SLIM GOES ON STRIKE
It was the heart of the Arctic summer and the high hills that rose all
about the town were green with deep grass--it looked as if it would reach
a man's waist--and ablaze with wild flowers. I was surprised to see such
a riot of blooms in this far northern latitude, but there they were, and
every off-shore breeze was sweet with their fragrance. The village was
dingy enough, but the country looked alluring and, as the day after we
dropped anchor was Sunday and nothing to do aboard, the crew decided to
ask for a day's liberty ashore. Bill White, the Englishman, and Slim, our
Royal Life Guardsman, agreed to act as the forecastle's ambassadors to the
cabin. They dressed up in their smartest clothes and went aft to interview
Captain Shorey on the quarter-deck. White made the speech of the occasion
and proffered the forecastle's request in his best rhetoric. Captain
Shorey puffed silently at his cigar. "I'll see about it," he said. That
closed the incident as far as the captain was concerned. We got no shore
leave.
As the day wore away and the desired permission failed to materialize, the
forecastle became piqued at what it considered the skipper's gratuitous
ungraciousness. Slim waxed particularly indignant.
"He'll 'see about it,'" Slim sneered. "He never had no idea of letting us
go in the first place. He's a cold-blooded son of a sea cook--that's what
he is--and as for me, I'll never do another tap of work aboard the bloody
hooker."
This was strong language. Of course, none of us took it seriously, feeling
sure Slim would reconsider by the next morning and turn to for work with
the rest of us. But we did not know Slim. Bright and early Monday morning,
the men mustered on deck and went to work, but Slim remained in his bunk.
Having rowed our whale bone to the dock and stored it in a warehouse to
await the first steamer for San Francisco, a boat's crew towed three or
four hogsheads roped together ashore for water. Another boat went ashore
for coal. Those left aboard the brig were put to work in the hold near
the main hatch under the supervision of Mr. Winchester. The mate suddenly
noted Slim's absence.
"Where's Slim?" he asked.
Nobody answered.
"He didn't go ashore in the boats," said the mate. "Where is he?"
Someone volunteered that Slim was sick.
"Sick, eh?" said the mate.
He hustled off to the forecastle scuttle.
"Slim," he sang out, "what's the matter with you?"
"I'm sick," responded Slim from his bunk.
"If you're sick," said the mate, "come aft and report yourself sick to the
captain."
In a little while, Slim shuffled back to the cabin. A few minutes later
wild yells came from the cabin. We stopped work. The mate seemed to think
we might rush to the rescue.
[Illustration: Hoisting the Blubber Aboard]
"Get busy there," he roared. "Slew that cask around."
The yells broke off. We went to work again. For a half hour, there was
silence in the cabin. We wondered what had happened. Slim might have been
murdered for all we knew. Finally Slim emerged and went silently forward.
We noticed a large shaved spot on the top of his head where two long
strips of court-plaster formed a black cross.
The first thing Slim did after getting back to the forecastle was to
take one of his blue flannel shirts and, while none of the officers was
looking, shin up the ratlines and hang it on the fore-lift. This is an
old-time sailor sign of distress and means trouble aboard. The mate soon
spied the shirt swinging in the breeze.
"Well, I'll be darned," he said. "Jump up there one of you and take that
shirt down."
No one stirred. The mate called the cabin boy and the young Kanaka brought
down the shirt. Slim told us at dinner time all about his adventure in the
cabin.
"I goes down in the cabin," said Slim, "and the captain is standing with
his hands in his pants pockets, smiling friendly-like. 'Hello, Slim,' he
says. 'Sit down in this chair.' I sits down and the captain says, 'Well,
my boy, what's the matter with you?' 'I'm sick,' says I. 'Where do you
feel bad?' he says. 'I ache all over,' says I. He steps over in front of
me, still with that little smile on his face. 'I've got good medicine
aboard this ship,' he says, 'and I'll fix you up in a jiffy, my boy,' says
he. With that he jerks one of his hands out of his pocket and he has a
revolver clutched in it. 'Here's the medicine you need,' he says and he
bats me over the cocoanut with the gun.
