I am going in to get medicine and I will bring it back here to

stop the deaths caused by lockjaw. There is a kind of a thorn, which

when it pricks a person, gives him lockjaw,” she explained. No wonder

Frances McCoy, the descendant of a pirate and mutineer, is looked upon

as a saint there.

Out of gratitude for the books and charts I gave them, the two women

gave me a beautiful screen made of skeleton leaves, painted with the

juice of wild berries and a small chest of carved coral. After our

bargain was made, we joined the others on the hatches on the main deck.

One of the descendants of Christian was asking about the war.

“In the Bible we read of far-off countries going to war against each

other. Is England at war now? A sailing captain of a German full-rigged

ship stopped off here about three months ago and said he would never

again trade with us.”

I hadn’t heard anything about the war that I could understand. I knew

that the price of copra had gone up because “soldier’s foods were

preserved with copra oil,” but it was just as indefinite in my mind what

war was as it was in the minds of the natives.

Then the conversation skipped from war to music. One of the men asked if

we had an organ to give them.

“What in the hell is the use of an organ in the South Sea Islands?” I

asked. The “hell” had slipped out, but young Christian answered before

anyone noticed it:

“We had one but the salt air has rusted it, so now it will give no

music. Next time you come here will you bring to us another organ?”

I guess the Pitcairn Islanders thought in America we could pick organs

off trees or something, so naïve and sincere were their requests.

At about midnight Father told the natives they would have to leave.

Sadly they departed, begging us to sail to them again, and thanking us

for our gifts to them. A Pitcairn Islander, when he is making a trade,

doesn’t drive a bargain like regular natives. They put down a commodity

such as two bunches of bananas in front of you, and then they say:

“I have made you a present. Now please, you will make me a present.”

It is our cue to give them a “present” in return, and if it doesn’t meet

with their approval, they take back their present and say, “I do not

make you a present.”

I was triumphant as we sailed away from the island of white natives. I

had a dress instead of overalls, feather fans, the screen and a box of

coral.

Father was leaning against the spanker mast watching the sails belly out

in the wind when I went to him.

“Hey, look, Father, all I got just for a few old charts and books,” and

I displayed my treasures.

“Charts? What the hell are you talking about?” he shouted.

“I gave them all the old charts I could find below and the books on

navigation and they gave me all these things,” I explained.

He didn’t stop to hear any more. He took me by the back of the neck and

almost carried me down in the cabin.

“Now what did you give them?”

I pointed to the empty place where the charts had been.

“How in the hell can I navigate now?” he shouted. This sounds calm as I

write it, but Father wasn’t calm. His face was blue he was so mad.

“I’ve heard you tell the sailors lots of times you were so good at

navigating that you didn’t need charts,” I answered.

I was sorry a moment later I had traded away my overalls for that native

dress, as the dress was no protection for the rope’s end that tattooed

my behind. I got a licking, but Father to this day has never bragged

about his navigating abilities where I could hear him! But he was too

stubborn to go back to the island for his charts. He had to steer by

dead reckoning the rest of the trip.

After that visit to Pitcairn, I could see why everyone who has been

there wants to go back. Maybe I’ll go there again some day myself. I

have heard since that Frances McCoy finally got off the island in a boat

which took the natives three years to build, to America. She landed in

Seattle, where she began to study medicine as she had dreamed. However,

within three months of the time she landed in Seattle she died a pitiful

death of brain fever. She was not accustomed to the noise and confusion

and strange life of cities and it struck her down before she could

attain her ambition of mercy.

[Illustration]

The clouds came down and the sea reached up to meet them and out of

their travail a sea monster was born!

I had settled down for a snooze on the mizzen hatch, bored by the

monotony of a dull tropic afternoon, when Father’s voice shook the air

with a “Clew up the topsails! Down with the foremain and mizzen!”

“Aye aye!” came from the mate on watch. “Aye aye!” echoed the sailors

forward, as they ran to their places at the several ropes. We were taken

“aback.” Slap! smack! went the sails against the rigging as the wind

caught them from the opposite tack.

“Sheet in the jibs!” Father took the wheel from the helmsman and sent

him forward to lend a hand on the halyards. I leaped up the ladder to

the poop deck. The wind had begun to hum with a vicious steadiness from

leeward. The sky darkened over with rioting grey clouds and the sea

became a funereal black.

Over the roar of the wind and the falling sails, Father called:

“Waterspout to leeward!”

I looked where he pointed and saw the horizon in turmoil. As I watched,

the clouds appeared to come down and the sea reach up to meet them. It

was as though the great God of Storms had mated the sky and the sea in

anger so that out of the resulting travail might be born the “terror of

the sea.”—Then, swaying and bending like a thing alive, whirling always

with tremendous momentum, a gigantic hourglass sped with terrific pace

across the waters, wearing blackness about it like a woman’s trailing

cloak. To me its base seemed the horizon, its top the middle of the sky

and its path led straight across our bow.

“Get the wind under your tail and give a hand here,” called Father.

“What’s going to happen?” I yelled.

“We’ll all be sucked to hell if we cross its course. This damned wind is

shooting us right into the belly of the spout.”

I grabbed half of the spanker boom tackle and tried to sheet in its

slack. As the sail luffed I got in a few feet, only to lose them when

the ship rolled back to leeward and snatched the ropes from my hands.

“Pull in the tackle,” ordered Father as if he were commanding a regular

sailor. I gritted my teeth and hauled again, but in vain. The wind was

too strong for my single strength. Closer swept the waterspout, swelling

and reaching like a living monster eager to destroy relentlessly

anything in its path.

Down on the deck the men sweated and heaved on the ropes to get down the

sails. Still the ship went forward, the current and wind taking us ahead

at the rate of two knots an hour with no sails up, except the truant

spanker sail that I couldn’t haul in. I heard Swede groaning and calling

a breathless chantey as he led his watch lashing down the main boom.

Bulgar, Nelson and McLean were straddled on the foot ropes of the

jibboom struggling to lash down the jibs which flapped and ballooned.

It was all chance and our fate rested in the lap of the gods.

Now there are all sorts of sea traditions and superstitions about

waterspouts. Some grave scientists who never went to sea write learnedly

that a waterspout does not and cannot sink a ship. But no sailor ever

would agree with those scientists and when you consider on the one hand

that waterspouts are tornadoes on the ocean and on the other hand see

what tornadoes do to cities on the land the justice of the sailor’s

attitude seems evident. A spout starts when a whirling, funnel-shaped

cloud hanging from a bunch of storm clouds dips down and hits the water.

The swirling wind starts a swirl of water and just as the land tornado

picks up a house and drops it a quarter of a mile away, so the water

tornado picks up its swirling column of water and carries it along.

Surface fish, driftwood, anything in its path goes up to tear, like a

huge hourglass, across the sea. But so temperamental is the sea tornado

that anything which changes the current of air, will break its hold and

the swirling upraised column collapses, dropping its tons on tons of

water back into the sea to crush anything beneath.

And, caught apparently right in the path of our waterspout, that was the

fate we faced. It is funny in a crisis how little things catch your

attention. With that waterspout racing toward us on the wind, the men

had to cling on with their knees and stomachs to keep from being whisked

off into the sea. I had never seen any of our crew show such real fear

in my life. They were as pale as the white canvas they were trying to

reef in, for a waterspout was no ordinary hazard. No calculations or

navigations could estimate what dizzy course it might take. I found

myself listening to the frenzied cries of the sea birds that came down

from the sky to seek the protection of the sea against the angry chaos

of the air above. Whenever sea birds fly low on the water in a storm it

is proof that the winds of the heavens are too vicious—too conflicting

for their wings. Rats leaving a sinking ship are not as fatal a sign to

mariners as defeated sea birds. The smaller birds lasted longer under

the beating of the wind than the big ones. An albatross, with a spread

of six feet of wings, flapped helplessly in the valley of the swells.

For the first time in the midst of danger my father didn’t sing. He bit

his lips together in grim determination and never once took his eye off

the fast approaching waterspout. He turned the helm and threw the ship

into the belly of the swells, a move that no sane navigator would do

under ordinary conditions, for a vessel is at the mercy of the sea once

she loses her balance in the trough of the breakers.

With almost an agonized screech he called the crew aft:

“For the love of Christ get this spanker in before we go nose in to

croaking.” Swede, the mate, Oleson and McLean, who had come in off the

jibboom, clambered up the deck. They hauled on the spanker tackle. The

rope wouldn’t give to their pulls. A knot had become tangled in the

block on the end of the boom, and that boom was swinging out over the

sea about fifteen feet.

“Send a man out to clear it,” ordered Father. Nelson volunteered.

“Now hold on out there,” the mate advised him as he started out the

swinging tackle, holding on with his feet and shinnying along like a

monkey on a stick. Once when the vessel rolled heavily the boom dipped

to the water and the waves lapped Nelson, almost sucking him under. But

he held fast. The other sailors stood at position on deck ready to haul

it in the second the block was free.

After what seemed hours, but in fact was only a few moments, Nelson

called: “Take it away,” and with one accord the men on deck began to

pull in the truant boom. Nelson hung on to the boom as they pulled it

in. The boom on a big ship is handled very much as you handle the boom

on a little fishing boat. There is a pulley block fastened to the end of

the boom and a pulley block fastened to the deck and the boom is

controlled by three strands of tackle running over the two blocks, the

free end of the tackles being cleated down on the deck. To help in the

handling of the boom as it swings over and to ease the strain, the block

on deck is fastened to a steel coupling which slides along a three foot

steel rod riveted at each end to the deck. This coupling is enclosed in

a steel lined wooden box or hood to protect the coupling from rusting.

The block itself is outside the hood and slides along the top of the

grooved opening. The wind had eased a little and the boom began to swing

over so fast that the tackle showed a few feet of slack. However, the

strain had been so heavy that the steel coupling had jammed slightly at

the end of the rail. McLean reached down in the opening at the top of

the hood to push the steel coupling free and hurry the boom over. Then

the wind suddenly veered back a point, caught the spanker and slung it

over the side again with a terrific jolt. A gruesome shriek of pain

split the roar of the wind and rattle of ropes and McLean fell in a heap

over the hood. His arm, just above the elbow, had been caught and

crushed in the grip of the steel coupling. The wind backed up the force

of the boom that held taut the tackles.

McLean was moaning. I heard a stifled, agonised “O Jesus” come from him.

But a man’s life is of little consequence when the fate of a ship is at

stake. That boom had to be hauled in or lost, no matter what happened to

McLean. But with the man’s arm crushed in the jammed coupling and his

body lying across the block the boom could not be pulled in.

“Chop away the jaws of the spanker boom,” came Father’s voice. No man

could be spared to do anything for McLean until the ship was safe.

Nelson had found his way back along the boom, holding on to the

leachings of the sail and was safe on deck now. With axes and crowbars

the crew set about chopping away the spanker boom. Better that it sink

into the sea than push us on into the path of the waterspout. I ran

below and brought back a big mug full to the brim with whiskey for

McLean. We had no chloroform or morphine on board, but the whiskey at

least would help him to endure. In my innocence I thought later it might

knock him out completely. He lay over the block, quiet except for a low

monotonous moaning. His breathing was very shallow. The veins in his

temples bulged in big throbbing cords. I poured the entire mugful of

whiskey down his throat. It might have been water for any effect it had.

The men hacking for their lives at the jaws of the boom and the rigging

had done their work. The boom crashed into the sea taking with it

riggings and stanchions of the railing. But even free of the boom the

ship went forward.

“We haven’t got a chance,” I heard Father mutter. He saw the waterspout

was traveling at a course and speed sure to bring it close up across our

bow.

Suddenly he shouted: “Joan, get my rifle!” I turned to run below for it

and as I was disappearing down the companionway I heard his next

command:

“Every man below the decks!” I could hear voices mumbling dissent, and

Father’s voice rose above the crew’s as though he were beating them with

his voice: “Get the hell below, you goddamned fools, or you won’t have a

Chinaman’s chance!”

I brought up the rifle and handed it to him. He had lashed the wheel.

“Throw a canvas over McLean,” said Father through his teeth, “and then

you get below!” Nelson had already got a big piece of canvas and he

completely covered McLean with it. I ducked below without hesitation; I

didn’t know what was going to happen. I wondered if Father was going to

use the rifle to kill McLean and mercifully end his suffering. I hadn’t

been below two minutes before I heard the report of his rifle! Then

several reports followed in rapid succession and Father came running

down the cabin himself, first closing the hatchdoor on the companionway.

“The shot busted it,” he said simply.

We went to the lee portholes and looked out. Father said the shots from

his rifle had started new currents in the air that broke the rhythm of

the waterspout. Like a wounded beast the spout seemed to stagger and

then collapse, dropping tons on tons of water, fish, and driftwood back

to the sea. The spout when it collapsed was nearly half a mile away but

the low heavy black clouds it came from were already over us and now

they opened and emptied themselves just above the ship.

Did you ever see a cork under a waterfall? That was our ship beneath

that downpour. Father had known what was coming and had saved the crew

by forcing them below, for not one could have kept on the deck under the

force of that bombardment with the ship pitching and wallowing in the

conflicting currents and undertows like some blinded thing.

