LIFE ON A SPONGER
The yacht sailed on and Dick, walking up to Captain Wilson, who
stood at the wheel, said, as he lifted his cap:
"I beg to report for duty, sir." The captain grinned, as he replied:
"I hope you'll always be as polite. You'll sure be a curiosity on
this coast. I'll put you in with Pedro. He doesn't know much
English, but you can talk enough for both. There he is, that
black-mustached fellow, with little rings in his ears. He will let
you know what your duties are."
A string of four dingies trailed behind the sponger and as many
poles, each thirty feet long, with a sponge-hook at one end, lay
upon the deck. Pedro was examining one of these poles when Billy
went to him and said:
"Pedro, I am to go in your boat. What do I have to do?"
"You scull where I tell you--slow--I look in glass--see sponge--take
up pole--you stop still--then you scull where pole go--you work
good or I keek you."
"Pedro, if you ever keek me, you'll go overboard queek and don't you
forget it."
The sponger lay at anchor on the sponging ground for nearly a week
before the water was clear enough for work. Dick spent most of his
time sculling his dingy and soon learned to throw his weight on the
big sculling oar to the best advantage without going overboard very
often. One day while Pedro sat in the bow, they saw a 400-pound
loggerhead turtle lying asleep on the water. Pedro motioned to Dick
to scull up to the turtle and when the dingy was within three feet
of the creature he jumped on its back and seized the edge of its
shell just behind the head, with both hands. Pedro's weight was so
far aft on the turtle's deck that the bow pointed upward and the
reptile's struggles only served to keep its head above water and
thus carry the man comfortably on its back. Soon Pedro shifted his
right hand to the tail-end of the turtle and thereafter navigated
his living craft with ease. Dick sculled the dingy beside the turtle
and, while trying to make fast the boat's painter around the
creature, fell overboard. Pedro didn't know enough English to
express his feelings fully, and so talked Spanish for a while. Dick
thought he could get the rope around the turtle more easily if he
stayed in the water, and he finally succeeded, though the reptile
got one of the sleeves of his shirt while he was doing it. Then the
boy and Pedro got into the boat and pulled the turtle beside it. In
rolling the reptile aboard they shipped a lot of water and as the
turtle dropped suddenly to the bottom of the dingy Dick fell
backwards out of the boat. Pedro began to express himself in Spanish
again, and, as the sponger was less than two hundred yards distant,
Dick swam to it, leaving his companion to bail out the dingy and
scull it to the big boat. The boat's tackle was required to hoist
the turtle aboard, where it was turned over to the Cook, who
butchered it on deck. The heart of the reptile continued to beat for
hours after it had been removed from the body, so strongly that its
throbbing could not be restrained by the grip of the most powerful
hand. Pedro said that the heart would beat till the sun went down,
and it did.
For days Dick hunted all the turtles he saw lying on the water. At
last he got near enough to one to grab him before he dove. But he
got hold too far back, the reptile's head was already turned
downward and his flippers forced him rapidly forward. Dick hung on
as well as he could, which wasn't for long, for the strong rush of
the water and its great pressure as the reptile made for the bottom
quickly compelled the boy to let go. Yet he was under water so long
that when he came to the surface Captain Wilson was in a dingy
sculling like mad to reach him. The captain gave the boy a kindly
warning, which affected him so much that in ten minutes he was off
after another turtle, which he saw asleep. The creature began his
dive just as Dick jumped for him, and the boy got hold of his
tail-end as it was lifted above the water, in time to get a sharp
slap in the face from the heavy hind flipper of the turtle. Dick
sculled for an hour without seeing another turtle, when, as he was
returning to the boat and within a hundred yards of it, one rose
beside the dingy so near that the boy was on its back before it
could go under the surface. He soon had his charger in fair control,
but the science of riding a big loggerhead turtle isn't picked up in
a minute. One of the crew came out in a dingy to help, but Dick
asked him to pick up his boat and oar and take them to the sponger
and said that he would ride back on the turtle. Sometimes his steed
was manageable, and once he got within a few yards of the big boat,
when it broke loose and carried him fifty yards away. Then, as Dick
tried to check the reptile, he pulled its head too far and tipped it
over on its back on top of himself, with his own head so near the
parrot-like jaws of the loggerhead that when they were snapped in
his face they missed his nose by about an inch. The turtle was as
anxious to turn over as the boy, and, by favoring his motions, Dick
soon had the creature right side up, while he again rode
triumphantly on his back. In another hour the halyards were fast to
the turtle and Billy had made good his promise to ride it back to
the boat.
