"I'm going to start you out right. Will the captain let you off for a
while?"
"The cook's my boss ... as far as my time is concerned. I'm cabin boy."
My father gave the cook a couple of big, black cigars. I was allowed
shore leave till four o'clock that afternoon....
"--you need a little outfitting," explained my father, as we walked
along the dock to the street....
"I've saved up a couple of hundred dollars, which I drew out before I
came over."
"But, Father...."
"You need a lot of things. I'm going to start you off right. While you
were up in the cabin getting ready to go ashore I had a talk with the
cook.... I sort o' left you in his charge--"
"But I don't want to be left in anyone's charge."
"--found out from him just what you'd need and now we're going to do a
little shopping."
I accompanied my father to a seamen's outfitting place, and he spent a
good part of his two hundred buying needful things for me ... shirts of
strong material ... heavy underwear ... oilskins ... boots ... strong
thread and needles ... and a dunnage bag to pack it all away in....
* * * * *
We stood together on the after-deck again, my father and I.
"Now I must be going," he remarked, trying to be casual. He put a ten
dollar bill in my hand.
"--to give the boys a treat with," he explained ... "there's nothing
like standing in good with an outfit you're to travel with ... and
here," he was rummaging in his inside pocket ... "put these in your
pocket and keep them there ... a bunch of Masonic cards of the lodge
your daddy belongs to ... if you ever get into straits, you'll stand a
better chance of being helped, as son of a Mason."
"No, Father," I replied, seriously and unhumorously, "I can't keep
them."
"I'd like to know why not?"
"I want to belong to the brotherhood of man, not the brotherhood of the
Masons."
He looked puzzled for a moment, then his countenance cleared.
"That's all right, Son ... you just keep those cards. They might come in
handy if you find yourself stranded anywhere."
When my father turned his back, with a thought almost prayerful to the
spirit of Shelley, I flung the Masonic cards overboard.
* * * * *
After dusk, the crew poured _en masse_ to the nearest waterfront saloon
with me. The ten dollars didn't last long.
* * * * *
"His old man has lots of money."
* * * * *
Our last night at the pier was a night of a million stars.
The sailmaker, with whom I had become well acquainted, waddled up to me.
He was bow-legged. He waddled instead of walked. We sat talking on the
foreward hatch....
"I'm glad we're getting off to-morrow," I remarked.
"--we might not. We lack a man for the crew yet."
"--thought we had the full number?"
"We did. But one of the boys in your party strayed away ... went to
another saloon and had a few more drinks ... and someone stuck him with
a knife in the short ribs ... he's in the hospital."
"But can't Captain Schantze pick up another man right away?"
"The consulate's closed till ten to-morrow morning. We're to sail at
five ... so he can't sign on a new sailor before ... of course he might
shanghai someone ... but the law's too severe these days ... and the
Sailors' Aid Society is always on the job ... it isn't like it used to
be."
* * * * *
But in spite of what the sailmaker had told me, the captain decided to
take his chance, rather than delay the time of putting forth to sea.
Around ten o'clock, in the full of the moon, a night-hawk cab drew up
alongside the ship where she lay docked, and out of it jumped the first
mate and the captain with a lad who was so drunk or drugged, or both,
that his legs went down under him when they tried to set him on his
feet.
They tumbled him aboard, where he lay in an insensate heap, drooling
spit and making incoherent, bubbling noises.
Without lifting an eyebrow in surprise, the sailmaker stepped forward
and joined the mate in jerking the man to his feet. The captain went aft
as if it was all in the day's work.
The mate and the sailmaker jerked the shanghaied man forward and bundled
him into a locker where bits of rope and nautical odds and-ends were
piled, just forward of the galley.
* * * * *
In the sharp but misty dawn we cast our moorings loose. A
busy little tug nuzzled up to take us in tow for open sea.
We were all intent on putting forth, when a cry came from the port side.
The shanghaied man had broken out, and came running aft ... he stopped a
moment, like a trapped animal, to survey the distance between the dock
and the side ... measuring the possibilities of a successful leap.
By this time the first and second mates were after him, with some of the
men ... he ran forward again, doubled in his tracks like a schoolboy
playing tag ... we laughed at that, it was so funny the way he went
under the mate's arm ... the look of surprise on the mate's face was
funny ... Then the man who was pursued, in a flash, did a hazardous
thing ... he flung himself in the air, over the starboard side, and took
a long headlong tumble into the tugboat....
* * * * *
He was tied like a hog, and hauled up by a couple of ropes, the
sailmaker singing a humorous chantey that made the boys laugh, as they
pulled away.
* * * * *
This delayed the sailing anyhow. The mist had lifted like magic,
and we were not far toward Staten Island before we knew a fine,
blowing, clear day, presided over, in the still, upper spaces, by
great, leaning cumulus clouds. They toppled huge over the great-clustered
buildings as we trod outward toward the harbour mouth....
The pilot swung aboard. The voyage was begun.
The coast of America now looked more like a low-lying fringe of
insubstantial cloud than solid land.
My heart sank. I had committed myself definitely to a three-months'
sea-trip ... there was no backing out, it was too far to swim ashore.
"What's wrong, Johann," asked the captain, "are you sea-sick already?"
He had noticed my expression as he walked by.
"No, sir!"
"If you are, it isn't anything to be ashamed of. I've known old
sea-captains who got sea-sick every time they put out of port."
* * * * *
There was a running forward. The shanghaied man hove in sight, on the
rampage again. He came racing aft. "I must speak with the captain."
There was a scuffle. He broke away. Again the two mates were close upon
him. Suddenly he flung himself down and both the mates tripped over him
and went headlong.