McLean covered with canvas and held fast by his crushed arm was the only

living thing exposed.

I felt trapped down there below. The air was suffocating. The pressure

of the humidity was so great that my pulses beat rapidly and I broke out

in a cold sweat. Then in less than fifteen minutes the rain stopped

abruptly, the clouds disappeared, the sun burst forth and the sea calmed

as though nothing had happened.

“There won’t be a whiff of wind now,” Father said with disgust. With

typical sailor fatalism he had dismissed the horror of the waterspout

but he hadn’t forgotten the trapped man above.

“We got to get that poor beggar out of that trap,” he said, referring to

McLean. I went on deck with Father to help him. We lifted the canvas off

McLean’s body. He lay cramped over in a doubled position, softly

moaning.

“Can you stand it for another few minutes, old man?” Father asked.

He seemed to come from far away to answer: “Jesus, Captain, take a pop

at me with your rifle and finish it. I can’t stand this!” His eyes were

bulging in excruciating pain.

“Why, you goddamned bawling sissie, shut your face or I’ll leave you

squawking there all night!” Father yelled at him. The voice was terrible

to hear but there were tears in Father’s eyes. His bullying tone of

voice was a trick to give McLean the guts to stand the ordeal he had to

go through.

I was still shaking with fright from the terror of the waterspout as

Father spoke to me and sent me below to get some iodine and his razor.

When I brought them on deck to him he was leaning over, examining the

steel couplets that had clamped McLean’s arm.

“I’ll have to cut your arm off, McLean. It’s the only chance in hell you

got to get out of this steel trap,” he said.

McLean looked at Father, saw that he meant it, and that it was the only

way to save him, and he forced a smile.

“Go ahead, Captain, but do it quick,” he begged.

Father beckoned me to stand over McLean and keep his head lifted up. I

got my arms under McLean’s shoulders and heaved him up in a semi-sitting

position. Bulgar and Swede held his legs. Another sailor brought a

couple of buckets of sea water. Father twisted a tourniquet of rope

around McLean’s arm. Then he swabbed the arm just above the place where

it was gripped by the steel, and cut in with his razor. McLean tried to

watch him, but bracing his back with my leg, I put my arm across his

eyes so he couldn’t see himself being butchered. Bulgar and Swede jammed

down on his legs to keep him from thrashing about. In about a minute

Father had all the flesh sliced away from the bone. He leaned over to

Swede and whispered. Swede went over to the rail and got a steel

belaying pin. He raised it over McLean’s arm. I saw Father nod and say

“Now.” And Swede brought the belaying pin down across the exposed bone

of McLean’s limb and broke the bone as clean as a hound’s tooth.

“A bucket of sea water, quick,” called Father. They poured two full

buckets of water over the stub of McLean’s arm. Ocean water is the best

disinfectant against blood poisoning there is on a ship. I hated the job

we had to do, for I could feel McLean trembling like one stricken with

palsy. Blood sputtered out of his arm over the deck and over us. He

began to laugh in a delirious frenzy. I kept hold of his head and four

sailors gripped and held him so he couldn’t move until Father had

stitched up the shreds of flesh with catgut and a surgical needle. Then

we carried him below and put him in my father’s bunk. He had small

chance of living, but Father kept that spark alive with big doses of

whiskey every half hour. He left me to attend him, for he had duties on

deck that were more serious. With the spanker boom gone, the rigging

destroyed and no wind to steady us against the rising cross swells,

there was danger of us “shaking our sticks (or masts) out.”

For twenty-four hours the crew labored clearing the debris. They set up

a makeshift spanker sail, “jury rig” it was called, in place of the

boom. The horror we had been through was duly written down in our ship’s

log as follows:

“Thursday, p.m. 160 latitude, 32 longitude sighted waterspout.

Shots from rifle broke it. Seaman J. McLean laid up unable to

work. Crew busy clearing ship’s deck.”

Four months later McLean left the ship. There is no place on a ship for

a one-armed sailor.

[Illustration]

Strip poker and female struck—which of course have nothing to do with

each other

When I was about sixteen, we took a trip to the Line Islands to get a

cargo of guano.

“What in the hell is the use of getting a ship full of bird dirt?” I

asked my father as we neared our destination.

He was balanced on the taffrail cleaning and oiling his sextant when I

approached him.

“Well, besides stinkin’ worse than copra and bein’ a rotten cargo to

carry through the heat of the tropics, it’s used for fertilizer and

ammonia. Land folks ain’t so particular what they use to make their food

grow,” he said.

I was keenly interested, for we were going to a part of the South Seas

that was unknown to me. So much has been written about the colorful

atmosphere of the South Sea islands, but little has been said about the

tragedy that inhabits some of the desert rocks along the Equator known

on the charts as the Line Islands.

No tropical foliage flourishes there, no sea blue lagoons, no fruits,

flowers and long golden beaches enhance their nakedness. They are barren

reefs, spewed up out of the sea by submarine volcanoes. As you approach

them they look like snow-capped rocks with a fringe of white foam edging

them from the breakers that crash against their cliffs. The screech of

white gulls fills the air for miles around. The guano islands are the

home of the sea fowl. There they lay their eggs in mating season.

Millions of birds find those rock islands every year. The rocks are

hardly fit for human habitation, yet a few men survive on them.

The French government owns the greatest number of those guano islands,

and the income from them amounts to a small fortune every year.

I’ll always remember my trip to those places for two reasons. First, it

was on that voyage that I was introduced to the mysteries of strip poker

and second, I saw a man so “female struck” that he swam a mile through a

rough sea to get away from me.

The night before we sighted the Islands, Fred Nelson, Swede, Bulgar and

Oleson were sitting in the lee scupper under the fo’c’s’le head playing

poker by the dim green glow of the starboard running light. I wasn’t

allowed forward of the mizzen mast unless my Father was with me, for

that was the sacred domain of the crew. However, I went forward every

time I got a chance, when Father wasn’t looking. This particular night I

waited until I heard him snoring on his settee before I tried it.

Running along in the shadow of the sails on the leeward side I came upon

the four men in the midst of the game.

They didn’t pay the least attention to me. I stood by and watched them

for about five minutes and then I butted in.

“Deal me a hand, will you?” I asked.

Swede looked up at me and then spat a big stream of amber juice over the

rail. Oleson pretended he hadn’t heard me, and Bulgar just scowled his

disapproval of my presence. However, Fred Nelson was more sociable.

“Sure, Skipper, you can play next hand—but I advise you not to. This is

strip poker we’re playing.”

For the first time I noticed certain oddities in the men’s appearance.

Swede had on nothing but his underdrawers. His shirt and dungarees were

piled beside Oleson. Bulgar’s pipe and leather belt were in front of

Nelson. When the hand was finished Oleson handed over his clasp knife to

Nelson also.

“See what it is? Now do you want to sit in?” asked Swede.

All I had on was a pair of overalls and a faded blue cotton blouse and

me “as-is” underneath. With such a slim margin of safety to go on I

probably would have withdrawn but for Nelson.

“Don’t think you’d better try, Skipper,” he said.

As usual, opposition made me stubborn.

“What’s the reason I hadn’t? Gimme cards!” and I plumped myself down.

Swede dealt me a hand. The cards were so dirty and worn and sticky with

tobacco juice that it was hard to keep them separate in my hand.

“Ante up, Skipper,” said Oleson.

I looked at my hand; I didn’t even have a pair, but I wasn’t going to

let them bluff me out.

“One leg of my overalls,” I piped up.

All except Swede laid down their cards.

“Ain’t you takin’ a chance?” said Nelson, looking at Swede’s drawers.

“No more than she is,” said Swede. “Raise you a whole bloomin’ pair of

pants,” he bet, “and I better not lose!”

I could feel my face looked the picture of guilt.

“Two legs of my pants,” was my come-back.

“Call you,” grinned Swede. He showed a pair of jacks and a king, and I

showed him a six, seven, a ten, and a queen and threespot.

“Hand over the wardrobe,” he said.

I stared at him. There was nothing under my pants but me. And my pants

now belonged to Swede.

“Hand ’em over, Skipper,” he grinned.

Strip poker suddenly had become very unattractive.

“But—but—that’s all I got on,” I stuttered.

“What are you going to do, welsh?”

He stuck his chin out at me and his voice was the essence of contempt as

he taunted:

“’Tain’t my fault if you force yourself into a strip poker game on just

a pair of pants. What are you goin’ to do?”

I don’t know just what I would have done. Probably I would have taken

off the overalls rather than fail to live up to the code of a true

sailor, but Fred Nelson intervened.

“Skipper is a girl,” he said, “and she don’t take off nothin’.”

“I’d ’a’ give her my drawers if I’d lost,” protested Swede.

“All right, I’ll give you my pants,” snapped Nelson.

“It’s her pants I won!”

Nelson jumped to his feet.

“Do you take my pants or a punch in the guzzler?” he asked, very quiet,

for that was the way he always was when he fought. He could whip any man

on the ship except Father and they all knew it. Swede looked up at him

and grinned.

“Gimme your pants, Nelson.”

Nelson yanked off his pants, threw them at Swede and sat down beside me

in his underdrawers.

“I’m through with this game and so are you,” he said.

“But I want to win back your pants for you,” I pleaded with him. Bulgar,

the sly bully of the lot, spoke up. “I know how you can stay in the game

without taking off anything, Skipper.”

“How?”

He smiled craftily: “Pay your losses out of the slop chest.”

The slop chest is the sea-going term applied to the Captain’s ship store

of gumboots, sailors’ overalls, shirts, socks, sou’westers and shoes,

and tobacco. Father invested some of his own money each trip to stock up

with supplies and the expenditure was often a big sacrifice for him to

make, for money was as scarce as hen’s teeth. There was always something

to eat up his profits: the ship had to go into drydock, then there were

new canvas, ropes, and paint to be bought, bail for drunken sailors in

foreign ports, to say nothing of cargo lost or damaged by storms. As a

result Father kept a jealous eye on his slop chest. At sea when a sailor

wanted to buy something the cost of the article was deducted from his

pay at the end of the voyage.

This precious slop chest was stowed under the bunk in my cabin, and many

a time in the night when a sailor had to get a sou’wester or warm socks

or something because of sudden inclement weather, I would be routed from

my bunk while Father dug under my mattress to get it for him. I had

absolutely no sense of the economic value of things, for I never saw any

money. Everything to me was an article of trade, and I would just as

soon have given a fifteen dollar pair of rubber sea boots in exchange

for a pineapple as a three cent piece of calico. The idea that the

things in the slop chest were Father’s stores and important never

occurred to me.

Naturally, therefore, I hailed Bulgar’s suggestion with delight. Nelson

wouldn’t play but the others agreed I could stay in the game and pay my

losses from the slop chest. But the next hand was no better for me. I

got a pair of kings and I was so delighted with them that I grinned like

a full moon as I bet. With one accord Swede, Oleson and Bulgar folded up

their hands and wouldn’t bet with me. I was licked either way—if I

bluffed they called me, or if I had them they wouldn’t come in, and in

an hour of playing I lost three pairs of sea boots, one jersey sweater,

ten pairs of socks, four shirts and eleven plugs of chewing tobacco.

“We want our winnings NOW!” they warned me, and I knew it wouldn’t be

healthy to hold out on them. Nelson made no further attempt to help. He

was evidently disgusted with me.

I went aft to raid the slop chest, but I didn’t trouble to let Father

know I was doing it. I lugged my losings forward and paid them to the

sailors and sneaked back into my bunk, where I fell asleep with no

twinge of conscience.

The next morning Swede came to the wheel in new dungarees, jersey and

shoes, Bulgar went about cleaning brass in a brand new shirt and socks

and Oleson had two plugs of tobacco sticking out of his back pants

pocket. Swede’s outfit caught Father’s eye of suspicion and I held my

breath for fear he’d start an investigation. When Bulgar walked right

past him I knew I was sunk.

“Where in the hell did you guys get the new outfits—have you been

stealing out of the slop chest?” Father inquired. His question made me

wonder where I would be the most comfortable, up in the crosstrees of

the foremast, or hid down in the lazarette underneath a bale of rope.

“No, sir,” spoke up Bulgar. “We just had a bit of luck, sir.”

Father went below and I knew he was going to take an inventory—so I

went aloft and got very busy with a bucket of grease oiling down the

topmast. I figured that if I was doing some useful ship’s work when he

caught me I would fare better. I hardly had time to get up to the

crosstrees, swing into a bosun’s chair and start swabbing grease on when

I heard Father’s voice booming out on the deck below:

“Call both watches on deck.”

Keeping one eye on my grease rag and the other on the scene below I

didn’t miss a thing. Father made every man on board haul everything out

of the fo’c’s’le on the deck where he rummaged through everything

looking for the things that had disappeared out of the slop chest.

Father yanked the shirt and sweater off Swede and Bulgar and made them

strip. I heard the sailors trying to explain that they had bought those

articles of clothing ashore before sailing—and Father’s answer to their

alibis:

“Any louse that steals on the high seas ain’t worth killin’,” and he

landed on Bulgar and knocked him head over heels. They took their

medicine sailor-fashion without squealing and Father took their honest

winnings back to his cabin—satisfied that he had taught his crew a

lesson in honesty!

