He had a huge music box there. And he was singing to its playing, and
dancing clumsily about like a happy young mammoth.
"Spying on the 'old man,' eh?"
He came over and caught me by an ear roughly but playfully.
"No, Captain, I was only saying breakfast is ready."
"You're a sly one ... do you like that tune? _The Sunshine of Paradise
Alley?_ It's my favorite Yankee hymn."
And it must have been; every morning for eighty-nine days the gaudy
music box faithfully played the tune over and over again.
* * * * *
The ship drifted slowly through the Sargasso Sea--that dead, sweltering
area of smooth waters and endless leagues of drifting seaweed.... Or we
lifted and sank on great, smooth swells ... the last disturbance of a
storm far off where there were honest winds that blew.
* * * * *
The prickly heat assailed us ... hundreds of little red, biting pimples
on our bodies ... the cook's fresh-baked bread grew fuzz in twenty-four
hours after baking ... the forecastle and cabin jangled and snarled
irritably, like tortured animals....
* * * * *
It was with a shout, one day, that we welcomed a good wind, and shot
clear of this dead sea of vegetable matter.
* * * * *
As we crossed the equator Father Neptune came on board ... a curious
sea-ceremony that must hark back to the Greeks and Romans....
The bow-legged sailmaker played Neptune.
He combed out a beard of rope, wrapped a sheet around his shoulders,
procured a trident of wood....
"Come," shouted one of the sailors to me, running up like a happy boy,
"come, see Neptune climbing on board."
The sail-maker pretended to mount up out of the sea, climbing over the
forecastle head--just as if he had left his car of enormous,
pearl-tinted sea-shell, with the spouting dolphins still hitched to it,
waiting for him, while he paid his respects to our captain.
Captain Schantze, First Mate Miller, Second Mate Stange, stood waiting
the ceremonial on the officers' bridge, an amused smile playing over
their faces.
A big, boy-faced sailor named Klaus, and the ship's blacksmith, a
grey-eyed, sandy-haired fellow named Klumpf, followed the sailmaker
close behind, as he swept along in his regalia, solemnly and
majestically. And Klaus beat a triangle. And Klumpf played an accordion.
"Sailmaker" (the only name he was called by on the ship) made a
grandiose speech to the Captain.
Schantze replied in the same vein, beginning,
"Euer Majestät--"
* * * * *
The sailors marched forward again, to their music, like pleased
children. For custom was that they should have plum duff this day, and
plenty of hot grog....
Before I was aware, I was caught up by several arms.
For I had never before crossed the line. So I must be initiated.
They set me on a board, over a great barrel of sea-water.
Klumpf gave me a mock-shave with a vile mixture of tar and soap. He used
a great wooden razor about three feet long. The officers shouted and
laughed, looking on from the bridge.
"What's your name, my boy?" asked Father Neptune.
"John Greg--" Before I could articulate fully the blacksmith thrust a
gob of the vile lather into my mouth. As I spluttered and spit everyone
gave shouts of laughter. One or two sailors rolled on the deck,
laughing, as savages are said to do when overtaken with humour.
The board on which I sat was jerked from under me. Once, two times,
three times, I was pushed, almost bent double, far down into the barrel
of sea-water. It was warm, at least.
Then a hue and cry went up for Franz. He was caught. He swore that he
had crossed the line before, as doubtless he had. But there was now a
sort of quiet feud between him and the rest aboard. So in a tumbling
heap, they at last bore him over. He fought and shrieked. And because he
did not submit and take the ceremony good-naturedly, he was treated
rather roughly.
* * * * *
My certificate of initiation was handed me formally and solemnly. It was
a semi-legal florid document, sealed with a bit of rope and tar. It
certified that I had crossed the line. The witnesses were "The
Mainmast," "The Mizzen Mast," and other inanimate ship's parts and
objects....