"The blood spurts all over me and I jumps up and yells, but the captain
points his pistol at me and orders me to sit down again. He storms up and
down the cabin floor. 'I'll teach you who's master aboard this ship,' he
shouts and for a minute he was so purple in the face with rage, I thought
he was going to murder me for sure. By and by he cools down. 'Well, Slim,'
he says, 'I guess I hit you a little harder than I meant to, but I'm a bad
man when I get started. You need tending to now, sure enough.'
"So he has the cabin boy fetch a pan of warm water and he washes the blood
out of my hair with his own hands and then shaves around the cut and
pastes sticking plaster on. That's all. But say, will I have the law on
him when we get back to Frisco? Will I?"
It was a long way back to Frisco. In the meantime we wondered what was in
store for the luckless Irish grenadier.
That afternoon, the revenue cutter _Corwin_ came steaming into port towing
a poaching sealer as a prize. It was the same schooner, we learned, we had
seen the _Corwin_ chasing a few days before. As the cutter passed us, Slim
sprang on the forecastle head while Captain Shorey and everybody aboard
the brig looked at him and, waving a blue flannel shirt frantically,
shouted: "Please come aboard. I've had trouble aboard." "Aye, aye," came
back across the water from the government patrol vessel. Waving a shirt
has no significance in sea tradition, but Slim was not enough of a sailor
to know that, and besides, he wanted to leave nothing undone to impress
the revenue cutter officers with the urgency of his case.
No sooner had the _Corwin_ settled to her berth at the pier than a
small boat with bluejackets at the oars, two officers in gold braid and
epaulettes in the stern, and with the stars and stripes flying, shot out
from under her quarter and headed for the brig.
"Aha," we chuckled. "Captain Shorey has got his foot in it. He has Uncle
Sam to deal with now. He won't hit him over the head with a revolver."
The boat came alongside and the officers climbed over the rail. Captain
Shorey welcomed them with a smile and elaborate courtesy and ushered them
into the cabin. Slim was sent for.
"Tell 'em everything, Slim," we urged. "Give it to the captain hot and
heavy. He's a brute and the revenue cutter men will take you off the brig
as sure as shooting. They won't dare leave you aboard to lead a dog's life
for the rest of the voyage."
"I'll show him up, all right," was Slim's parting shot.
Slim came back from the cabin a little later.
"I told 'em everything," he said. "They listened to everything I had to
say and took down a lot of notes in a book. I asked 'em to take me off the
brig right away, for, says I, Captain Shorey will kill me if they leave me
aboard. I guess they'll take me off."
An hour later, the two officers of the _Corwin_ emerged from the cabin,
accompanied by Captain Shorey. They were puffing complacently at a couple
of the captain's cigars. They seemed in high good humor. After shaking
hands with Captain Shorey, they climbed down into their boat and were
rowed back to their vessel. That was the last we ever saw of them. Poor
Slim was left to his fate.
And his fate was a rough one. There was no outward change in the attitude
of the captain or the officers of the brig toward him. Whenever they spoke
to him, they did it with as much civility as they showed the rest of us.
But Slim was compelled to work on deck all day and stand his regular
night watches into the bargain. That meant he got eight hours sleep during
twenty-four hours one day and four hours sleep during the next. As the
ship was in whaling waters from now on, the crew had little to do except
man the boats. But Slim always had plenty to do. While we smoked our pipes
and lounged about, he was kept washing paint work, slushing down masts,
scraping deck and knocking the rust off the anchors. Any one of a hundred
and one little jobs that didn't need doing, Slim did. This continued until
the brig squared her yards for the homeward voyage. Slim had more than
three months of it. The Lord knows it was enough. When his nagging finally
ended, he was a pale, haggard shadow of his former self. It almost killed
him.