A Storm Comes from the Coast of Cuba—Everyone Goes to Sleep on the
Ship Except the Watchman and Pilot—The Bad Boy Is Put in the
Dungeon—The Captain Says to Throw the Boy Overboard to Feed the
Sharks.
I feel like a bridegroom that has been left waiting at the church, with
no bride appearing, and the crowd scoffing at him, and commenting on his
clothes.
I waited on the porch of the hotel at Fortress Monroe all the forenoon
for Mr. Evans’ launch to come and get me and take me aboard his
gladship, holding my ticket in one hand and my bundle of clothes in the
other.
Launches came by the dozen, bringing people ashore, but no one was
allowed to go out to the ships. Finally the last launch came, and it was
manned by “Connecticut” men, and when I showed my ticket and was going
to get on, the boss said “skiddoo,” the boat moved away with one of my
feet on board and the other on the dock, and I promptly fell in the
water, the boss of the boat yelled to some one on the dock to “get a
boat hook and pull it out,” and soon I came up strangling, a hook caught
me in the pants and I was hauled out on the dock, they rolled me on a
barrel and stood me on my head to empty the water out of me, and a
soldier took me into the kitchen of the hotel to have me dried out by
the gas boiler, and I felt deserted and demoralized. The guns boomed,
the bands played, and I looked out of the kitchen window and saw the
fleet sail away south without me, and I realized that Bob Evans had been
“stringing” me, and that he never intended I should go around the horn
with the fleet, and I thought that may be, if he was a liar, and used
profane language, and was subject to rheumatism, it was better that I
did not go, as I might be spoiled. But they can go plumb with their old
fleet, and if the Japs get Bob Evans and roast him over the coals, all I
hope is that he will be sorry for treating me as he did.
[Illustration: The Boss of the Boat Ordered Me Pulled Out with a Boat
Hook.]
But I always light on my feet. After I got dried out, I met a man who
was picking up a crew to go to Europe from Baltimore on a cattle ship,
and he pictured to me the easy life on the ocean wave with a load of
steers, and hired me to go along, and I thought it was the chance of my
life to meet up with Pa, who is over there hunting airships for his
government, so we went to Baltimore, and that night we were in the
cattle ship and I slept in a hammock and ate my bread and beef out of a
tin basin.
Gee, what a change it was over my former trip to Europe with Pa, on a
regular liner, with a bed and meals in the cabin. But when a boy goes
out in the world to gain his own living, and travel on his face, he has
got to take what comes to him.
The next morning my work began. Our vessel went up to the stock yards,
and began to load steers for shipment, and all I had to do was to act as
a “twister.” When the cattle came through the shute, and landed on the
deck, and refused to go into the dark places, we had to take hold of the
tails of the cattle and twist them so they would move on, and of all the
bellowing you ever heard, that was the worst.
Whether the bellowing was caused by the tail twisting, or because the
cattle were home sick, and did not want to be kidnapped or “shonghaid”
on board a foreign-bound vessel, I don’t know, but it was more exciting
than the sea fight at Santiago and about as dangerous, for the cattle
hooked with their horns and kicked, and I was kicked more than forty
times, and would have quit, only the man that hired me said if any of us
were injured we would be put on the government pension list, and be
supported in luxury the balance of our lives, so I worked for two days,
and finally we got a thousand or more steers down in the hold, sliding
them down on skids, and they were lined up in stalls, with a hay rack in
front of them, and a bar across behind them, and we sailed for the
ocean, after feeding the cattle bailed hay and giving them water and
bedding.
It seemed to me those cattle were almost as comfortable as steerage
passengers on a liner, but they kicked and bellowed, and pawed the
planks off the deck, and mourned like lost souls.
The first day out I found that I was not a passenger, but a crew.
