Chapter XXI (2)

“And just to show you how much better and cheaper I manage my ship,” concluded Captain Swanson, “look at this.” He reached into a barrel and brought out a small piece of something that looked like dirty marshmallow.

“See that, Captain?” he boasted. “Well, I had a whole barrel of it. Used it to oil down the masts this trip, saved me buying oil. Maybe if you was to oil down the sticks on your ship you could sail faster.”

Father took the substance from his hand, and smelled it, and looked up. I was surprised to see all the mad had gone out of his face.

“Got any more of this?” he asked, and there was a twinkle in his eye.

“Naw, I ain’t got no more. When we struck hot weather it stunk to high heaven so I throwed it over the side.”

“How much have you got left?”

“Just about a bucketful in this barrel,” he answered. “And I told the ship’s chandler he could have it. He asked me for it.”

“The hell you say,” observed my father, and I thought I saw him smile. “You’re a smart old barnacle, aren’t you, Swanson?” Swanson puffed in pride, and led the way to the dining saloon. There before us was a meal intended to impress Father with its luxuriousness. I looked at it glumly, remembering Father’s words, “I’ll paddle you if you eat like you enjoy it.” How could anybody eat all that food and not show enjoyment? He must have seen what was in my mind for he slapped me on the shoulder, exclaiming: “Forget it, Joan. Eat all you can and enjoy every bit of it. I’m going to.”

I had my mouth full before they were in their chairs, but, once squared away, I never saw Father eat so much or enjoy it so heartily. When he finished he pushed back his chair, looked at Swanson and burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” asked Swanson uncomfortably.

“Nothing, you big squarehead, but do you know what that grease is you threw overboard?”

“Naw. I found it floating off the Gilbert Islands. Saw some sea birds picking at it, so I put off a boat and investigated. Looked like good grease so I hauled a couple of barrels aboard and used it like I told you to grease down the masts.”

“They’re fine sticks, Swanson,” grinned Father. “They ought to be, greased down with a hundred thousand dollars worth of ambergris.”

Swanson gulped and turned pale. His eyes were almost popping out of his head.

“Huh? Ambergris?” he gasped.

“Yes, ambergris!” shouted Father. “Worth thirty-two dollars an ounce. And you threw a barrel of it overboard. You threw away a fortune, you goddamned, ignorant, stingy squarehead.” And Father lay back in his chair and roared with laughter.

Swanson was livid now. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?” he yelled. “Only don’t forget this—there was twice as much stuff there as I took. I know where it is and I’ll go back and get it.”

“Good luck,” laughed Father, “if you can find it again you’re entitled to it.”

“I’ll find it,” were the grim parting words of the squarehead Captain.

Going back in the small boat to our ship I asked Father what ambergris was.

“Whale vomit,” he answered.

I couldn’t see what was so funny about Swanson throwing away whale vomit so I persisted in questioning further.

“What’s it good for?”

“Joan, ambergris is worth thirty-two dollars an ounce. He threw away about sixty thousand dollars worth just through ignorance.”

“Well, what’s the good of whale vomit? Why is it worth money?”

“Perfume companies use it as the base for rare perfume. And I wish to Christ I could find some.”

“Why don’t you try and find what Captain Swanson left?”

“Because anybody but an old fool like Swanson would know that sea birds eat ambergris. What he left is gone long ago. I only hope he does hunt it. It will keep him off the trade route for six months.”

And that is exactly what happened. Captain Swanson spent six months looking for his ambergris and found nothing. But Father told the story in every port and nowhere Swanson went did seafolk allow him to forget it.

I couldn’t forget ambergris either. If Swanson could find it why couldn’t we? There must be some way of locating it.

But the more I thought the more discouraged I became. A few barrelsful of ambergris in a whole ocean—not much chance of finding that. Then like a flash the idea came to me. It was so simple I wondered why Stitches or Father or some other sea captain had not thought of it. All I had to do was just to make the whales in the ocean sick at their stomach and they would belch forth ambergris enough to fill our ship. And that much I figured would be worth millions and millions and Father would never have to worry about bad trading seasons or port charges any more. We put to sea in a week and were headed for the Union Group of islands about twenty-eight degrees latitude South, one hundred and sixty-seven degrees longitude West. There ought to be some whales around there. I thought if I poisoned the water in the sea all the whales would be sick. The only drawback to my scheme was that I didn’t have any poison, so I made some of my own.