"Keep this," said Sailmaker, as he handed it to me, "as evidence that
you have already crossed the line, and you will never be shaved with tar
and a wooden razor again. You are now a full-fledged son of Neptune."
* * * * *
On a ship at sea where the work to do never ends, it is a serious matter
if one of the crew does not know his work, or fails to hold up his end.
That means that there is so much more work to be done by the others.
Franz deliberately shirked. And, as far as I could see, he purposely
got in bad with the mates, under whom he had approximately sixty days
more of pulling and hauling, going up aloft, scrubbing, and chipping to
do. I was puzzled at the steadfast, deliberate malingering of the man.
The crew all hated him, too. I have seen the man at the wheel
deliberately deflect the ship from its course, in order to bring the
wind against the mutineer's belly, hoping to have him blown overboard
while he was running aloft....
And one night, in the forecastle, someone hurled a shoe at him. A blow
so savagely well-aimed, that when he came running aft, howling with pain
(for, for all his obstinacy, he seemed to lack courage)--to complain of
the outrage, to Schantze--his eye popped out so far that it seemed as if
leaping out of its socket! It was ghastly and bloody like a butchered
heart.
Later, I asked the sailors why this had been done to Franz. And Klumpf
said--
"We had a scuffle over something. We were all taking it friendly ... and
Franz bit Klaus through the hand, almost ... then someone threw a shoe
and hit him in the eye"....
* * * * *
In about a week, after his eye had healed just a little, I drew Franz
apart. We sat down together on the main hatch. I was worried about him.
I did not understand him. I was sorry for him.
"Look here, Franz ... don't you know you might get put clean out of
business if you keep this mutiny of one up much longer? You can't whip a
whole ship's crew."
"I don't want to whip a whole ship's crew."
"The captain had to have another man in a hurry, you know ... but he's
really willing to give you decent treatment."
"Did the captain send you to tell me this?"
"Of course not ... only I'm sorry for you."
Franz gave me a broad, inexplicable wink. He smiled grotesquely--from
swollen lips made more grotesque because of a recent punch in the mouth
"Sailmaker" had fetched him....
"Don't trouble yourself about me. I know what I'm doing, my boy."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that, as soon as I came out of my drunk, and found myself
shanghaied, I _wanted_ them to ill-treat me ... there's a Sailors' Aid
Society at Sydney, you know!"
"What good will the Sailors' Aid Society do you?"
"You just wait and see what good it will do me!"
"Nonsense, Franz! The captain's willing to pay you off at Sydney."
"Pay me off, eh? Yes, and the old boy will pay me handsome damages,
too!... the sentimental old ladies that have nothing else to do but
befriend the poor abused sailor, will see to it that I find justice in
the courts there."
"You have a good case against the captain as it is, then. Why don't you
turn to and behave and be treated decently?"
"No," he replied, with a curious note of strength in his voice, "the
worse I'm treated the more damages I can collect. I'm going to make it a
real case of brutal treatment before I leave this old tub."
"But they--they'll--they might kill you!"
"Not much ... those days are about gone ... for a man who knows how to
handle himself, as I do....
"Well, let us thank God," he finished, "for the Sailors' Aid Society and
the dear old maids at Sydney!"
I walked off, thinking. Franz had sworn me not to tell. Yet I was
tempted to. It would get me in right with Captain Schantze.
* * * * *
We shaped to the Cape of Good Hope with great, southern jumps. We were
striking far south for the strong, steady winds.
* * * * *
"There was a damned English ship, the _Lord Summerville_, that left New
York about the same time we did ... she's a sky-sailer ... we mustn't
let her beat us into Sydney."
"Why not, Captain?"
"An Englishman beat a German!" the captain spat, "fui! We're going to
beat England yet at everything ... already we're taking their
world-trade away from them ... and some day we'll beat them at sea and
on land, both."
"In a war, sir?"
"Yes, in a war ... in a great, big war! It will have to come to that,
Johann, my boy."
* * * * *
The cook's opinion on the same subject was illuminating.