Swede and Oleson looked up at me in the rigging. I couldn’t hear what

they called me but I was sure it was no term of affection, so I decided

to remain aloft. I don’t know what they would have done to me but for

Nelson and Stitches, who of course knew the story.

“Skipper is a kid and she never had a chance in a poker game with you

robbers. It was honest stealin’ on her part and dirty stealin’ on yours

and you got what was comin’ to you,” declared Stitches.

“And if you ain’t satisfied and wants to get even, I’m glad to give you

some more,” added Nelson and then the cry from the look-out, “Land Ho!”

ended the argument.

Our destination, the Line Islands, was in sight.

“You can’t go ashore here, Joan. There’s no tellin’ what kind of

riffraff is livin’ on the island.”

Father sailed the ship in as near as he dared without striking any

sunken reefs. There was no sign of life that we could see, nothing

except myriads of seagulls circling overhead.

“Where do the guano gatherers live?” I inquired.

“In a rocky cave, near the water. They can’t live too high on the island

because the fumes of the guano make poisonous gases.”

I climbed the rigging of the mizzen mast so that I could get a better

view of the island. I hung on with my toes to the ratlines to keep from

falling off, for the swells and backwash from the shore were rolling the

ship like a pendulum. I watched carefully for about twenty minutes, and

then I saw a tiny black speck splashing in the water. As it came nearer,

I saw it was the figure of a naked man, swimming out towards us. He was

so burned by the sun that he was almost black.

“On deck,” I called.

Father called back: “Hello?”

“Look at the native swimming out to us. He is just a quarter point off

the stern,” and I indicated with my hand to the spot where I saw the man

swimming.

“He’s comin’ out to make a bargain with us for a load of guano,” Father

answered, megaphoning through his hands. I descended from my perch in

the rigging by sliding hand over hand down a halyard. By the time I

reached the poop deck, the “native” was within a hundred yards of us. We

waved and called to him, and he raised a brown arm in answer. I was

dressed in old faded overalls, and wore no blouse. My hair blew away

from my face.

“What dialect does he speak?” I asked Father.

“One that you don’t know, so for once you won’t be able to hog the

conversation—French!” I had never heard of a French dialect. I knew all

the easy languages,—Samoan, Marquesan, Gilbertina, etc. but French was

some savage language foreign to me. I wasn’t going to be left out of the

greetings, so I hollered as loud as I could: “Hello you!”

The native was right under the stern. At the sound of my voice he looked

up. I smiled down at him. “Hello again to you,” I said, and I smiled my

best native trading smile. The native, who was a white Frenchman, stared

up at me as if I were an apparition. He opened his lips as if to speak,

his face flushed under its brown and he turned in the water as if struck

by a bullet and swam back for the shore. Father called to him to stop.

On he plunged back towards the island, and never once looked back.

“What in hell’s the matter with him?” asked Father of no one in

particular.

“Female struck,” spoke up the mate. “These guys spend a lifetime on the

islands alone and the sight of Joan with her exposed neck and shoulders

and the curves around her hips set him nutty.”

“What was he afraid of me for?” I wanted to know. “I didn’t say anything

except hello to him.”

“There’s a lot of things you got to learn about men, Skipper. I seen

cases like this before. Sometimes the sight of a female drives them so

crazy they kill themselves.”

At that time I couldn’t understand the mate’s explanation. Why should a

man be afraid of me? Father sent the mate and three sailors ashore to

make the dicker for the cargo. When they returned the mate asked to

speak to Father alone. It was obvious that he did not intend for me to

know what he had to tell.

I was determined to know, however, so Father took me down into the cabin

and explained:

“A man isn’t complete without the love of a woman, some time in his

life, Joan. A seagull can’t fly with one wing, and neither can human

beings really live alone by themselves and be whole. That man was

convicted of a crime in France when he was a young boy about nineteen.

The French Government, instead of sendin’ him to Devil’s Island for

life, gave him the choice of workin’ for a lifetime on this island. He

lives worse than an animal in the foul atmosphere of bird manure. He

eats nothin’ but bird eggs and raw fish, and him just catchin’ the sight

of you made the man in him realize his aloneness.”

I had never been conscious of my sex before that time. Father’s words

impressed me so deeply that I began to wonder about myself.

For three days we hove to while the crew made trips back and forth to

the island in our boat with loads of guano. I had lost interest in the

loading—I could only think of the derelict on that barren island.

[Illustration]

A shanghaied crew and scurvy are poor bunkmates in a White Squall

The following September we set sail for the Gilbert Islands with a load

of trading articles to exchange for pearl shell. In our crew were just

three old members: Bulgar, the Swede and Axel Oleson. The remaining men

were shipped aboard at Sydney.

There was a labor strike on in Sydney at the time and to find a crew of

non-union men willing to ship for the voyage was impossible. Father was

up against it, but a crew he had to have and he was never a man to be

balked by seeming impossibilities.

Now there is a widespread belief that “shanghaiing” as a common practice

flourishes only in the stories of Jack London, Conrad and other writers

of sea tales, but deep sea captains and sailors know better. So Father

in his difficulty sought out a “sailors’ runner,” a ratty-faced little

crimp familiar with the waterfront, and made his deal—five pounds a

head for a crew.

“I’ll want them aboard ship by five o’clock flood tide. I’m goin’ to

sail tonight without waitin’ for any goddamned pilot and tugboat,” he

said to the crimp and returned to the vessel.

About four thirty that afternoon a launch sputtered alongside, and the

mate and two sailors lowered a Jacob’s ladder over the side. The man on

the launch yelled up at them:

“Put over a cargo boom. These beggars won’t come to until you hit the

Equator.”

I looked over the side and saw eight lumps of flesh, eight dead men, so

it seemed, sprawled over the bottom of the launch like so many sacks of

wet wheat. With every roll of the launch the bodies pitched from side to

side in grotesque rhythm. Our men rigged up a cargo boom and tackle and

the man on the launch slipped a running bowline around one of the limp

hunks of flesh.

“Take it away!” he grunted, and the sailors, with my help, pulled up the

load.

It was a blond, husky Scandinavian. His body landed on the deck with a

dull thud.

“Is he dead?”

The mate only looked at me contemptuously—as if anything could kill a

Swede—and threw back the tackle for the next load of flesh. Over and

over again they repeated that process until a row of eight bodies was on

deck. The mate told me to call my father. I went below, almost sick, for

I thought the men were dead. However, I was better trained in the code

of the sea than to let anyone see I was affected by the sight of eight

men laid out like corpses on the deck of the schooner.

I brought Father back with me. He reached down and picked up the foot of

the first man and let it drop back with a lifeless thud on the deck.

“He’ll be a good man on a halyard,” he said, and passed on to the next

one. He was a dirty, uncouth-looking person so black with coal dust that

he looked negroid.

“What a hell of a mess this is to soak me five pounds for,” and he

passed on to the next and the next until he had felt the muscles of each

one. Satisfied that he had a good load of “beef” to pull on ropes in a

storm or pump ship if a leak should spring, Father signalled the launch

to cast off.

Turning to the mate, Father said:

“Take these so and so’s forrard to the fo’c’s’le and lock them in, then

come aft and stand by. We’ll sail out tonight anyway and sign those”

(indicating the unconscious sailors) “on the Ship’s Articles when they

come out of it. You, Joan, take the wheel. I’ll lend a hand to set

enough sail to get out of here.”

I was just short of sixteen at that time, husky and as strong as most

men, and I felt myself to be as good a sailor as ever held a ship to a

course. I went up on the poop deck to the helm, unleashed it and pulled

with all my strength on its spokes.

“Hard over,” called Father, and I slowly turned the big wheel.

“Hard over” means to turn the wheel completely around. Under my hands

the wheel didn’t turn as quickly as it should have, and Father let out a

volley of curses at me that made the sky blue, but it also put vitality

into me or scared some more strength into my arms, for I pulled the helm

around as the wind caught the topsails and we glided out the Heads for

the Gilbert Islands.

It was a hard week, that first one out, for the men were so drugged and

beaten that they were slow in regaining consciousness. Three sailors,

Father, the cook and myself navigated that big schooner, which in fair

weather ordinarily required sixteen men to handle. I took the helm in

the daytime, the sailors stood by the fore and main masts and the cook

tended the jibs. Father slept in his clothes.

On the fourth day out we ran into the electrical storms off Lord Howe

Island. Lord Howe is a barren island off the Australian coast, around

which all the fury of the China Sea, Indian Ocean and South Pacific

gathers. I’ll never forget it—lightning so blinding and near that it

made our eyes blur with blue shadows! Thunder which rattled so loud and

so close that it reverberated on the deck!

And then, right in the midst of the thunderstorm the wind suddenly

veered from southeast to north—northwest and we had to tack ship to

keep from running aground.

The mate went aloft to free a tangled block from the mizzen topsail. He

had reached the crosstrees and was straddled on them to balance himself

as he freed the rope from the block. The lightning rods on the tops of

the mast were alive with fire—they looked like huge gas jets aflame on

the top of each spar. I was at the wheel, tied there by two ropes to

keep from washing overboard in the seas that were sweeping over the poop

deck. Father looked up to see if it was all clear aloft so he could let

go the mizzen boom to tack over, when a streak of lightning made him

cover his eyes with his hands to keep from being blinded. At the wheel I

put my face down in my overalls’ bib, and I guess the other men hid

their eyes from the fiery onslaught of streak lightning, for not one of

them saw just what happened. The mate aloft must have touched a ring

bolt of steel on the mast and received the full shock! He dropped from

the crosstrees to the deck, and his body was crushed into a mangled pulp

by the fall. Before anyone could reach the spot where he fell a green

sea swept across the deck and carried him overboard! It was too

horrible—too gruesome! I crumbled inside. I don’t know what would have

happened to me if a sea hadn’t washed over the poop and almost smothered

me with water bringing me to.

The ship was “around” or tacked, and we were trying to hold her head up

to the wind and keep her out of the belly of the swells to avoid

capsizing. We couldn’t possibly hold out much longer as the terrific

strain had told on her strength. There seemed only one thing to be done

as a last resort—revive the shanghaied sailors.

Father went into the fo’c’s’le and attempted to rouse them. They only

moaned and turned over and slept, or didn’t move at all. It was four

days later, exactly eight days from the time they were sent aboard ship,

that they regained consciousness. The crimp had made a good job of them.

He had first drugged them and then his gang beat them to lifelessness.

Of the eight only two were sailors; the others were not worth their

beans at sea as a crew. One was a waiter, another a truck driver,

another a coal passer, another a cattle man and still another a hopeless

dope fiend. The crimp had had a hard time finding heads to make up his

blood money of five pounds apiece, so he had raided a waterfront saloon

and made a wholesale slaughter of the available men he had found

standing at the bar. All of them except the two sailors were seasick and

cowardly of the storm.

With the mate dead and a bunch of landlubbers for a crew in one of the

worst storms of the South Pacific, Father turned into a savage. The men

had to sign on the Ship’s Articles as seamen. It is maritime law that

every man voluntarily sign his own name to the Articles, and in doing

so, he becomes liable to obey the laws of the sea as dictated by the

master of the ship. Once those men had put their signatures to the

Articles, Father had them! They didn’t want to sign, but when he invited

them to sign or get off and walk, they wrote their names willingly.

Immediately after signing, the coal passer and cattle man made the

mistake of refusing to go aloft to shift the topsails in the storm.

Father took his revolver and pointed it at them.

“You dirty blank so and so’s, you’re sailors now. Get aloft and make

fast those sails or you’ll go over the side. Swimming isn’t crowded

around here,” and he pointed to the seething ocean to windward. They

went aloft.

The entire trip up through the islands was like that. Father was

captain, mate and part of the crew and I was chief helmsman. The crew

were unwilling prisoners, and they made life aboard a lively hell for us

all.

As a result of poor seamanship and adverse winds, it took us

ninety-three days to reach Papua. The ship was a mass of wreckage on

deck—broken pieces of booms and rigging cluttered the scuppers. There

was never any time during that trip that we had an uneventful day.

Southerly busters, those vicious white squalls of the South Seas,

smacked our schooner and tossed us around like a cockleshell on the

water. Then we reached the doldrums, that great area of deadly calms.

Even in the calms there was no respite from the slapping and smashing of

the rigging which was useless for sailing purposes and its battered

condition. Ground swells from some distant storms shook the _Minnie A.

Caine_ until she wallowed like a drunken sailor.

Most people think the real dangers of the sea are storms, but to the

deep sea sailor there is a terror greater than wind or sea which stalks

in the wake of sailing ships long overdue—scurvy. Scurvy is caused by

lack of fresh food, unhealthy water and heat on salt foods. The disease

acts insidiously; the victim doesn’t know he has it until terrific pains

in his stomach make it impossible for him to eat anything. Then come

headaches, blinding and maddening. The body appears dry and withered

like the husk of a coconut. Fever and delirium follow, and in a short

time, if medical relief or fresh food is not obtained—death!