I begged an empty codfish keg from the cook and poured some cold split pea soup in it. I hated split pea soup so I was sure that was poison. Then I emptied the spittoon from the wheel which was full of tobacco juice and spit into the soup. To this I added tar and some dead rats. The finishing touch was some dead cockroaches. I caught them and mashed them up in the mixture, and then, positive that I had concocted a potion to ruin all the whales, I waited for nightfall.

About ten o’clock that night I slipped to the lee rail and dumped my poison into the sea, and waited. For hours, I waited, straining my eyes against the darkness, searching the water for some signs of ambergris to float. At four bells I turned in, and spent the rest of my night at my porthole looking for a promise of a seasick whale, but of course there was none. My scheme to poison the entire ocean failed, and when the cook found that I had wasted a pot full of good pea soup, I got a licking for my effort. To this day the only consolation I have for my failure is that when I detect rare perfume on beautiful ladies, I speculate with pleasure as to what they would think if they knew the base of their scent was whale vomit!

As long as I was a baby the sailors thought me a grand toy to play with and make a fuss over but when I grew old enough to become a bother their kindly attitude was frequently subject to change.

Of course it is the common belief that when a captain has a girl aboard ship the sailors slay each other to get the captain’s beautiful daughter—that her very presence on shipboard uplifts them and inspires them to lofty ideals.

That might be the case in novels, but in real life it is far more practical! Never in all my experience did any sailor attempt any act of violence to gain my favor. Their acts of violence, at times, were directed against me instead.

It was on our next voyage after Father squared accounts with Captain Swanson that I saw my first real mutiny and felt what it was like to have an entire ship’s crew against one. It all came about in the most natural way from being caught in the doldrums with a short water supply.

Our ship carried our fresh water supply in a tank under the fo’c’s’le head and in two iron tanks lashed on the poop deck just aft of the spanker mast. These tanks contained in all about five thousand gallons of water, to be used by sixteen people over a period of from eighty to one hundred and twenty days at sea. It was a precious commodity and it was guarded zealously by the cook whose job it was to portion it out daily, three cups to a person. In the tropics the water became so hot and stagnant that “wigglers” came out in it. Wigglers are small worms which hatch in the water. It is an old maritime law that every “off-shore” vessel must carry a certain amount of lime juice as a preventative against scurvy. A drop of lime juice in a mug of water kills the wigglers and thus enables the consumer to drink water without live stock in it. To this day old English sailing ships are referred to as “lime juicers,” and that name came down to them from the old custom.

We had been out eighty-three days from Mukelteo, bound for Brisbane, Australia, with a million feet of lumber. The water supply ran very low, and the residue was so alive with tiny wigglers and germs that it was like a death warrant to drink it. The cook came aft and told Father that a plague would come on the ship from that water. The stench of it was terrible. Even the rats were boldly searching the decks for something fresh. We were in the doldrums, about eleven degrees south of the Equator. The ship just wallowed in the glassy sea, and seemed to crack and shrivel in the heat. There was no shade anywhere. The sails hung limp and useless, like unstarched linens. The bedbugs and roaches seemed to multiply by the million.

“All hands on deck,” ordered my father, and the mate repeated his order to the men sleeping below. In a few minutes the entire crew were on deck.

“There’s no more water, men, until we hit a rain squall. The glass is down and I look for a squall, so stand by with kegs and catch all the rain you can if you want fresh water.”

There was a mad hurry to get kegs to catch the rain. The men brought everything from salt pork barrels to empty tomato tins and placed them under the booms and scuppers. The cook and a sailor put a barrel under the drain on the main deck just below the poop deck to catch the water that washed down the poop.

No sailor tried to sleep any more. They sat huddled in the scuppers looking thirstily at the deceitful clouds that drifted by and disappeared to the horizon with their refreshing cargoes.