[Illustration: "DICK HUNTED ALL THE TURTLES HE SAW"]
When the water became clear the dingies were sent out with two men
in each, one of whom sculled while the other sat with his face in a
water-glass watching the bottom for sponges. The water-glass is a
bucket with a glass bottom which so smooths the surface of the water
as to produce the effect of a perfect calm to one who is looking
through it. The first day of sponging was like a dream to Dick. The
water was smooth as a mirror and no water-glass was needed. He
sculled slowly over water so clear that he seemed to be floating in
the air. Beneath him was fairyland, filled with waving sea-feathers
and anemones, paved with curious shells, strangely beautiful forms
of coral and sponges of various kinds, and alive with fish of many
varieties. Sometimes there floated on the surface of the water
Portuguese men-of-war, most beautiful of created things, like
iridescent bubbles, with long silken filaments, delicately lined in
pink, purple and entrancing blue. Lighter than thistledown, fitted
to drift with the merest zephyr, they can nevertheless force their
way against a breeze. Harmless as a soap-bubble in appearance, each
of them is charged with virulent poison, and when Dick touched one
with his hand he received a shock that made him wonder if a bunch of
hornets had hidden in that innocent-looking bubble.
Sometimes schools of little fish gliding beneath the dingy began to
dash wildly about, and a moment later a group of jackfish or Spanish
mackerel could be seen darting around and picking up stragglers from
the little school, which often huddled for protection close beside
and beneath the dingy. Dick like all brave boys, was on the side of
the under dog, and he laughed with glee when a quick-moving mackerel
shark appeared among the pursuers of the little fish and picked up a
few of them for his breakfast as he drove the rest away. As Dick
sculled easily with one hand, he kept an eye upon Pedro, and obeyed
the signals of his hand, to go to the right, the left, or stop, as
sponges were seen. Then from time to time the long pole with the
claw at the end was lowered to the bottom and a sponge torn loose.
Sometimes Dick changed places with Pedro, and manipulated the long
pole with the claw, while Pedro handled the sculling oar. Then Dick
began to learn the difference between coarse grass and common cup
sponges, and the finer fibred glove and choice sheep's wool
varieties. For when he was clumsy with the pole, Pedro only swore
softly in Spanish, but when he brought up a worthless grass sponge,
the big oar was lifted, and the boy might have been knocked
overboard but for the iron claw which he held high, while a purpose
gleamed in his eye which made Pedro peaceful. But Dick felt that
Pedro was half right and he set to work studying sponges until he
knew them almost as well as his teacher. His strength and skill with
the sponge hook were less than the Spaniard's, but his eye was
quicker and Pedro's chronic growls were often changed to grunts of
approval. When the surface of the water was ruffled by a breeze it
was needful to use the water-glass. Then Pedro sat with his head in
the bucket, studying the bottom, and when he took up the heavy pole
which lay on the thwarts of the dingy and dipped it vertically in
the water, it was the duty of Dick to stop sculling at once. But
once while Dick was sculling and looking for sponges he saw gliding
beneath the dingy, a whip-ray, the most beautiful member of the ray
family. Shaped like a butterfly, its back is covered with small,
light rings on a black background. Its long, slim tail is like the
lash of a coach-whip and at its base is a row of little spears with
many barbs, which are capable of inflicting exceedingly painful
wounds. The roof of the mouth and the tongue of the fish are hard as
ivory and shell-fish are ground between them as rock is pulverized by
the jaws of a quartz-crusher. As Billy watched the graceful swaying
of the body of the whip-ray under the impulse of its wings, a
wandering shark came upon it. In its first rush the tiger of the sea
almost caught the beautiful creature, which fluttered for a hundred
yards upon the surface of the water, with the jaws of its pursuer
opening and closing within a few inches of its body.