Contrary to popular ideas and the maritime law of all countries, a

ship’s medicine chest usually contains nothing but Friar’s Balsam, which

is a sea-going iodine, salts, and blue ointment for vermin; none of

which is a cure for scurvy.

Under the hardships of our voyage it was no wonder that we fell victim.

For days at a time, while the decks were awash with swirling seas, the

cook could prepare no meals. Time and again vainly he attempted to build

a fire in the galley but no sooner would it begin to draw than the ship

would list heavily to port, submerging the galley, cook and his pans in

green seas. As a consequence we lived on dried salt fish and lime juice.

The shanghaied men couldn’t even stomach that, and they were the first

to be stricken with scurvy. The coal passer had the worst dose of all.

His teeth dropped out one by one. His body withered. He seemed at the

point of death. The cattleman, who was a sailor by circumstance, lost

his eyesight. None of us could sleep.

We put up the distress signal at the masthead and took turns standing on

look-out aloft for signs of another ship or tramp steamer to bring us

relief. That red flag branded us as an outlaw, a crippled ship with a

diseased, dying crew aboard. All around us lay the monotonous circle of

horizon without a sign of life, except for an occasional whale or school

of flying fish. And so we wallowed on, expecting—waiting for death.

I was the last to get the scurvy. I suppose that was because I was the

youngest and healthiest on board. When it did hit me it was horrible. I

felt I was dying from the outside in. I would sit for hours and peel

dead skin off my body. When I look back on those days now I wonder how

we ever lived through it. Scurvy seems to make savages of men at

sea—they lose all sense of balance. There is nowhere to turn for

help—nothing to do but suffer and wait for it to finish you. Only my

father raved at the bad luck:

“It’s a goddamned shame. If I had anything but a bunch of vomitin’

landlubbers for a crew we’d be in Honolulu now.” He paced up and down

the poop deck from the rail to the binnacle and back. I crouched on the

hawser bit astern, picking dead skin off my arm.

“Porpoise!!”

The cry brought us all to our feet. There, close to us on the windward

side was a school of about twenty porpoises diving and snorting in the

spray of the bowsprit.

“All hands on deck! Man the capstan! Stand by the harpoon!”

Father rushed forward over the debris on deck. In less than five minutes

every living man aboard was on the fo’c’s’le head standing by to help

land a porpoise.

A porpoise is a mammal and its meat is very like that of beef. If we

could land one it would furnish fresh food for a week. Father stood down

on the martingale under the jibboom, harpoon in hand. We waited praying

for the porpoise to come near. The thin leader line from the harpoon was

fastened to a three-quarter inch rope made fast to the capstan.

So eager was I to help land the porpoise that, not realizing what I was

doing, I twisted the leader line of the harpoon around my hands. A big

porpoise dived under the bow. Father hurled the harpoon. It struck the

porpoise amidships and sunk in deep. The porpoise let out a squeal like

a stuck pig and dived.

“Play out the leader line,” called Father.

He was going to let the porpoise have plenty of rope for it couldn’t get

away with a steel harpoon through it, and sooner or later that harpoon

would take its life. Six fathoms of line played out quickly, and then

suddenly I was jerked with a terrific force to the edge of the fo’c’s’le

head. The porpoise, diving deep, had used up the slack, and I couldn’t

let go of the rope twisted around my hands. Slowly it slipped as the

porpoise, with its two tons of weight, pulled, and the slipped rope

burned inches into my hands, cutting, burning the flesh off down to the

bone. I was being dragged overboard with only my own strength against

that of the maddened, dying porpoise.

Two sailors grabbed me, trying to hold me back. They nearly pulled my

arms from their sockets, but the porpoise took us all closer and closer

to the edge of the low rail. Father looked up from the martingale and

saw what was happening. He reached out, grabbed the taut leader line,

and with a jerk using all his strength, managed to slack it for a

moment. The porpoise, under the water, changed its course, turning back

underneath the keel. That saved my life. The leader line caught in the

hawse hole and held until one of the men cut the line free. The porpoise

was gone, taking that harpoon with it.

The line was twisted and cut into my hands so deeply that Father had to

pull it out. He looked at the raw flesh hanging on the bone, and without

wasting words, dashed for the galley. In a minute he was back with a

handful of wet salt.

“Hold out your hands.”

I held them out and he spread that wet salt on the deep burns. The pain

was so great I thought I couldn’t stand it. I suppose now if that

happened to me I would cry or moan or faint, but then I took it like a

sailor. I cursed until the air was blue, and cursing that way held back

the tears, for I would rather have been drawn and quartered than have

let a sailor see me bawl—even though those sailors were seasick,

shanghaied landlubbers.

The men set about to harpoon another porpoise and got one on deck within

an hour. As they hoisted it aboard it opened its long snout and squealed

and hollered. Father shot it several times, then chopped its head off

with an ax.

The men were like vultures, hovering around for the first taste of its

blood to relieve their fevered throats. The Jap cook snatched the ax

from Father’s hand and licked the raw blood off it. Then Father hacked

off a piece of blubber and meat for each sailor. He gave me a piece of

its bloody liver and the tragedy then was not my burned hands, but that

I couldn’t hold anything in them to eat. I lay down on the fo’c’s’le

head and lapped up the blood, chewing at the liver like a dog.

That fresh blood saved our lives. Five days later we dropped anchor in

Papua, a “plague ship” manned by semi-delirious men.

It is such things as this that make me wonder why land folks think being

the daughter of a sea captain is so romantic.

[Illustration]

The Dance of the Virgins on Atafu

At Papua we all put in to the marine hospital for treatment. One of the

most dangerous things to do after starvation and scurvy is to eat, but

it is almost impossible to keep from gorging oneself on food at the

first opportunity. I traded a plug of tobacco with a native for a dozen

bananas and I ate ten of them. The result was that my stomach swelled

and I took on the proportions of a fat turtle in pain.

We were in port for a month, while the ship was being repaired and the

sailors were recovering. If Father could have found any sailors at Papua

he would have shipped them in a minute, but they are scarce in that part

of the world, and beachcombers or halfbreed natives were the only crew

he could assemble as he struck out once more from Papua to the Union

Group of Islands, which are situated about twenty-eight degrees south of

the Equator and one hundred sixty-seven longitude west.

All of the hardship of the trip thus far was paid for as far as I was

concerned when we made Atafu. This is the largest island of the Union

Group, and at that it is only three miles long by half a mile wide. It

is atoll shaped, around a blue lagoon of clear water. Atafu is what is

known as one of the coral islands, for its base is pale pink coral. The

island rises about three feet above sea level, and is covered with thick

tropical foliage. The palms are thirty to forty feet high, and the

underbrush is a tangled jungle of tropic vines.

Breadfruit trees, coconuts, yarrow root, banana and plantain palms,

blossoming hibiscus flowers, poisonous wild peas, giant morning-glory

vines and little native berry plants grow there in such profusion that

as you approach the southeast side of the island it looks like a solidly

woven mat of green and white. The beauty of Atafu is distinct from other

South Sea islands. The sand on its horse-shoe beach is an orange gold,

the coral jutting out under the white spray of the surf a delicate pink

against the transparent green sea. Then within almost a stone’s throw

from the beach inland lies the opalescent, bottomless lagoon. The

natives say that at the bottom of the lagoon, which is so deep it has

never been fathomed, in the “Sunset Land”: their heaven. They will tell

you in all earnestness that that lagoon reaches to the other side of the

earth where the sunsets are painted, and as natives worship beauty that

far away the place at the pit of the lagoon is to them the “hereafter.”

The village which nestles on the edge of the jungle is composed of queer

little three-cornered houses of coconut fibre matting. These houses are

movable, and if the wind veers around or rain comes, the native husband

turns his hut around to keep out the storm. The huts are only about four

by six feet, and can be lifted by one man—it is no uncommon sight to

sail up to Atafu and find the whole village gone. Not a sign of a hut or

a living thing anywhere. That happens in the hurricane months, which are

June and July in the tropics. The island is so low to sea level, that

the giant breakers whipped up by a hurricane wash far upshore, even to

the edge of the lagoon. The natives spend six months a year preparing

for their winter. On the lee of the island, they dig caves and barricade

them with twigs and woven palm leaves to shut out the wind. The women

dry fruit and fish and bury it in the bottom of the cave for provision

during the two months of hiding. One of the rarest delicacies they

preserve is sun-dried plantains. These plantains are a species of

banana. They let the intense heat of the sun crystallize them to sugar,

then wrap them in damp leaves of morning-glory plants. The plantain thus

wrapped turns to a sugary wine. They are wrapped up in little bundles

that look like a Spanish tamale. I knew of some travellers who were

touring the South Seas and their charts gave an accurate position of the

native villages on each island in that group. When they returned to

Australia they reported that they had found no sign of life. That was

because they arrived there during hurricane time. I once asked a native

Chief if his people didn’t grow restless during the two months they were

buried alive on the island, and he said “No, they all get very

no-doing,” which means drunk. The native men take coconuts and punch

holes in the nut to let air get to the milk. Then they stop it up and

let it ferment, thus brewing a liquor that is more deadly than any

pre-Volstead drink ever conceived. I saw one of our sailors take a

couple of drinks of coconut wine, and topple over me as if he had been

hit on the head with a belaying pin, so I never pitied those natives who

were forced by the elements to lie in a cave and suck wine while the

sailors at sea had to struggle to keep a ship afloat.

The trip to Atafu was uneventful, except for Father’s vocabulary of

profanity which he developed in finding expletives to describe his

landlubber crew’s seamanship.

About five o’clock of the night of October 19th, we hove to off Atafu.

There is no anchorage there so we had to drop extra sail and keep the

ship up in the wind. The natives had evidently sighted us long before we

saw Atafu, for the beach was a swarming mass of black men, wildly

gesticulating to us.

Father called to me, “You get your trading stuff on the poop deck, Joan,

we want to get a chance to trade before you cheat them out of their

breech clouts.” I have always been able to get more from the natives by

trading than any six sailors, and Father said I must be cheating! My

particular store of goods to trade consisted of pieces of tinfoil off

chewing gum and tobacco which I had begged from the sailors, boxes of

matches, ivory soap, and red calico. The natives were crazy to get the

tinfoil. They rolled it into little knobs and put it on their bushy hair

like jewels. The matches were my next best bet for a good trade. I would

give them two matches for a Panama hat or a handful of bird of paradise

feathers. Ivory soap was especially valuable in trading. The old natives

would give me a rare mat, or a box of sandalwood inlaid with raw pearl

for a cake of it. No, they didn’t want the soap to wash in; they ate it

for dessert! The red calico was for the women. From them I would coax a

ring of tortoise-shell inlaid with blue mother-of-pearl, or fans painted

on palm leaves with berry juices.

“Drop over a Jacob’s ladder,” called Father as four heavily laden

outrigger canoes shot out toward us. These outriggers are so built that

they will not capsize in a surf, and they were overflowing with bunches

of bananas, breadfruit, dried fish, and wild chickens, about the size of

pigeons. Years before some whaling captain must have given them some

chickens and they interbred them so much that they degenerated until

their offspring became as small as pigeons. They live wild in the trees

and the natives sneak up on them at night and catch them.

“Ora-ai,” shouted a large native in the bow of the first canoe. That

meant “Friendly we come as friends.” The large man was none other than

Rara-mongai, the native Chief of Atafu. Rara-mongai was the largest man

on the island and by virtue of his stature he was king. When he died the

next biggest man would succeed him. Rara-mongai was all dressed up for

the gala occasion of the “white man’s ship with wings” arrival. The

natives see about two ships a year and it is a big event when one will

stop and trade with them. As that native Chief climbed up the Jacob’s

ladder loaded down with strings of rare shells, he was the queerest

looking live thing I had ever seen. His fuzzy hair was turning grey,

which seemed to accentuate his black skin. He wore an old full-dress

coat, a woman’s muslin petticoat, (it looked like the cast-off of some

sea captain’s wife) which ended above his knees, and a string of jewelry

around his waist. His jewelry was rusty hardware that had washed ashore

from some passing ships. A tomato can jangled amidships, ring bolts of

iron came next to that, and an old colander and a can opener. The chief

wore them as ornaments, for to him they were strange, weird, unheard-of

things, those bits of sea-washed, rusty hardware.

Rara-mongai stepped forward and placed a string of shells around my

neck, and then one around Father’s. That was a sign of friendly welcome,

too. Father made the sign of friendship back to him and we waved to the

blacks in the canoes to come aboard. They scrambled up the side of the

ship like screaming monkeys. Their bronze bodies were naked except for a

protecting breech clout. In a flash they had unloaded their canoes and

were chattering wildly for bargains. In the last canoe, unnoticed

apparently, were two women. They were so fat they weighed the canoe down

astern. The youngest of them was the Chief’s daughter, “Good,” and the

other woman was her nurse.