Night came, and still no sign of rain. Just at sunset, at about a quarter point off the starboard bow, appeared the end of a rainbow, dipping right into the sea and making an arch of vivid colors, which dissolved into the mist of a rain squall a mile away. It was aggravatingly near, and the men bent every inch of sail to hurry the ship into its midst to catch some of its rain, but just within a hundred yards of it, the little gust of wind died, and once more the sails hung limp and impotent.

That night for dinner we had a sticky mess of salt dried codfish. Its odour was so bad from the intense heat that the only way it could be swallowed was to smother it with mustard and hold your breath, to kill the smell.

“This damn stuff stinks,” observed the mate, whereupon he proceeded to pick out the remnants of fish from his teeth with the prongs of his fork. I was just old enough to recognize the expression on my father’s face as a sign of trouble.

“Yeh? Well any time you get disgruntled about the menu on this packet, just write me a letter and I’ll file it in my correspondence.” The mate’s remark, however, spoiled his appetite and he shoved the dish of ill smelling fish at the cabin-boy.

“Chuck that overboard.”

For my dinner I had boiled lentils, which only accentuated my thirst, as the salt fish had increased the men’s.

At sea a very little thing will start a feeling of mutiny, and thirsty, dried-up men, scorched by heat and discouraged by no winds and bad food, are like dynamite to handle. They started to quarrel among themselves, viciously. Father anticipated trouble. Right after dinner he sent me to my bunk.

“And if you hear anything on deck, you stay below,” he added and swung up to the poop deck. He searched the horizon for some sign of a storm to bring relief. If another day passed and no fresh water fell, there was no foretelling what uprising would occur. The sky was red, and the old legend, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight” gave no promise that the morning would bring water.

Father heard the men mumbling in the scuppers, for in some way they blamed him for their plight. Old Stitches, whose loyalty to father was like iron, came up on the poop deck beside him, and casually started to smoke his pipe. Beneath his nonchalance were grim, tight lips. He knew there was going to be trouble, and he wanted Father to know he was still swinging a belaying pin on his side.

I could feel something was going on that I didn’t understand, and whenever I felt there was something being kept from me I just had to find out about it. So after I had been sent to bed, I sneaked back on deck and hid out of sight of Father. Nobody on the ship was asleep. I could hear the men stirring and grumbling for’ard.

Hour after hour passed, and in the deadman’s watch, which was from twelve midnight until four, the men broke. Larsen, who had always been one of the best sailors, led the rest of the crew up on the poop deck, seething and snarling.

“What do you want?” roared my father.

“Water!”

“Where in the hell will I get water for you?” Father asked, as he eyed the men who were closing in on him.

“Water,” came the accusing chorus again.

Stitches put down his pipe, and edged closer to Father.

“The barometer is low, we ought to run into a squall ’fore daybreak,” explained Father.

“Yeh? Well we want water NOW, do you hear, and if you don’t give us some, you and your goddamned ship will be sucking water in hell!” And with that two of the sailors jumped for him, and hit out with terrific blows, the blows of thirst-crazed men. Father hit back, and his punch was like a shot of steel. Stitches struck blindly with the belaying pin. Blood smeared the deck. I could hear a sickening, crunching sound of bones breaking. Slowly, one by one, the two of them backed the cowed men on to the main deck. I scuttled back to my berth and hid myself under my straw mattress.

Stitches came below and I heard him fumbling in the gun rack near my bunk.

“Nothin’ like being watchful in nights like this,” he said, and he came back on deck with two rifles. For the rest of the night the two of them stood off the men on the deck below.

Morning came early, for the sun rose at five-thirty. I was on deck early, too uncomfortable to stay below, and fretful from thirst. About six o’clock a black cloud which looked like a splotch of ink on the sky appeared on the horizon. A light breeze scurried it towards us. In ten minutes it was upon us, and rain fell in great cool sheets on the swollen decks and the parched lips of the men. They fought each other for places at the drains to grab the first water. They were like frenzied, caged animals suddenly loosed on raw meat as they opened their mouths to let the rain pour in.

I stood on the poop deck, under the spanker boom, and the water fell on me. It was so cool, so caressing, so life-giving! I couldn’t soak enough of it in, it seemed, so I took off my overalls, and let it rain on my naked body. I was so absorbed in my fresh water bath that I was oblivious to the men standing on the main deck to catch the water that washed off the poop. I would do my bath up right! A real fresh water bath with soap!