Instead of the easy life I had expected, loafing along across the ocean,
I had to get up before daylight and skin potatoes, and help stir soup,
and pulverize hard tack, and carry the food up into the cabin for the
officers, and be sea sick, and wash dishes and wait on table, and feed
cattle, and do everything anybody told me to do. After a few days I
mutinied, and went to the captain and complained. He was an English
nobleman, and after hearing my tale of woe, he told me if I didn’t like
it I could go to ’ell, and I went down cellar to the cook room, which
was the nearest to ’ell I could go on that vessel. I found the man that
hired me, and told him I seemed to be doing the most of the work on the
excursion, and that I wanted an assistant. He said if I thought I was
working much now, I better wait until we run into a storm, when I would
not only have to be cook and waiter and chamber maid to the steers, but
I would have to be trained nurse down in the cattle regions, for when
the steers began to be sea sick that was a time when any man who had a
heart could use it to the best advantage, for there was nothing more
pitiful than a steer with a pain under his belt. He said steers were not
at all like the Irishman who was on the bow of the boat on the last
trip, feeding the fish, when the captain came along and said, “Pat, your
stomach seems to be weak,” and Pat said, “O, I dunno, I am throwing it
as far as any of them.” He said when there was a storm at sea the
animals acted perfectly human. They would get down on their knees and
roll their eyes heavenward, and moan, and cry, and tears would be in
their eyes, but they never lost their cud, only they swelled up and
bellowed.
Well, it wasn’t an hour before a storm came from towards Cuba, and the
boat was rocking and pitching, and the captain blew three whistles,
which was a signal for all hands to go below and nurse the steers, and
we all made a rush down to the very bowels of the ship, where the cattle
were, and such a sight I never saw.
Every steer was standing on one leg and then another, pitching forward
into the manger, and then back against the bar that held them in the
stall, and all bellowing as though their hearts would break, and the
duty of the crew was to go in the stalls and throw the cattle down on
their sides, and tie their legs so they couldn’t get up, when they could
lie there and ride easy.
They sent me into a stall where a steer was slowly dying by inches, with
instructions to hold up his left foreleg, so they could throw him, and
just as I had raised the leg they threw him onto me, and went on to the
next stall, leaving me with the wind all jammed out of me, and the
haunch of the steer holding me down.
They went all through the lower deck, got the steers down, and went off
and left me there to die, never seeming to miss me. I have slept with a
good many different kinds of people and things in my time. I have had a
porcupine crawl into bed with me when camping in the North woods, and he
was rough enough, for sure. I once had a skunk come into a tent where
some of us boys were camping, and when the skunk found out who we were
he didn’t do a thing and all the boys said it was me, and they kicked me
out, and made me sleep with the dogs, until the dogs struck, when I was
lonely enough.
Once I had a snake get under my blanket and shake his rattles, and I got
out of the tent so quick the snake never knew I was there, but in my
wildest moments of seeking for new experiences, I never thought I should
be a pillow for the stomach of a sea sick thousand-pound steer.
When I got my breath so I could yell it was night, and I had probably
been under that steer for several hours. I tried to kick the steer in a
vital part, where ox drivers kick oxen to make them “haw” and “gee,” but
the steer had gone to sleep and never paid any attention to me.
I guess everybody had gone to sleep on the ship, except the watchman and
the pilot, but I could lay there all night, so I began to make a noise
like a ghost, and I wailed so the watchman heard me, and he peered down
the hatch, and I mumbled, “I am thy father’s ghost,” and I rubbed some
phosphorus I had in my pocket on the hair of the steer that was acting
as my bed clothes. The man skipped, and pretty soon he came back with
the English captain, who had told me if I didn’t like my job I could go
to ’ell, and when he saw the shining steer with the phosphorus on its
hair, I wailed and said, “This is ’ell, come in, the water is fine, and
I smell the blood of an Englishman.”
[Illustration: “I Am Thy Father’s Ghost!—Come on in, the Water’s Fine!—I
Smell the Blood of an Englishman!”]
Well, the captain weakened, and wouldn’t come down, but I heard bells
ringing all over the boat, like a fire alarm, and pretty soon the whole
crew came down cellar with hose and began to squirt water on the steer
and me, and the steer was so scared it broke the rope on its legs and
got up off me, and then the animal stampeded out of the stall and
charged the firemen, and rubbed its phosphorus side against the English
captain, and he thought he was in hell, for sure, and he made them turn
the hose on him, and then a man hit the steer in the head with an ax,
and the trouble was over, except that the captain laid it all to me, and
told the crew I was a “’oodoo,” and they searched me and found my
phosphorus, and that settled it with me.
They were ordered to put me in the dungeon, and when they were going up
stairs I heard the captain say, “At daylight ’oist it h’out of the ’old,
and chuck it h’over board to feed the sharks,” so I guess I can see my
finish all right.
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