“Come on aboard,” I called to them, in English, forgetting in my

excitement to speak their dialect. They just held on to the edge of the

canoe and grinned. My pantomime convinced them I wanted them, so they

climbed aboard, but with great difficulty. Father and the sailors were

engaged on deck trading, so I sneaked the women down to the cabin of the

ship. I asked them if they wanted something to eat; they said they did,

so I called the cabin-boy and told him I would eat my supper then. Those

two native women never in their lives had been inside a room without

fresh air, and that, combined with the rolling of the ship, made them

seasick. They were game, though, to see it through. I was watching them

to see what they would do just as they were curiously watching me. They

sat at the table when the food was served. First came soup. I watched

them to see if they knew what to do with it. They didn’t, but they

watched me, then followed my every movement and ate the soup. They had

never tasted any food in their lives except native fruits and fish, so

the expression on their faces at onion soup was one of wonderment. All

during the meal they laughed and gurgled, and stared at me. Suddenly

Good and her nurse heard a commotion up on deck and I told them to wait

a minute and I would be back. The noise I found there was the natives

shoving off for the island. The Chief said to Father:

“You come, Chief of white-ship-with-wings and I make fun for you.”

Father wasn’t very anxious to go ashore to have natives “make fun,” or

dance for him.

“Can I go?” I asked, fearing he would forbid me to be out of his sight

for an hour.

“All right, you can go ashore and help those two blankety-blank

landlubbers fill the kegs with fresh water.”

I turned and disappeared down the companionway before he could take back

his promise. There I found Good and her nurse just finishing the

contents of the swill barrel. While I was gone they had prowled into the

pantry, thought the garbage was part of the strange new food and ate

every mouthful of it. I had to get three natives and Father to carry

them up to the deck and fresh air.

Some of the natives at the signal from the Chief to return to the

island, jumped overboard, their breech clouts bulging with their trades,

the others pulled back in the outriggers. I started to get in the

outrigger with Good but Father caught me by the seat of my pants, just

as I was going over the side.

“Hey you, you go ashore in the dinghy with the crew. Bring back two

barrels of fresh drinking water, and when you get them filled come smack

back here to the ship.”

“Yes sir,” I answered, only too eager to obey. Bulgar and the Swede, the

waiter and the truck driver and myself put off with the two barrels. It

is one thing to land an outrigger canoe through a surf, and quite

another to get a clumsy ship’s boat with two water kegs and four people

in it ashore. Swede sculled, and I stood in the bow directing him

through the channel, for I could see over the reef. A long sinuous green

comber sneaked up on us and lifted us high in the air, then let us down

with a smack in the surf. We got by that, but another came before we got

righted out of the swell, and it took boat, landlubbers, sailors, water

kegs and me, and sent us flying toward the beach smothered in foam. I

dodged a water barrel and landed without a scratch on the beach, but the

boat was lost. It broke up into splinters. The water barrels washed

ashore. I don’t think I was as sorry as I should have been about losing

the boat, for without it Father couldn’t get ashore, and we couldn’t get

back to the ship. I didn’t care particularly, because I wanted to

explore the island. Before I had shaken the water off myself I was

surrounded by a dozen or more boys, about twenty years old. They formed

a circle around me, and were laughing. Finally, with a great show of

bravado, one of them dashed up to me and touched the white skin on my

legs, whereupon all the others shouted and cheered. I was the first

white girl they had ever seen and they wanted to know how white skin

felt under their dusky fingers.

With a guard of them we were taken to the center of the village to the

Chief. That kindly old man was very much concerned over our accident.

However, Good was not concerned, sulked on the floor of the hut, and

would have nothing to do with me. I think she credited me with being

responsible for the pains in her stomach from her meal of garbage.

However, I was undaunted—I was ashore once more. I had my bare feet on

real land again so didn’t care about anything else.

“Chief, where is the water for our barrels?” I asked. Instead of

summoning a servant to take me to the native reservoir, he himself took

me by the hand and led me down a path through the jungle. Hand in hand

we walked, and the sailors followed behind carrying the two barrels and

cursing at the stickers in the jungle that were cutting their bare feet.

In native dialect Rara-mongai said to me:

“Over there, in the hollowed-out heart of the palm trees we save water.

When it rains, water goes inside the palm trunk. Save it for dry

months.”

He pulled some green leaves away from a row of chopped off banana palm

trunks, and there, inside of each, were trunkfuls of cool fresh water. I

tasted it, and it had the tang of palm pitch in it, which made it the

more refreshing. Carefully, using coconuts and tortoise-shells for

dippers, he helped us fill the two barrels.

“Tonight when moon comes up full, dance of Virgins in the village. You

stay and see all by my side. Your friends (meaning the sailors) they

stay too and see Virgin dance.”

“Virgins? Sure I’ll stay,” piped up Bulgar.

“What is the Dance of the Virgins?” I asked.

“Every year young girl ready to marry. Must choose mate at Virgin Dance.

Then become good wife because she pick husband alone.”

I was so anxious to stay and see the dance that I forgot all about

returning to the ship. I asked Swede, as he was the oldest sailor and

therefore had the most authority over the others, if he wanted to stay.

“Hell yes, Skipper, any time any virgins dance that’s where you’ll find

me.” As long as he had expressed a willingness to stay also I saw no

occasion to hurry back aboard ship, so we followed the Chief to the

village. The sun had set, and the moon was just beginning to dip out of

the horizon. I sat at the Chief’s feet, and the men stood behind him and

watched the festival begin.

Once a year it is the custom in Atafu to have a marrying festival, which

is celebrated by the Dance of the Virgins. An Atafu girl is ready to

marry when she is ten or eleven years old, and she alone has the choice

of her husband. No man can woo her until she has given him the sign that

she has chosen him. The marriage festival is the biggest event of the

year. The little girls shine their gold brown bodies with coconut oils.

Instead of preparing lavish wardrobes they make their skins shine like

burnished gold. Over their left ear, snugly tucked in their thick hair

to assure its not falling out during the dance, is a white lotus or

hibiscus flower. The white hibiscus is a flower sacred to virgins, and

when they place one on the left ear it is the sign that they are ready

to take a mate.

The moon rising on the set day of the festival is the signal for the

dance to begin. All the young men who are going to take a wife, or

rather who desire a wife, line up on the left side of the Chief, and

stand with folded arms and watch the dance. The folded arms are a sign

of “must not touch, but only look” until the dance is over. Slowly and

almost inaudibly at first, then gradually becoming louder and more wild

and barbaric, it burst into a thrilling savage rhythm. The tom-tom is

the tribe’s only musical instrument. They have never heard of the

ukulele or guitar. I have found out since that the ukulele was

introduced into the Hawaiian Islands by a boy from Harvard!

As the beating of the tom-toms swelled, the virgins, nine in all,

started their dance—there in our presence they unfolded the sacred rite

of virginity crying for a mate. Every movement of their muscles has a

meaning, and it is foreign to the meaning that the civilized world has

put upon it. The Chief, on seeing the sailors’ spellbound gaze, said:

“On your far-away island United States men pay women many gifts to make

bad our dance.” I hotly denied that accusation. The hula-hula, which is

always associated with the South Seas, is a cheap imitation of the real

thing, but at that time I had never heard of it.

The writhing of their abdomens was symbolic of calling upon the fires of

the earth to burn their wombs clean for the coming of a manchild to make

their tribe strong. Their waving arms called on the sea to bring them

ships loaded with treasure, and on the winds to bring long life to their

body, so that their loved one would enjoy them long. As the music

swelled their dance became more uncontrolled; they seemed to be spirits

inside of native bodies trying to express a hunger for mating.

Suddenly the music stopped, the girls threw themselves on the ground

singing a triumphant song, but the left hand of each was cupped over the

lotus flower to keep it from the ground.

Rara-mongai rose from his throne and walked to the middle of the

clearing where the girls lay. A hush fell, as he solemnly spoke:

“To you who are looking for a wife, I speak. The strongest men alone can

have maidens. Here in moonlight on festival night, each man step forward

and show what strength of body he has that the maidens may choose the

greatest of you.”

A native man’s way of wooing is to show off in front of his bride to be,

physically. He tries to outdo his rivals by excelling in physical

strength, such as husking a coconut with his teeth, stabbing a wild

boar, diving and killing a shark single-handed. Instead of protesting

their love in so many words they believe in action, and by displaying

physical supremacy, they think to impress the women that they are the

masters. At the Chief’s words about twenty young natives stepped forward

eagerly. The truck driver and Swede made a dive for the center of the

clearing too.

“Say, Chief,” spoke up Swede, “I’m stronger than any of these young

pups, and I’ll take that little girl with the nice fat figger.” Swede

was so pleased with himself that he didn’t notice the anger in

Rara-mongai’s face. He spoke harshly in his dialect:

“Maidens choose husband. No white man touch my people.”

To Swede, the dance had just been a good show, and sailor-fashion he was

entering into the spirit of it, not realizing he was violating the most

sacred rite of Atafu.

By intervening I gained the favor of the Chief once more. The girl that

Swede had pointed out never took her eyes off him during the rest of the

ceremony. A white man wanted her, and she wouldn’t make any effort to

attract her own native kind. Any white man in the South Seas who is

healthy looking and strong, can win a native woman away from any native

or chief.

For two hours while the rest of the villagers feasted, the native men

wooed the virgins by showing off athletically. Not one word is spoken,

the whole story of their desire is in pantomime. When the moon reached

the center of the sky, the Chief called for silence. According to the

custom of the tribe he told the girls that now they must choose a man,

by taking the lotus from their left ear and placing it on the right ear

of the chosen one. I looked at the faces of the twenty young men who

stood in a row hoping to be selected. As the girls walked up slowly with

the lotus blossoms in their outstretched hands toward them, fear and

triumph flashed down the line. Three girls went to one young buck and

gave him their lotus, another man received two flowers, and the others

one. Those that were passed up by the girls once more folded their arms

in to their bodies.

“Huh,” grunted Swede contemptuously, in my ear, “if those birds just

fold their arms and lay down on the job no wonder the janes didn’t pick

’em.”

The Chief walked to the three girls who had picked one man, and did a

Solomon. He handed the man to the girl who had reached him first.

Primitive law, administered swiftly and without question. A couple stood

before the Chief. With his tortoise-shell emblem of state he touched the

girl and the man on the head, the native sign of wedlock. To the woman

he said:

“By choosing this man you now become nothing. He is the stronger. If any

man touch you after this wedlock the man shall be punished, for you have

no right or privilege to say what shall be done with your body. If your

husband gives privilege of your body to man he must be paid for it. If

man take you without your husband’s willingness, that man shall be sent

to the coral reef to scrape the salt that dries there from the surf.

There he shall stay until he is again like a child (until madness seizes

him) and then he shall fall in the sea.”

The native man turned to the girl, she lifted her bare shoulder to his

lips, and he bit her until her blood came. The Chief went on:

“Woman’s blood in husband’s body make you one always.”

Then to the man, the Chief admonished: “Every girl come now and touch

her body to your body. If you do not desire them when they touch you,

your choice of wife is good. You have woman good for you.”

He beckoned to a group of the youngest and prettiest girls in the

village. One by one they sidled up to the groom and in the most alluring

and sensuous manner, they let their bodies caress his. The groom stood

with his eyes averted, unmoved. It was a triumph over temptation, and

that was the signal for the tom-toms to burst into an exotic rhythm, as

the married pair walked hand in hand down to the lagoon. There is a

tribal custom on Atafu that every newly married couple walk hand in hand

up to their necks in the waters of the lagoon, they cleanse themselves

together, and when they have done that, their marriage is consummated

before the eyes of all.

When the last couple was married, the festival was over, and dancing,

singing and feasting lasted long into the night. I had forgotten all

about time, the water barrels and Father’s order to come right back to

the ship. By the position of the moon I guessed it was about four a.m. A

frightened cry from a native running up from the beach broke in on the

revelry. Wildly he pointed to the ship off shore. The truck driver who

never had much to say at any time laconically observed:

“The Old Man’s sending up flares from the vessel. Guess he thinks a

cannibal swallowed you whole.”

I was in for it and I knew it. I could feel my hind part tingling in

anticipation of what was going to happen when Father got his hands on

me.

“Let’s beat it back to the ship, Swede. There won’t be a barnacle left

on my bottom when Father catches me.”

“Yeh? Well, what’s your hurry, how you going to get the water barrels

back?”

I knew I’d catch hell for staying ashore, but to come back minus a life

boat and no fresh water was suicide.

“Say, Chief, will you lend me an outrigger and a couple of men to bring

it back, so I can get back to the ship?”

The Chief smiled, and said:

“White girl always ora-aii on Atafu. I help you go, but sorry. Some day

come back again?”

I would have promised that Chief anything just to get off the island. He

gave us an outrigger and we shoved out for the schooner. I saw the red

distress flares from the ship light up the sky—Father was in earnest,

and the moon was so bright I could plainly see the hull of the ship from

the beach. Without much difficulty we got beyond the surf and were soon

alongside. I let the sailors go aboard first. They threw over a bowline

and hauled the water kegs on deck. Father was at the Jacob’s ladder

leaning over the side, smoking his pipe. The smoke was coming out of it

in fast jerks, and I needed no barometer to tell me a storm was coming.

Leisurely I climbed the rope ladder, for I was in no hurry to get

aboard. Halfway up Father called:

“Where in hell is the dinghy?”