Naked, and unconscious of the threats of the men who objected to my being in their way, I ran forward to the galley and asked the cook for some soap. He made soap from the grease drippings of the salt pork. To the grease he added lye and kept the conglomeration in a kerosene can under his bunk. I grabbed a handful of it, and began smearing it on me as I ran aft once more, and up to my place under the spanker boom. I was a mass of sticky bubbles, and the rain carried them, after they washed off me, down the drain into the waiting kegs of the crew. The soap suds ruined their water. Two of them leaped up on deck by me and were about to choke me when my father interfered. He grabbed me by my slippery body and put me behind him, while he ordered the men down on deck.

Then he turned to me.

“What the hell’s the big idea?” he yelled, so enraged with me he was pale.

“It feels so goddamned good to get cool in the fresh rain,” I answered. The humor of my remark didn’t appeal to him. I could see I was going to get another licking, and my bare body was a good target for a rope’s end!

“I’ll teach you to spoil fresh water,” he said, and he went forward. He returned with a handful of the soap!

“Now open your mouth. You’re so anxious to be washed clean, just taste that,” and he washed the inside of my mouth with the rotten soap.

And I’ve never wanted to be washed clean since then!

5
Perfume on the cook’s feet and hair on my chest.—What of it?

As I grew up, strong and healthy, I had three very simple ambitions in life: to be able to hand, reef and steer; to spit as far as any Swede could; and to get as much food, if not more, than anyone else. On sailing ships the food is portioned out in what is called “whack;” that is, so many ounces of food per week is allotted to each person. There was no way of definitely estimating the exact number of days a trip would take, as we depended entirely on winds to blow us to our destination.

We carried no fancy foods—there wasn’t room for anything except plain necessities in the storerooms. Lentils, rice, salt beef pickled in barrels of brine, dried codfish, powdered milk, dried prunes and apricots for desserts on holidays, and lime juice. The stores were stowed in an after-hold and were kept under lock and key. Only the Jap cook and my father had keys to that sanctum of grub and they guarded them relentlessly. The locked storeroom made life a bit difficult for me. I never seemed to get enough to eat. For instance, breakfast consisted of a big dish of cooked oats, dry bread and coffee. When the cabin-boy rang the breakfast bell it had the effect of a fire alarm and we all stampeded to the dining saloon. The first one that got to the table grabbed the bowl of mush and scraped off a big pile on his plate. I soon learned to grab the quickest. I developed in me the ability to take care of myself. Once a week, on Thursday, we had duff pudding. Duff day at sea was always an occasion. The cook prepared a sticky, glutinous mess of steamed suet and flour and put a few raisins in it. Plum duff it was called, but I always thought the cook put the pudding at the top mast and tossed plums at it, always missing, for I never could find any fruit in it. Weeks became important to me because of the plum duff pudding, and instead of saying of the future, “next week,” I always calculated next duff day, or two duff days ago. Frequently the salt horse, as the pickled beef was nicknamed, stank so that I couldn’t eat it, and neither could the sailors without drowning out the smell with mustard pickles, and holding their breath as they swallowed it. Sometimes by way of variety of menu, the bread took on the appearance of raisin bread, but the raisins were unfortunate cockroaches that had dived into the dough when the cook was kneading it. Little fresh meat additions like that never killed our appetites.

The final blow to my father’s æsthetic sense came one day at lunch time. Father bit into a crust of bread and then his face became livid with anger.

“Slops!” he yelled at the cabin-boy. We had a new boy every trip. “What kind of so and so does the cook call this bread? It stinks of perfume like some barmaid.”

“I don’t know, sir. The cook just baked that bread fresh this morning,” answered Slops. There was never any love lost between the cabin-boy and the cook and I think that Slops was enjoying the prospects that confronted his enemy.

I tasted the bread. It tasted of perfume, or rather of bay rum, the stuff the Jap cook always smelled of, but I couldn’t figure out how it had got into the bread.

Father left the table and hurried forward to the galley, with me in his wake.