Dick was so busy watching the chase and so earnest in his sympathy
with the frightened, fleeing whip-ray that he quite forgot his
duties. He was reminded of them when Pedro, who had been frantically
signaling him, took his head from the bucket and made a speech in
Spanish to Dick that must have used up all the bad adjectives in
that language. Dick's conscience hampered him so much that he was
quite unable to reply fittingly, and the battle of words was won by
Pedro. The dingy drifted so far during the discussion that they were
unable to find the sheep's wool sponge that Pedro had seen, and
which he now described as the finest one ever found.
Each day the spongers in the dingies worked farther from the sloop
and each day more time was lost when the sloop made its round to
pick up the spongers for dinner. There were too few sponges to
please Captain Wilson, who sailed over the ground whenever the water
was smooth, studying the bottom with practiced eye and throwing out
little floats, with anchors attached, wherever a sponge was seen.
"I'm going to the 'Lake,'" said the captain, one afternoon at the
end of a day of little success. "It's a feast or a famine there. You
get rich or go broke."
"What is there at the 'Lake'?" asked Dick.
"Sponge, all sponge, the bottom lined with sponge. If the weather is
just right we'll pile the deck with sponges in a week till you can't
see over them. If the weather isn't exactly right we won't get a
sponge. On one cruise there, the men on this sloop averaged
twenty-five dollars a day apiece. I've been there five times since
without ever making enough to pay for our salt."
A week later the captain said to the boy:
"Dick, you are a mascot. You've brought us big luck. We never had
such weather here but once and I don't care now how soon it comes on
to blow. I reckon it'll begin to-night from the looks and we'll hike
for Key West to-morrow."
Dick was glad to go. The week had been a hard one, the work
incessant and each night he felt as if his back were broken. He was
used to the fresh, sweet air of his country home and the sloop he
was in was arranged like most of the sponging craft, with quarters
sufficient for half the crew it carried. The deck of the sponger was
piled with the result of the work of the week. The sponge of
commerce, the one you buy at the drug store, is the skeleton of the
creature; the thing taken from the water is its corpse. Not until
this body has rotted away is it pleasant to live with. Day by day
the stench, like that of a charnel house, became more unbearable to
Dick. The crew seemed never to notice it, which caused the boy much
wonderment that noses had ever been given them. He was glad when a
strong wind came and swept some of the smell away instead of leaving
it to settle in chunks in every nook and cranny on the boat.
At Key West most of the crew went to their homes, but Dick was
invited to live on the sloop till he found a boat for the coast he
wanted to reach.
Cargoes sent to Key West for a market are almost always sold at
auction and the auction houses in the early morning are busy marts.
Cargoes of sponge, fruit, vegetables, lumber and other goods are
sold in lots to suit purchasers, who range from the dealer who buys
by the cargo, or the small merchant who takes a few boxes of pines,
oranges, grape-fruit, or tomatoes, to the housewife who wants a
watermelon or a bunch of bananas. On the day following their arrival
at Key West Captain Wilson handed Dick a roll of bills containing a
hundred dollars, saying to him:
"That's about your share in the cruise, Dick. The sponge hasn't been
sold yet, but you are in a hurry to get off and I reckon that's
about right."
Dick was dazed as he took the roll, but a moment later he handed it
back to the captain, saying:
"I can't take that, Captain Wilson. It is ten times as much as I
have earned. You took me on as a boy and I want you to pay me just
what you would have paid any other boy."
"Put that money in your pocket, Dick. You've done a man's work and
now you've got a man's pay and that's all there is to it. Lucky for
you, though, that the weather was good at the Lake. If it hadn't
been you wouldn't have got anything but your board. Now come ashore
and we'll hunt up a boat for Marco or Chokoloskee."
They stopped at an auction room in Key West for a minute, when
Captain Wilson sang out to a boy who was passing:
"Hi, Johnny! Where's the _Etta_?"
"Same old place, off the end of the dock."
"Thought yesterday was your sailing day."
"So it was, but Cap'n's in the calaboose. Got drunk yest'd'y and
had a fight. I got ter raise th' cash ter git him out."
"Why don't the boss bounce him? He's drunk most of the time."
"Boss says Cap'n Tom's a better sailor when he's drunk than any of
th' others when they're sober."
"Well, I'll get Tom out of limbo for you and charge it to the boss.
Only you must take this friend of mine with you to Chokoloskee."
"Sure! What's his name?"
"Name's Dick. Can you make an alligator-hunter of him?"
"Reckon I kin, or kill him tryin'."