He told me many anecdotes which tended to prove that even England's
colonies were growing tired of her arrogance: he related droll stories
told him by Colonials about the Queen ... obscene and nasty they were,
too.
"Catch a German talking that way about the Kaiserin!"
The old cook couldn't realize a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon
temperament--that those they rail against and jibe at they love the
most!
* * * * *
Off the Tristan da Cunha Islands we ran head-on into a terrific storm
... one that lasted forty-eight hours or more, with rushing, screaming
winds, and steady, stinging blasts of sleet that came thick in
successions of driving, grey cloud.
It was then that we lost overboard a fine, handsome young Saxon, one
Gottlieb Kampke:
Five men aloft ... only four came down ... Kampke was blown overboard
off the footrope that ran under the yard, as he stood there hauling in
on the sail. For he was like a young bull in strength; and, scorning, in
his strength, the tearing wind, he used to heave in with both hands ...
not holding fast at all, no matter how hard the wind tore.
* * * * *
It was all that the ship herself could do, to live. Already two
lifeboats had been bashed in. And the compass stanchioned on the bridge
had gone along with a wave, stanchions and all.
* * * * *
There was no use trying to rescue Gottlieb Kampke. Besides, he would be
dead as soon as he reached the water, in such a boiling sea, the captain
said to me.
The melancholy cry, "Man overboard!" ...
I took oath that if I ever reached home alive, I would never go to sea
again. If I just got home, alive, I would be willing even to tie up
brown parcels in grocery cord, for the rest of my life, to sweep out a
store day after day, regularly and monotonously, in safety!...
The captain saw me trembling with a nausea of fear. And, with the winds
booming from all sides, the deck as slippery as the body of a live eel,
he gave me a shove far out on the slant of the poop. I sped in the grey
drive of sleet clear to the rail. The ship dipped under as a huge wave
smashed over, all fury and foam, overwhelming the helmsman and bearing
down on me....
It was miraculous that I was not swept overboard.
After that, strangely, I no longer feared, but enjoyed a quickening of
pulse. And I gladly took in the turns in the rope as the men sang and
heaved away ... waves would heap up over us. We would hold tight till we
emerged again. Then again we would shout and haul away.
* * * * *
"It's all according to what you grow used to," commented the captain.
* * * * *
By the time I was beginning to look into the face of danger as into a
mother's face, the weather wore down. The ocean was still heavy with
running seas, but we rode high and dry.
* * * * *
Unlucky Kampke!
His shipmates bore his dunnage aft, for the captain to take in charge.
And, just as in melodramas and popular novels, a picture of a
fair-haired girl was found at the bottom of his sea-chest, together with
one of his mother ... his sweetheart and his mother....
Depositions were taken down from his forecastle mates, as to his going
overboard, and duly entered into the log ... and the captain wrote a
letter to his mother, to be mailed to her from Sydney.
* * * * *
For a day we were sad. An imminent sense of mortality hung over us.
But there broke, the next morning, a clear sky of sunshine and an open
though still yesty sea--and we sang, and became thoughtless and gay
again.
* * * * *
"Yes," sighed the cook, "I wish it had been Franz instead of Gottlieb.
Gottlieb was such a fine fellow, and Franz is such a son of a----."
* * * * *
... I have left something out.
At the beginning of the voyage Captain Schantze housed a flock of two
dozen chickens in a coop under the forecastle ... in order to insure
himself of fresh eggs during the voyage....
And for fresh meat, he had a huge sow hauled aboard--to be killed later
on....
* * * * *
One morning, when I went forward to fetch the captain's and mates'
breakfast, I found the cook all white and ghastly....
"What's the matter, Cook?"
"To-day's the day I've got to butcher the sow," he complained, "and I'd
give anything to have someone else do it ... I've made such a pet of her
during the voyage ... and she's so intelligent and affectionate ...
she's decenter than lots of human beings I've met."