“Yamashita! Come out of your rat hole.” The cook, trembling in fear, looked up from where he was sitting on the edge of the bunk.

“Yes sir?” he asked, as he continued washing his feet.

“Let me see the pan you mixed this bread in.”

Yamashita looked up at Father in all innocence and replied, “This pan, Captain. This pan I wash my feet in!” Father let a snort of rage out and grabbed at the cook. He shook him within an inch of his life, and would have hit him if the cook had been anywhere near his size. I beat it aft to get out of the fight, for the cook was my friend.

Every time I got a chance to sneak forward to his galley I did so, and would sit on his lap listening to his stories of Japan. I would tolerate his tales, just so he would let me sit on him and smell his bay rum. The odor of it was exquisite to me, for everyone else on the ship smelled of rope and tobacco. I often measured a person’s worth by the smell of him. One day an American consul’s wife came aboard, and she smelled of some delicious powder. When I got a good sniff of it I said to her:

“You don’t stink like men do, do you?” I intended it for a compliment, but the woman took umbrage and left in great haste, mumbling something about the uncouth persons that lived on ships!

No two days at sea were ever alike. Even in the monotonous trade winds, with the breeze so steady that the wheel could be lashed down and the ship would keep on her course alone, something would happen. It was on such a day as that that John McLean, an able-bodied seaman, won my heart. He was a huge, lumbering sailor with more muscle than brain, and was so crabby that the other sailors were afraid of him. He was always friendly with me in his rough sort of way because I would sit by the hour at his feet and admire him. On his chest, which was covered with hairs, he had a tattooed, full-rigged ship under sail that was one of my prize sights. If he was in a good humor he would undo his shirt and let me see that ship, then wiggle his chest so that the ship looked as if it were in a storm. Then he would bulge out his chest muscles and the ship looked as if it were under sail in a fair wind, or else he relaxed his chest and it looked becalmed in a lifeless sea.

“Gee, McLean,” I exclaimed, “do you think I could ever have a ship on my chest?”

He moved his wad of tobacco to the other side of his cheek, looked at me scornfully and then condescended to answer:

“Naw, can’t be tattooed like me unless you got hair on your chest.”

That finished me, for my chest was as smooth as a piece of silk. But I wasn’t to be outdone. I went to my father and asked him what made hair grow on people’s chest. That question played right into his hand because he replied:

“Hair on your chest, Joan? Well, let me see. I warrant if you was to eat your pea soup every meal that would grow hair on your chest.”

And I hated pea soup, but if it was necessary to cause a growth on my chest like McLean’s, I would endure it. So for weeks I ate the pea soup with the secret consolation that some morning I would awake with a thick crop of hair on my chest. We arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, and still no hair on my chest. I was worried for fear I would probably never be able to grow any, so I went to McLean who was in the hold of the ship unloading copra.

“McLean,” I confided, “I’ve looked every morning for nine weeks and there isn’t any hairs on me yet—not even any fuzz. What shall I do?”

He grinned, one of his rare indulgences, and said:

“Hey, Skipper, is the Old Man aboard?”

“No, he isn’t. He’s up at the American Consul’s office this morning.”

McLean continued to grin for a moment, then said:

“All right, Skipper. We got an hour to knock off at noon, and I’ll take you up to be tattooed.”

“Really, McLean? You’re not filling me with wind?” I could hardly believe my ears.

“Sure. I know the best tattooer this side of Tokio. He’s just a quarter of a mile from here, back of the fish store and ship chandler’s.”

I was elated. I was to be like a real sailor, tattoo and everything! McLean had offered to take me and have it done because in his inarticulate way he liked me, and in his own mind he was being very generous to pay for me to be tattooed. It never occurred to a deep sea sailor like him that girls are not tattooed.

At noon time I was ready, waiting for him at the gangway. I had put on my sailor cap which was an old mate’s cap elaborately embroidered with anchors and little ships and fish by the sailors. McLean kept his promise to meet me, and hand in hand we walked up the dock. My feet hardly touched the ground, I was so happy. We plotted what we would have put on me. I decided I wanted a naked lady in red tattooed on my forearm, a full-rigged ship on my breast and an American flag on the bottom of my foot so I could stick it out of the porthole and make it look as though I was waving a flag. If I was to be tattooed I was going to do it up right!