“I was going to explain to you about that, Father. We were trying to

ride the surf and we capsized and. . . .”

I got no further. Father had me by the neck and seat of the pants,

hurrying me up to the poop.

“I can understand these so and so landlubbers upsettin’ a boat, but

you’re my daughter and I won’t believe any yarn like you losin’ control

of a dinghy.”

Along about dawn I was comfortable enough to sit down without too great

pain! We were sailing along under full canvas, and Father, evidently

content that I could get into no further deviltry, had turned in for a

nap.

Swede and the sailors were sitting on the hatch near the mizzen mast.

From my place at the wheel I heard Swede saying:

“Yeh, I coulda had any one of those dames, they was crazy about me; that

fat little nigger wench is just busted-hearted to see me leave.”

And it was me that got a licking!

I was never to forget that experience on Atafu. I thought that everybody

in the world was married according to native custom. I thought that some

day I, too, would be taken to a dance where I could pick out my mate.

The days that followed our departure from Atafu became dull and

monotonous. The sound of the tom-toms and the vision of the native girls

abandoning themselves in a dance, was constantly before me. I hadn’t

even had a licking for almost a week and the calm atmosphere was too

much for me. I would have to start something if nothing was going to

happen of its own accord. I started a cockroach war. I caught two big

cockroaches and tied their bodies together with pieces of thread. Then I

went around to the sailors and took bets on them. I drew a line on the

deck and put a roach on either side of it. The one that pulled the other

over the line won. I bet two plugs of tobacco and one of Father’s

undershirts on the fattest cockroach, but the ship took a list to

leeward just as he started to pull hard, and the other cockroach won and

I lost. In novels of the sea the Captain’s daughter is frequently

pictured as occupying herself with lovely feminine pastimes, but

cockroaches, rats, or bedbug hunts were more fascinating to me. But even

in the trade winds those games tired me. I wanted action.

One afternoon, finding nothing more exciting to do, and when I was sure

Father was asleep, I started on my own Dance of the Virgins. I didn’t

have anything I could use for a lotus flower except a pair of dried

flying fish wings. I put them behind my left ear as I had seen the

native girls do. I wasn’t sure just which one of the sailors on watch I

would give that flower to, but that was to come later anyway.

Swede was at the wheel. I whispered to him:

“Will you go forward and get me a can full of grease from the cook? I’ll

take the wheel for you.” He was glad of any excuse to get away, so he

consented. He brought back a can of salt pork dripping from the galley.

“What are you goin’ to do with that stuff?” he asked.

“Don’t talk so loud, Swede. I’m goin’ to do that Virgin Dance the way we

saw them do it on Atafu.”

“Jeeze,” he said.

I went down on the main deck near the mizzenmast and began greasing my

body. I took off my overalls, and gave my body a glorious shine that

would rival any I saw on the island, and started the dance. I pounded on

a rain barrel for a tom-tom. Every sailor on deck beat it just as I got

going. They had seen Father’s head appearing out of the companionway,

but I hadn’t. The next thing I knew Father grabbed me but my body was so

slippery he couldn’t keep a hold on me.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled.

“Just dancing the way the girls danced for us on Atafu,” I answered, and

I ran aft and locked myself in the flag locker.

Father followed me, but couldn’t unlock the door. “I’ll knock hell out

of you when I lay hands on you,” he promised. I had no intention of ever

coming out of that flag locker. Hours later I heard the dinner-bell

ring. I was greasy and hot and hungry, but I thought better than to

venture out. At dusk I heard a low whistle outside the porthole. I

looked out and saw a piece of bread dangling there on a piece of string.

The Jap cook had taken my side, and smuggled me some supper. The next

morning I unlocked the door and looked around for Father. He was busy on

his chart. I stood by him wrapped up in a flag. I thought I might as

well get the licking over with so he could go on with his work. However,

he didn’t even speak. He reached up to his book shelf and took down an

illustrated copy of Dante’s Inferno, and opened it to the illustrations

of women burning in fire in hell. I was cured. I would never be a

dancer!

[Illustration]

A Love Story—which is an end and not a beginning

“Them’s Portuguese Men-o-war, Skipper,” explained Stitches when I asked

him what the floating, transparent little blue things were that I saw

glistening in the sunlight on the surface of the sea.

“Yep, them little tri-cornered sails on them looks like old Portuguese

ships of war, that’s where they gets their name.”

“Are they fish?” I asked.

“Kind of. They is barnacles in the making. When they catch fast to the

bottom of a ship with their little blue threads of trailing anchor lines

they petrify into shell and that is how barnacles grow.”

I marveled that the little inch high jelly ships could ever turn into

the curse of seamen—barnacles! There was a fleet of thousands of them

before my eyes.

“As long as they keep moving they is all right, but they are like some

cussed folks ashore who, when they stick on to someone else, turn into a

damned nuisance,” Stitches concluded. It was another lesson I learned

from the sea. Only a few days before we had passed through a floating

mass of porous-looking petrified lava—the spewed up evidence of an

undersea volcano in eruption. There was so much of it that it gave the

appearance of floating land.

“Shore folks call that pumice stone and they grind it up to make tooth

paste,” Stitches had said. Why did shore people make everything so

difficult for themselves? I used salt to brush my teeth with, not lava

from deep sea volcanoes.

“It appears like you was usin’ up a lot of wind askin’ questions with

your mouth—and your mind is a-headin’ off to leeward on another tack.

Ever since you seen that love dance on Atafu you been moonin’ around.”

Stitches’ words struck home. The beauty of the dance, the thrill of

seeing the native girls choose their mates, and the expression of

longing on the native men’s faces to possess the girls haunted me. No

matter how I tried I couldn’t drive the memory from my mind. I pretended

to be interested in ship work, but really just one problem absorbed my

mind. I wanted to mean everything to some one person—I wanted to be

wanted. My loneliness on shipboard was accentuated after I saw the

marriage dance on Atafu. Where would I find a mate? I didn’t have any

lotus to wear to make any man choose me. In fact none of the men on

board seemed to have the slightest idea of the thoughts constantly in my

mind—I was just a nuisance, and no one of them ever showed an

inclination to offer himself. I probably never would be taken to a dance

where I could pick out my man. Then the thought came: the girls on the

island could choose only from the men they knew and the dance was merely

a method of selection. After all, getting the man was the important

thing and if the native girls had an island full of men to pick from—I

had a shipload, so I became encouraged.

I would find my man on board the ship and so I began to look over the

crew. First, of course, there was Stitches. I loved him but not as a

prospective mate. He looked so much like a wise old turtle, and if I

spoke to Stitches about my plan he’d go to Father and I’d get a mug full

of salts or a rope’s end on the back of my lap to clear away “crazy

fancies.” The rope’s end never really hurt—my body was too tough. But

of late my ideas with regard to lickings had changed. They made me

furious. I was getting too old to be treated as a child. That’s what I

thought. But what I thought made no difference to Father. It was the

rope’s end or the salts, clear to the last day we were on the ship.

So it was plain Stitches would not do.

There were the two mates. Strange, but all the time I was on the ship we

never had a mate I really liked. I passed them over. There were just

four of our old men on board now, Stitches, Swede, Bulgar and Nelson;

the rest of the crew to me were just sailors, new men who meant nothing.

I considered Swede again. He was big and strong but he could never stand

the test of beautiful girls caressing him without being tempted. Bulgar,

well, he was too much of a bully.

I was sitting on the main hatch helping the watch splice ropes into a

bumper when the first really concrete idea came to startle me. Nelson

was splicing a rope opposite me. Why hadn’t I thought about him? Somehow

he was the last one I ever wanted to think about, yet he measured up

finer than any of the crew. He could spit a curve, he had hair on his

chest. Just looking at him at that moment made me feel funny. I got hot

and cold all at once, and my fingers tangled the rope splice.

“Aw, he ain’t the one,” I declared to myself, and I got up and left the

hatch. I climbed up to the crosstrees. The more I thought up there at

the masthead the more tangled my mind came. Nelson kept coming in my

thoughts, but I’d shove him out. That night I stayed on deck very late.

The moon was out, and the soft air from the trade winds barely kept the

sails full. At four bells, Nelson came to take his trick at the wheel.

He didn’t seem to notice me lying in the belly of the spanker sail. He

just kept his eyes on the topsails and on the compass. I didn’t dare

speak to him as long as Father stayed on deck, but about eleven o’clock

Father went below to turn in. The mate was pacing his beat down on the

main deck so my way was clear. There is a maritime law that prohibits

anyone talking with the man at the helm so I had to do it very quietly.

“Nelson!” I whispered. He looked up to where I was lying.

“Huh?”

“Are you like all sailors? Are you in love with the curves of the sails

too?” He was startled by my sudden question, but after a moment he said:

“Hell no! I ain’t in love with no skirt, imaginary or real.”

I couldn’t think of any answer to that so I kept quiet. He looked at me

so steadily I thought he’d let the ship get off her course. After

several minutes of silence he said in a voice that sounded as if he was

talking about a cargo of copra:

“Skipper, you know you’re a pretty kid.”

I thought he was being sarcastic. I jumped off the sail and ran below

where I threw myself on my bunk and cried. I hated him for making fun of

me. Hadn’t my father told me I was ugly? Why was Nelson just rubbing it

in? I hated him, and for hours I lay awake wishing the ship would sink

and he would be the first one to drown. But in spite of everything, the

next day I found myself forgiving him. It was Sunday and we had the

inevitable duff cake for dessert. Instead of eating my piece I stowed it

away in my overall’s pocket to give to him, for the fo’c’s’le didn’t

rate desserts. He stood his trick at the wheel that afternoon from two

to four. He didn’t even look at me when I came on deck, but I walked

past the wheel and stuffed my hunk of precious cake in his hand. He took

it and began to eat it. I sat on the skylight and watched each swallow

go down while my mouth watered for just a taste of the dessert I took

joy in sacrificing for him.

“This is good grub,” he said between mouthfuls. The last bite went into

his mouth but a corner of it fell to the deck. Oh, if he wouldn’t see it

I’d wait until he left the wheel and pick it up and eat it myself! I

stood guard from my perch on the skylight over that piece on the deck.

When Oleson came to relieve him, Nelson’s big bare foot stepped on the

piece of cake by accident and ground it into some tobacco juice on the

deck!

Fred Nelson was a Dane. He had yellow hair and light blue eyes. He was

about thirty years old, and as strong as three average men. He was the

only man I had ever seen that had gold hairs on his chest—and those

curly ones. He was different from the rest of the crew. He wouldn’t let

me play strip poker. When he looked at me he made me wish I didn’t wear

overalls. I imagined there was an expression in his eyes of hunger when

he looked at me, yet he avoided speaking to me whenever he could. He had

been on the ship for six years and never in all that time did he show

fear in a storm or shirk the hardest job.

I did everything that I could to worship at his feet, without letting

him know of it. One hot night, about a week after the duff cake

disappointment, I was sleeping in the lifeboat which was hung over the

stern. I awoke and through half-closed eyes I saw Nelson hacking a curl

of hair off my head with his pocket knife. He was breathing fast as if

he had been running hard. I began to tremble from head to foot and a

pounding in my head and throbbing in my chest nearly made me burst, but

something inside told me to pretend I was still asleep. After he took my

curl he walked softly away and disappeared forward. I never let Nelson

learn that I knew what he had done. Somehow I felt it was a secret he

wanted to keep. I began to keep away from Stitches and Father. I just

wanted to hide where no one could see how I felt.

Nelson never acted as though he had cut off my hair that quiet night. A

few days later I heard him telling Swede and Bulgar his ambition as the

three of them sat whittling sticks in the scupper near the mizzen mast.

“I stuck by this barge ’cause I’m workin’ for a job of second mate. Ever

since I left the old country I been plannin’ to get officer’s papers,”

he said.

“There ain’t nothin’ in being a second mate. Responsibility at sea and

standin’ watch in port. Not for me!” volunteered Swede with all the

contempt in his voice he could master.

“Some day I’ll have a ship of my own,” went on Nelson, “and she’ll be

the fastest full-rigger afloat.”

“You mean you’re going to be a Captain Nelson?” I asked. He looked

straight at me. Again I felt my face flush hotly. “Yes, and there ain’t

going to be no women-kind on my ship when I’m Skipper. Women belongs on

land,” he answered.

I couldn’t stand it, I fled aft and hid again—away from myself.

“What are you moping around about, Joan?” Father asked me that night.

“Lately you been pale as a white squall, and so quiet you must be sick.

What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing—except that I wish I was a million miles away from here. I

wish I was never on a ship. I wish I was on land!” I cried at him.

“I set you ashore once and you ran away, so now I ain’t going to let you

go navigatin’ on the land until you can steer a clear course. I seen too

much of what livin’ ashore does to women,—it fills their heads so full

of ballast that real cargoes such as common sense haven’t got any place.

I’ll not cast off your hawsers from the ship until you can sail in fair

or foul weather by yourself without runnin’ aground.” Those were the

only words of warning my father gave me, and I don’t know to this day if

he knew the turmoil I was in. If he suspected I was in love he didn’t

let me know it! We arrived in Newcastle, Australia, a few weeks later.