The captain couldn't help laughing. Then he began to swear ... "that
fellow's going to give us a lot of trouble," he prophesied.
Several sailors, grinning, had joined in the chase. They had caught the
fellow and were dragging him forward by the back and scruff of the neck,
while he deliberately hung limp and let his feet drag as if paralysed
from the waist down.
The captain stood over the group, that had come to a halt below. The
captain was in good humour.
"Bring him up here."
The shanghaied man stood facing Schantze, with all the deference of a
sailor, yet subtly defiant.
The captain began to talk in German.
"I don't speak German," responded the sailor stubbornly.
Yet it was in German that he had called out he must see the captain.
This did not make the captain angry. Instead, like a vain boy, he began
in French....
"I don't speak French ..." again objected the sailor, still in English.
"Very well, we'll speak in English, then ... bring him down into the
cabin ..." to the men and mates ... To the sailor again, "Come on,
Englishman! (in derision), and we'll sign you on in the ship's
articles."
They haled him below. The captain dismissed the sailors. The captain,
the two mates and I, were alone with the mutineer.... I stepped into the
pantry, pretending to be busy with the dishes. I didn't want to miss
anything.
"Now," explained the captain, "what's happened has happened ... it's up
to you to make the best of it ... we had to shanghai you," and he
explained the case in full ... and if he would behave and do his share
of the work with the rest of the crew, he would be treated decently and
be paid ... and let go, if he wished, when the _Valkyrie_ reached
Sydney....
"Now sign," commanded the mate, "I never heard of a man in your fix ever
being treated so good before."
"But I won't sign."
"Damme, but you will," returned Miller, the first mate, who, though
German, spoke English in real English fashion--a result, he later told
me, of fifteen years' service on English boats....
"Take hold of him, Stanger," this to the second mate, a lithe,
sun-browned, handsome lad who knew English but hated to speak it.
They wrestled about the cabin at a great rate ... finally they succeeded
in forcing a pen into the mutineer's hand....
Then the man calmed down, apparently whipped.
"Very well, where shall I sign?"
"Da," pointed the captain triumphantly, pointing the line out, with his
great, hairy forefinger ... and, with victory near, relapsing into
German.
But, just as it reached the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent
swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He
tore a great, ink-smeared rent through the paper....
_Whang!_ Captain Schantze caught him with the full force of his big,
open right hand on the left side of his face.... _Whish!_ Captain
Schantze caught him with the full force of his open left, on the other
cheek!
The shanghaied man stiffened. He trembled violently.
"Do it a thousand times, my dear captain. I won't sign till you kill
me."
"Take him forward. He'll work, and work hard, without signing on.... No,
wait ... tie him up to the rail on the poop ... twenty-four hours of
that, my man, since you must speak English--will make you change your
mind."
He was tied, with his hands behind him.
The captain paced up and down beside him.
Then Franz (as I afterward learned his name) boldly began chaffing the
"old man" ... first in English.
"I don't understand," replied Schantze; he was playful now, as a cat is
with a mouse ... or rather, like a big boy with a smaller boy whom he
can bully.
After all, Schantze was only a big, good-natured "kid" of thirty.
Then Franz ran through one language after another ... Spanish, Italian,
French....
The captain noticed me out of the tail of his eye. His big, broad face
kindled into a grin.
"What are you doing here on deck, you rascal!" He gave me an
affectionate, rough pull of the ear.
"Polishing the brass, sir!"
"And taking everything in at the same time, eh? so you can write a poem
about it?"
His vanity flattered, Schantze began answering Franz back, and, to and
fro they shuttled their tongues, each showing off to the other--and to
me, a mere cabin boy. And Franz, for the moment, seemed to have
forgotten how he had been dragged aboard ... and the captain--that Franz
was a mutineer, tied to the taffrail for insubordination!
* * * * *
Sea-sickness never came near me. Only it was queer to feel the footing
beneath my feet rhythmically rising and falling ... for that's the way
it seemed to my land-legs. But then I never was very sturdy on my legs
... which were then like brittle pipestems.... I sprawled about,
spreading and sliding, as I went to and from the galley, bringing, in
the huge basket, the breakfast, dinner and supper for the cabin....
The sailors called me "Albatross" (from the way an albatross acts when
sprawling on shipdeck). They laughed and poked fun at me.
* * * * *
"Look here, you Yankee rascal," said the captain, when I told him I
never drank ... "I think it would do you good if you got a little smear
of beer-froth on your mouth once in a while ... you'd stop looking
leathery like a mummy ... you've already got some wrinkles on your face
... a few good drinks would plump you out, make a man of you.
"In Germany mothers give their babies a sip from their steins before
they are weaned ... that's what makes us such a great nation."
* * * * *
If I didn't drink, at least the two mates and the sailmaker made up for
me ... we had on board many cases of beer stowed away down in the
afterhold, where the sails were stored. And next to the dining room
there was the space where provisions were kept--together with kegs of
kümmel, and French and Rhine wines and claret....
And before we had been to sea three days I detected a conspiracy on the
part of the first and second mates, the cook, and the sailmaker--the
object of the conspiracy being, apparently, to drink half the liquor out
of each receptacle, then fill the depleted cask with hot water, shaking
it up thoroughly, and so mixing it.
As far as I could judge, the old, bow-legged sailmaker had taken out a
monopoly on the cases of beer aft. Never were sails kept in better
condition. He was always down there, singing and sewing.
Several times I saw him coming up whistling softly with a lush air of
subdued and happy reminiscence.
* * * * *
Several mornings out ... and I couldn't believe my ears ... I heard a
sound of music. It sounded like a grind-organ on a city street....
_The Sunshine of Paradise Alley_.
And the captain's voice was booming along with the melody.