As we walked up the dock I saw Father standing by the warehouse talking to the boss stevedore. I was so exultant that I let my enthusiasm get the best of my discretion and I yelled at him:

“Ain’t I swell? I’m going to be tattooed all over like a sailor.”

Like a shot he wheeled around and said, “What?”

“I said I’m going to have a naked lady tattooed on my arm near my elbow so I can move my arm and wiggle her stomach like she was dancing.”

A murderous look came on his face. I turned around and saw McLean hotfooting it down the dock back to the ship! I followed him in haste, for Father grabbed me by the seat of my pants and the nape of my neck and propelled me along the dock at double speed.

“I can’t leave you for five minutes but that you get into some kind of deviltry, so now I’ll teach you how to behave.”

He took me up on the poop deck and tied me to the wheel in full sight of the sailors. My heart was broken with disappointment, but no tears for mine. I stood there and swore all the words that I knew, and at that age my vocabulary included enough adjectives to keep me swearing two minutes without repeating a word.

As if it wasn’t humiliation enough to be tied up like a bad puppy, the mate came aft and heard me swearing. I started all over again when he came near and looked at me. I could have murdered him for laughing at me. He listened to me going it and then scratched his head and said:

“I’ll forfeit my grub if you can’t cuss as good as if you had hair on your chest.”

Oh, the music of his words! I pulled my jumper closer together so that he couldn’t see if I had hairs or not, but having him think I did have hair on my chest was almost as good as really having it, so the day wasn’t lost after all.

6
A dead fish and a squarehead’s kiss

I was seven years old when I first met Fear, and what happened at the meeting and what followed did more to shape my character and life than anything I can remember. For I learned the important lesson that if I stuck to the code of the sea never to squeal, no matter what happened, but to fight my own battles in my own way—I could win against odds, provided I licked Fear.

It all came about through Stitches teaching me to fish. Of course careful old Stitches had too much sense to start me after deep sea fish, for they are so heavy and powerful that one might have yanked me overboard before help could reach me.

“You can practice gettin’ little ones first, Skipper,” he said, as he baited a line with a cockroach for me. “If you get a pull, take your line in easy.”

I fished every day for weeks, and never got so much as a nibble. As I hadn’t had any luck deep sea fishing, I tried casting my line in the harbor at Sydney. Father was ashore attending to bills of lading, and the crew were cleaning up the ship, painting, chipping paint and reeving on new canvas.

I felt a nibble; the line twitched, and I pulled with all my seven-year-old strength on it. On the hook was a flat fish about six inches long with huge bulging eyes. He wiggled and squirmed, but I got him in my fist and called to anyone who could hear to come and see my catch. Alex Svenson, a Norwegian sailor, who was holystoning the poop deck, came over to look at my fish.

“Ain’t he a whopper?” I asked him, full of pride and enthusiasm. Svenson picked up the fish in his big paw and grunted a negative.

“This is a bloody bullfish. It ain’t no good to eat,” he said, and he ground the fish under his heel and laughed at my tears of disappointment.

No one ever fought my battles except myself, and this insult to my first catch was cause for war.

“That’s my fish, you bloody squarehead,” I shouted at him, as I grabbed my shining treasure and stuck it inside the bib of my overalls next to my skin.

“I’ll kill you for making fun of my fish,” and I kicked Svenson on the shins as hard as I could. But kicking a six foot Scandinavian on the shins with bare feet is not to be recommended. I only stubbed my toes and the more I kicked the more they hurt and the louder Svenson laughed. Ordinarily he was vile-tempered, but now my helpless rage seemed to please him.

“Say, you got a helluva lotta spirit, ain’t you?” he grinned in my face.

“You killed my fish. I’ll kill you, do you hear? You just wait!”

“Now be a nice little girl and don’t get your temper up and I’ll give you a big box of candy.”

I was young enough for the prospect of candy to be a pacifier for any woe. My father never let me have any, and the rare occasions when the sailors sneaked it to me made me regard heaven as the place where you got all the candy you wanted.

Wiping away my tears with a fishy hand I forced a smile.