As usual, the crew went ashore after the long sea trip, to frequent the

pubs along the waterfront. The second mate got in a drunken brawl and

was put in jail. Swede, Bulgar and Oleson just kept away without

reporting for duty for a week. One day Father left the ship early in the

morning to attend to chartering a cargo of coal and left me on board. We

were anchored out in the channel. The only others on the ship were the

Jap cook, Stitches, and Fred Nelson.

“You’re the most sober man I got, Nelson,” Father said. “You take the

day shift of watchman while I’m ashore.”

“Yes, sir,” came back Nelson, pleased that Father had noticed his

sobriety. It would stand him in good stead when he came up for a second

mate’s license.

Along about noon I got so lonesome for someone to talk to that I sought

out Nelson. I found him down in the hold of the ship coiling up ropes

and otherwise cleaning the hold ready for its next cargo. I slid down a

rope to the keel. Nelson didn’t even speak to me, so I asked:

“Can I watch you work, Nelson?”

“You’re the Skipper’s daughter, so I suppose you can do anything you

damn please,” was his unpromising answer.

I sat down on a big coil of rope and let my feet hang over but they

didn’t quite reach the floor of the hold. For perhaps half an hour I sat

there. I was thinking. Nelson was working. Neither of us said a word.

All of a sudden Nelson turned quickly towards me and before I could

realize what was happening he grabbed me and kissed me! My head swam. I

felt dizzy. I was thrilled and frightened. All in a confused instant the

thought that I was bad because I liked that kiss stabbed my

consciousness. I wanted to run from the hold up to the sunlight, but I

couldn’t move. My first grown-up kiss from a man! If only the bottom of

the ship would open and swallow me.

From what seemed miles away I heard Nelson’s voice speaking to me. He

had walked back to his chore of cleaning and from there he said:

“How did you like that one, huh? That was just what you was aching for,

wasn’t it?”

So he blasted my illusion. For that kiss _was_ just what I had been

aching for but I could have killed him for putting my thought into

words.

Through a daze I heard him continue:

“You better not tell the Old Man I kissed you. He’d raise hell with me.”

I had no intention of telling Father about that kiss. I climbed out of

the hold to the deck. I felt that every one would see when they looked

at me that I had been kissed for I thought that kiss stuck out like a

flaming mushroom on my face.

When Father returned to the ship that night he looked at me and didn’t

see anything wrong.

Long days of loading on coal passed, but I avoided going on deck when I

knew Nelson would be on duty. How I treasured that kiss! Each morning

when I washed my face I was careful to leave untouched the portion the

kiss was on, with the result that my countenance gave the effect of a

clean swept beach with a dark circle left by a receding tide in the

region of my mouth. I was preserving as precious that kissed spot

because how did I know I would ever get another one.

My happiness was complete until my father got a good look at my face

while we sat at the dining table. The reflected light from the skylight

overhead betrayed me. Father saw my dirty face.

“What do you mean by coming to the table without washing your face?” he

demanded. I never thought so fast for an excuse in my life.

“I can’t wash around my mouth, Father, because it’s all chapped and it’s

too sore.”

Father rose from the table, clutched me by the suspenders of my overalls

and propelled me to the sink in the pantry. “Too sore to wash, huh?” he

said and he took some sandsoap (the kind used to scrub down the decks)

and a rag. With them he wiped the kiss, or what was left of it, from my

face forever. I think in that moment I felt I suffered my greatest

tragedy. I didn’t want to see Nelson again for fear he would think I

wanted him to kiss me again. I did want him to, that’s why I avoided

him.

When the cargo was loaded Father went ashore to bail his crew out of

jail. He found all of them except the second mate willing to come back

and ship out. The second mate refused to be bailed, and it put Father in

a hole because officers for American ships are difficult to get in a

foreign port.

“Why don’t you make Nelson second mate?” I ventured to Father when I

heard him grumbling about his bad luck with crews. The idea appealed to

him, for he said to the first mate:

“Send Nelson aft to me, Mr. Owens.”

I was delighted. If Nelson was made an officer I would see him every day

at the table. We would eat together—oh, the thrill of that thought! To

eat with him three times a day for a six months’ voyage! I could be

friends with a second mate, according to Father’s code of discipline,

but not with a common sailor.

Nelson came into Father’s quarters very much ill at ease.

“Yes sir, Captain. You sent for me, sir?”

“I’m going to ship you out as second mate. If you make good from here to

Adelaide, I’ll indorse your license for Officer’s papers. Get your sea

bag aft, at once. Your duty begins now,” and Father turned to his bills

of lading as the way of dismissing the conversation.

I stood near grinning, I was so happy. I saw Nelson’s face flush bright

red. He looked at Father. Then he looked at me and back at Father again.

The flush had gone out of his face and his mouth made a straight line.

“I have to refuse, Captain. I don’t want to be a second mate. I’d like

my discharge, sir,” Nelson said, almost defensively.

Father turned on him as if he hadn’t heard him rightly.

“Are you a damned fool or just plain crazy? What do you mean, ‘don’t

want to be a mate?’”

“That’s it, sir. I’d like to be discharged,” came back Nelson. My heart

sank. Why did he want to leave? It was the dream of his life to be an

officer and he was throwing away his first chance.

“Then get the hell off this ship and not a damned cent of pay will you

get!” bellowed Father at him. Nelson left the cabin. I followed him, and

ran after him. I caught up to him and pulled his arm to hold him back.

“Why are you going to leave, Nelson?”

Nelson took me by the shoulders and shook me. I was crying and I didn’t

try to hide my tears. It was the first time any sailor had seen me bawl

but I wasn’t ashamed. The awful fear—the ghastly loneliness of the

prospect of losing Nelson—gripped me.

“Aw, what the hell, Skipper. If I stay on this ship as second mate I’d

be seeing you every day, three times a day, even at meal times.

“An’ if I was to be near to you like that every day I’d be makin’ love

to you, see?”

“But isn’t that what you would want?” I asked, for it certainly was what

I wanted—what I dreamed of.

“Sure, Skipper, but being so close like to you, this packet wouldn’t be

big enough for us both. You never had a chance—why, you ain’t growed up

yet, and any man’d be a dog to make love to a baby like you.”

With those words Nelson turned from me and walked forward in great

haste.

The next morning he went over the gangplank with his sea bag without

looking back even to wave good-bye to me as I stood in the rigging

watching him go. That was the last time I ever set eyes on Nelson. I

have learned since that he was killed in a race riot on the docks in

Galveston.

Of course I know that land folks would think Nelson a fool—a dear,

chivalrous fool. Maybe—but I’ll never forget him.

[Illustration]

“You pull for the shore, boys,

Praying to Heaven above,

But I’ll go down in the angry deep

With the ship I love.”

With the red of the ship’s waterline weighted deep in the water we

sailed from Newcastle with a cargo of coal. Father shipped a new man in

place of Nelson, a John Johnson. Father could have shipped a thousand

sailors but none of them would fill the place in my life that Nelson

did. John Johnson was a bully second mate and he handled his watch with

an iron hand, but when off duty he was as gentle as the down on an

albatross’s wing. Johnson had great difficulty with his pronunciation of

“J.” His Norwegian origin was very obvious.

“Are you a Dane?” I asked him the second day out. I hoped he would say

yes, because then he could in a way remind me of Nelson.

“I bane no Dane. I am Norwegian,” he boasted. His accent was so marked

that the crew used to sing when he was out of their hearing:

“Yumping Yimminy!

Yacob yumped off the Yib Boom with his

monkey yacket on. Yeesus! What a Yump!”

We sailed for weeks and June found us in the tropics. June is the

hurricane season in the South Seas when freak storms, baffling winds and

dangerous currents menace seafarers.

Father was on watch almost constantly at night. He would make frequent

trips to his cabin to watch the barometer, only to return to the deck

and pace up and down.

“Are we going to nose into a blow?” I asked Father.

“There’s more than a blow going to strike us, Joan. I got a feeling in

my marrow that we’re a-headin’ for our last anchorage,” he said. Father,

like all men of the deep sea, was superstitious, but, of course, when

accused he denied it vigorously. The crew of a ship are guided by the

Captain. If the Captain grows restless and worried the men suspect that

he has gotten wind of impending disaster. What it is about the sea that

whispers warnings to those who battle it I don’t know, but that there is

something, I am sure.

“There’s a Jonah on this vessel.” Father spit the words out to the mate

on watch. The mate cast a suspicious glance at Bulgar, who was at the

helm.

“It ain’t him,” Father said with finality. Bulgar heard the discussion

but he appeared to be oblivious to it. He just went on chewing his wad

of tobacco and spitting with unerring accuracy into the codfish keg near

the wheel. Occasionally he lifted his eyes from the compass to watch the

full spread of wind-taut sail. The topsails were set and pulling, and

when the weather permits topsails it is a sign of fair wind.

The mate had no patience with Father’s fears.

“There ain’t nothin’ to jaw about with this fair wind, Cap’n,” he

argued. “We had a good trip so far. Only one man, that Swede, had to be

put in irons for trying to kill the cook.”

Swede had caught the cook in the act of putting a dead cat into the

slumgullion, as ship stew is termed. Cook was holding out the salt beef

for himself and pawning off dead pussy. Taking fo’c’s’le justice in his

own hands Swede caught Cook by the back of the neck and began to shake

the liver out of him. The cook managed to get his meat cleaver and

attempted to assassinate Swede. There would have been a dual murder in

the galley if Bulgar and Oleson hadn’t intervened in time. Father put

Swede in irons for attempted murder, but we needed the cook, so all that

happened to him for bad conduct was forfeiture of one month’s pay.

“Been nothin’ but trouble ever since we sailed from Newcastle. Two men

at the pumps night and day to keep down the water leakin’ in the hold.

Fights in the fo’c’s’le. Joan not eating, and I been dreamin’ about a

broken anchor.”

To make matters worse a large rat came up on deck one night shortly

after that, looking for water. I tried to catch it to play with. I

chased it off the poop deck, down the main deck and into the scupper. I

had it cornered behind a rain barrel and was just about to grab its tail

when it darted back into the scupper. In its fright it ran out a hawse

hole and fell into the sea.

“My old rat got away from me, Stitches,” I confided. Stitches was aghast

with fear.

“Did a rat leave the ship?”

“No, I chased him overboard,” I answered.

“Don’t you tell your Old Man a rat left the ship. He’s like a seethin’

volcano now, ready to erupt ’cause he can’t lay his finger on trouble he

smells in the wind,” Stitches warned me.

Despite Father’s fears we reached the island of Ruratu, discharged the

coal there, picked up a load of sandalwood and cat’s eyes for a deck

load after we had collected nine hundred tons of copra and sailed for

Adelaide, South Australia, our destination.

The mate, cocky about the ship-shape condition of the vessel under his

supervision, reminded Father of his groundless fears on the out trip.

“But we ain’t in home port yet,” Father persisted.

So he kept up his vigil. After seventy-one days we were due to sight

land if Father’s navigation was correct. Sailors were stationed at the

masthead and on the bow as lookouts.

“Land off the starboard bow, ho!” wailed Swede from his post at the

foremast crosstrees.

“Where away?” returned Father.

“Quarter point off the bow, sir!”

Sighting land after seventy-one weary days at sea was a great relief to

Father. He hurried below, after giving a direction to the man at the

wheel, and brought up his binoculars. He gazed steadily through them as

if he were trying to bring the land closer through the glasses.

“That’s it! Take a look, Joan.”

Through the glasses I saw a little cone-shaped shadow on the horizon.

Land!

“It’s the sou’east point of Australia,” opined Father. He climbed half

way up the rigging of the spanker mast and clung to the ratlines. “We’ll

hit Bass Straits tonight!”

Then Father slid down the rigging to the deck and spoke to the mate:

“The Straits are a helluva passage to make at night. There’s no moon out

to navigate by. All hands on deck—stand by.”

Although the Straits are one hundred miles across, that leaves little

room for a sailing ship to beat and tack in. There is a channel of deep

water running through the center of the Straits where the currents are

less deadly. The sweep of the Pacific meets the rushing tides of the

Indian Ocean. Mountainous promontories rise on the coast of South

Australia and the jutting saw-toothed coast of Tasmania guards the

southern end of the straits. Baffling winds and treacherous cross

currents stirred by the vortex of waters from three oceans, the Pacific,

Indian and Antarctic meeting, make sailing dangerous. Sometimes the wind

dies suddenly shut off by a mountain range only to kick up again in a

fury from an opposite direction. It is no feat at all for steam vessels

to go through the Straits but a sailing ship is at the mercy of the

winds and tides.

Almost like magic the land loomed larger and larger, until the blue haze

faded and we could distinguish Wilson Promontory. It looked like a huge

whale asleep on the water. It was about four bells in the evening and

the tropic light was rapidly fading into a soft gray.

“Clew in the topsails! Sheet home the jibs!” called Father suddenly. It

isn’t just duty that makes sailors over-eager to hasten a ship’s arrival

in port. They are contented until they sight land and then they become

restless.

“A sailorman can sniff a drink in the wind a hundred miles out to sea,”

Stitches declared.

In less than five minutes the topsails were fast and only the flying jib

was set. Father went aloft with his binoculars. Far off to leeward I saw

a vermilion-colored lightship jerking at its anchorage near the shore.

Eight bells struck! The watch changed. The moaning of buoys came out of

the darkness to warn us of reefs and shallow water.

I ascended the mast to be near Father.

“You turn in, Joan. If any trouble comes, keep out of the way, do you

hear?”

“Yes, sir!” I replied, for when he used that tone to me “Yes, sir” was

the only thing to say. I stuck my head out of my porthole watching the

phosphorus in the water make the sea look as if it were on fire until I

became too sleepy to sit up. I got my family of cats from the chartroom

and put them under the blankets at my feet. Under the covers their eyes

looked just as the phosphorus in the water did. I mention those kittens

because they played a big part in the “trouble” Father had predicted. He

had always forbidden me to take the cats into my bunk.

“Bedbugs and cockroaches can’t be avoided in bunks but cats can be, so

don’t you let me catch you taking them to bed with you.”

I put my own interpretation on that advice. I couldn’t catch the bedbugs

and roaches but I could catch the cats. I kept them under the covers so

their protesting meowing wouldn’t reach Father’s ears. Then I fell sound

asleep. I was wakened by a heavy rain squall and stiff wind which shook

the ship. I lay in my bunk listening to the seas slap the porthole above

me. I heard Father shouting above the wind to the crew, and faintly the

answering calls of men came back. Shallow water when it becomes rough

rocks a ship unlike a deep sea storm. The difference in the rolling made

me peer out the porthole. A sudden jolt of the ship threw me flat on the

bunk. If only that wind would blow steadily and not in jerks—but I was

asleep before I could form any more opinions.

I don’t know how long I was asleep before I awoke in a fit of coughing.

My eyes burned. I rubbed them with my fist but they watered and stung

more. I quit rubbing them but they hurt even more and then I could

hardly breathe. It was pitch dark in my cabin and I thought I was having

a nightmare. My senses began to dim and I felt as if I were going a long

way off from my body. The scuffling of feet on the poop deck—hoarse

shouts—confusion, then a cry that pierced my dulled brain sent a chill

of fear through me.

“Fire!”

“Fire! Fire!” The words were repeated and echoed hollowly in the wind.

“Fire!” That was what I was thinking the phosphorus in the sea looked

like. I tried to wake up. Surely I was dreaming.

“It’s in the after-hold.”

“The paint locker is burning!”

I couldn’t move from my bunk for I was paralyzed with fear. Over and

over in my fast dimming consciousness I could hear “Paint Locker.”

“Fire!” The curses of the men above grew faint. I could feel the kittens

scratching under the covers at my feet to get out but I could make no

effort to help them. Had there been a light in my cabin I would have

seen the dense smoke choking the air—slowly suffocating me. Why

couldn’t I move? Why didn’t some one help me? But too well I knew the

code of the sea that reckons one life as little where the safety of the

ship is concerned.

The floors of the cabin were caulked with tar and oakum. Fire from below

had burned the underpinnings and the tar was boiling in the cracks.

On deck Father opened the lazarette hatch and flames six feet high burst

out. The cargo of copra in the hold was a blazing inferno! Copra is

highly explosive. The rubbing and grating of the stuff in the freak

storm had caused spontaneous combustion. The flames licked up from out

the open hatch and overcame the mate. Father’s face was burned, and his

hands blistered. The wind swept down into the hold and fanned the fire

into a vicious furnace.

I finally managed to get out of my bunk and found my way by groping

through the smoke to the chartroom. I could smell where the companionway

was by the rush of fresh air that poured down from it. But the air only

served to fan the gasping licks of fire that had eaten up through the

cabin floor into a blaze. I tried to reach the companionway door. Clad

only in a flour sack nightgown and in my bare feet I picked my way over

the hot tar on the floor to the ladder leading to the deck. Then I

remembered the kittens I had left to smother under the covers in my

bunk.

I felt my way back to the cabin and blindly reached for them. I found

them huddled in the farthest corner of the bunk. The ship gave a sudden

toss and sent me sprawling to the floor with my arm full of kittens.

They dug their claws into my bare flesh and held on. I tried to get back

to the companionway, but the fire had eaten through from below. I stood

on the edge of the chartroom unable to go farther. My feet were burned

and the pain was almost more than I could bear. The smoke choked me. It

stung and burned my eyes. The kittens were clawing at the raw flesh

around my breasts.

The realization that I was going to die seemed a relief. I became calm.

If I died, the terrible pain would stop. I stood perfectly still, just

waiting, for I couldn’t move another step.

On deck pandemonium had broken loose. The sails slapped and ripped. The

deserted helm spun dizzily around leaving the ship at the mercy of the

choppy sea. Then, from what seemed millions of miles away, I heard an

agonized cry. I recognized the voice of Stitches:

“Joan?”

I tried to answer him, but all I could manage was a whispered, “Here I

am.”

“Joan! Skipper! Where are you?”

Oh, wouldn’t he ever find me! I couldn’t help myself. Smoke and pain and

panic overcame me. I couldn’t speak another word. I heard his voice

coming nearer—and then a numbness crept over me so that I hardly knew

what was happening. Stitches came down the companionway from the forward

entrance and into the dining saloon. Finally his arms found me and my

cats. Picking me up in his old arms he carried me over and out of the

fire which was licking up in scarlet tongues of flame all over the deck

of the cabins.

Just as he reached the top of the companionway ladder Stitches dropped

with a gasp under me. We struck the deck and lay there side by side.

Then the sight of the sky, the wind and rain on my face, the fresh air

in my lungs brought me to. I staggered to my feet, and bending over

tried to arouse Stitches. He was dead! He had crowned the years of his

devotion by giving his life to save mine. He had done his job the best

he knew how and he would go under the waves with his ship for his

coffin—a sailorman found his last anchorage! No matter how long I live

Stitches will be a memory of the sea that nothing will erase.

I could see they were lowering the lifeboat off the stern. I caught

Stitches’ body under the arms and tried to drag it to the poop deck.

Swede saw me.

Rushing over he jerked me from Stitches, dragged me to the poop deck and

flung me into the lifeboat.

On the poop deck by the spanker mast were two kegs of gasoline used for

starting the donkey engine forward to hoist cargo in port. They were

lashed to the deck with chains. If the fire reached them the ship and

every one on board would be blown to bits. They were lashed too securely

to be chopped away in time to save them from the fire which had already

eaten through to the poop. There wasn’t a second to be lost.

“Pull away to leeward, then head for the lightship,” shouted Father. He

didn’t even stop to see if his command was carried out. He and the mate

and two of the sailors were bailing up canvas bucket after canvas bucket

of sea water to throw on the fire.

The ship began to fill with water from the open scuttles. The weight of

the sea water in the hold sank the vessel deeper, but it forced the fire

up through the decks. The _Minnie A. Caine_ wallowed like a stricken

thing under the vast weight of water. I worked back to a place in the

stern of the dinghy. Then I discovered the cats were still clinging to

me. Afterwards I found they had sunk their claws deep in my flesh. At

the time I scarcely noticed the pain.

Father and the mate stayed on the poop deck until the burning vessel

sunk to the water line when they plunged overboard, jumping clear of the

hull. The ship tossed by a big swell capsized over on its beam ends. A

hissing, bubbling sound came from her as the flames were buried in the

sea. Father and the mate swam to the lifeboat which was leaking badly.

The tropic heat had warped the seams in it and it was filling faster

than we could bail it out. The rain, the spray from the waves and the

thick smoke from the smothered fire made vision impossible. I could

barely see the other figures in the lifeboat. The men pulled long

strokes towards the shore.

We were about a hundred yards away from the ship and through the maze of

smoke all we could see were the topmasts sticking above the sea. The

wind was freezing and the cold rain wet us through and through. My

nightgown was poor protection against the wind and water, but I was so

terrified I wasn’t conscious that I was nearly freezing.

“Pull! Pull! Pull!” Father’s voice set the beat for the men at the oars.

“Are all hands here?” he asked. Swede, Bulgar, Oleson, the mate,

cabin-boy, Johnson and me were the only ones to answer the roll call.

The Jap cook had jumped overboard and failed to make the lifeboat.

Stitches’ charred body was somewhere cradled in the burnt hull of the

ship. Over the roar of the wind and rain the buoys kept up their

monotonous warnings—and shorewards the riding light of the light ship

traced semi-circles against the sky as her masts rolled heavily in the

onshore breakers. We were about a quarter mile away from the wreck when

the smoke cleared. Father gazed back at his ship, which looked like some

glorious living thing struck dead. It was too much for Father to endure.

With a gurgling sound of agony in his throat he pulled in his oar:

“O Christ!” I heard him gasp. Then he stood up, trying to plunge into

the sea and return to his beloved ship. Only the strong restraining arms

of Swede and Oleson kept him back. He struggled like a maniac.

“Let me go, you ——s. Let me go!” he cried.

In this crisis the mate, Johnson, saved Father and us.

“The lifeboat’s sinking, Captain,” he said.

Those words brought Father out of his frenzy of grief at losing his

ship. For the first time in my life I saw Father cry. He covered his

eyes with his hands as if to shut out the sight. The weight of our

bodies in the life boat opened up the already leaking seams.

Father reached through the rain to where I crouched in the stern and

grabbed my arm. In a voice that became suddenly calm—he was once more

the master in command, he said:

“Joan! Swim for it, kid,—the lightship.” He pointed to the pin point of

light which was about three miles away. “Swim slowly and high out of

water. And breathe deep, Joan, as deep as you can.”

“Yes, sir!” I answered, trying to hide the terror of the long swim.

“If you get all in—float. Take it easy, girl. I’ll be right behind

you.”

He had only time to finish those words when the lifeboat filled with

water up to the gunwales. If I had to swim no nightgown was going to get

in my way to drag me down. I tore it from me, but the drenched kittens

still clung to my flesh. I filled my lungs with a deep breath and jumped

out of the lifeboat. When I came up in the choppy sea I was conscious of

only the pain caused by the salt water on my bleeding cuts and

scratches. Each stroke I took was like a knife cut, and I couldn’t shake

the drowning kittens off. Perhaps to those cats I owe my life, for the

pain made me so mad I fought on and on, toward the lightship which

seemed to go farther away instead of closer. I could hear the others

swimming near me, just the “cut-splash—cut-splash!” of their strokes. I

had swum about a mile against a high running sea with the cats on my

back. I was exhausted, so I trod water and drank the fresh rain that

poured down. That is a trick for deep sea swimming—to drink rain water

which absorbs the salt water that is swallowed.

Two of the men, Swede and Johnson, were ahead of me. Swede began a song.

It was his bravery, his daring to sing in the face of near death that

put courage into me. If Swede could sing then I could hold out too, for

wasn’t I a regular sailor, and here was a supreme test.

I plowed on through the seas. I thought I had been swimming hours, when

Father’s voice a few yards abreast me called:

“Just ahead now—there she looms!”

That was all I remembered until the next morning at daybreak. I came to

on the iron deck of the lightship with only a man’s vest on my naked

torn body. A strange man was bending over me. He turned out to be the

keeper of the lightship.

“She must be a damn fine swimmer because young things is hard to kill.”

He lifted me off the deck and carried me to his warm cabin where I lost

consciousness again. The cats were gone! Somewhere in that last quarter

mile they were lost.

Late that afternoon I awoke. The engineer of the lightship gave me a

warm suit of dungarees and a heavy sweater to wear, and then we learned

what had happened. The look-out on the lightship had seen the fire on

board. He attempted to launch a small boat to come to rescue us when the

Southerly Buster squall arose and made the feat impossible. He and his

men watched from the crow’s nest on the mast all night through. They saw

the ship capsize. Through powerful binoculars they scanned the sea for a

sign of us in our lifeboat. At almost daybreak Swede and Oleson reached

the lightship, then followed Johnson, the cabin-boy and Bulgar. Swede

swam back to get me and he dragged my limp body to the lightship. The

lightship keeper threw over a running bowline which Swede made fast

around my stomach and back and they hoisted me on deck. Father and the

mate were the last to be pulled aboard.

We stayed on the lightship for three days. Father couldn’t speak. He

stood by the rail for hours at a time just staring out towards the sea.

He refused food. I tried to talk with him but he didn’t hear me.

“From a skipper to a bum!—I’m through forever now,” he finally said,

more to the sea than to any person, as the Government cutter from

Melbourne steamed alongside the light ship to take us ashore, in answer

to the S.O.S. call sent by the lightship Keeper.

And Father _was_ through too. The day of steam ships has come. Old

sailing captains have no place any longer. My father was seventy years

old, and broken by the wreck. He is living ashore now, near the coast on

the Pacific, but his spirit is not on the land—it is far off in the

tropics dreaming of a fair wind and the stars of the Southern Cross to

steer a course by.

[Illustration]

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where

multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer

errors occur.

Book cover is placed in the public domain.

“They never swear on Pitcairn, Skipper,” he explained. I had offended