“I bet you ain’t got any candy,” I challenged him.

“Well, don’t you squeal to Stitches or the Old Man, and I’ll give you a whole box just for yourself.”

I promised him I wouldn’t betray him, and he went forward to get it. I twisted up my fish line in a neat coil while I waited for him. Presently I saw him coming aft with something concealed behind his back.

“Where is it?” I asked, a bit suspicious that he was only fooling me.

Svenson looked up the deck to make sure no one was watching him.

“Come on down in the cabin. Some of these stool pigeons might squeal on you,” he said.

“Hey, sailors ain’t allowed in the after quarters,” I protested.

Svenson snarled something out of the corner of his mouth, and then he shook me by the shoulders.

“Do you want this candy or don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“All right then, shut your trap and come on down below.”

I followed him down into the chartroom. He made no show of giving me any box of candy.

“Where is it?” I asked.

Svenson held out a five pound box of candy wrapped in shiny paper and tied with lots of pink ribbon. I grabbed for it. As I did so he snatched it away just out of my reach.

“Oh no, you don’t! Give me a kiss and you can have it.”

“You said you’d give me the candy because you killed my fish.” I couldn’t understand why he still held the candy as another bait.

“Come on with the kiss or you don’t get it,” he insisted.

I looked at his tobacco-stained mouth and the yellow stubs of teeth that showed when he spoke. He looked horrible to me, but it was a five pound box of candy and it would be all my own and I had never had a whole pound of candy in my life, and I thought it would be worth even kissing Svenson for. I pursed my lips up to kiss him as I had kissed my father, my kittens and sea birds.

“Here’s the kiss,” I said.

He put his face down close to mine and I remember now how hot his breath was in my face. His mouth was twisted and his eyes narrowed and for years after in every horrible dream I ever had I saw Svenson’s yellow teeth and narrowed eyes. . . .

I forgot the candy and turned to run. He made a noise in his throat like a snarling animal and grabbed me up in his arms. His face was against mine. He forced my mouth open and kissed me—horribly! One of his hairy arms nearly crushed my ribs and his big paws patted over my body as I kicked and struggled. With his face against mine I couldn’t make a sound. I managed to get my fingers in his eyes and tried to push them in. Suddenly he dropped me so that I fell to the deck of the cabin and he ran out of the chartroom and up to the deck. I scrambled to my feet and scurried like a rat to my own cabin, slammed the door and threw myself on my bunk. There I beat my hands against the wall and bit into my straw pillow to keep from screaming.

I don’t know how long it was before I felt Father’s hands shaking me.

“For the love of Christ, what’s the matter, Joan?” he kept saying above my muffled sobbing.

“Get out of here, I hate you! Get out of here! Get out!” I screeched at him. I didn’t want to be touched; I just wanted to hide in the dark somewhere to get away from the feeling of Svenson’s kiss.

Then I remembered the fish in my breast. I put my hand down and brought it out. When Father saw it he asked:

“Say, are you bawling over a dead fish?” He was annoyed at what he thought my childish sentiment. I didn’t have time to answer him, for he left my cabin abruptly. I lay down again in the bunk clasping my dead bullfish and shivering with fear. Father came back with a big can of Epsom salts.

“Now, no more of this nonsense. What’s the matter with you anyway? Are you sick?”

“No, Father, I just—I—” I couldn’t finish for I knew the penalty of squealing on anyone in a fight. Sailors don’t do that; they take their beating and settle with the offender at their leisure. I felt that if I told on Svenson I wouldn’t be fit to be a regular sailor, and it was Father himself who had drilled that code into me.

“Answer me, are you sick, or is this just a show of bad temper?”

“I’m sick,” I wailed in a weak voice. I knew what would follow. Father made me take a big dose of salts and then told me to go to bed.

“You don’t get any supper. You probably been sneaking something to eat that wasn’t good for you, so no food for you until we get your stomach cleaned up.”

I didn’t mind swallowing the salts, for it got Father away from me, and I was afraid I would tell him the truth if he asked me many more questions or accused me of being a blubbering child.

I didn’t come out of my bunk all the next day. I stayed there with my fish. The fish began to smell bad so Father took it away from me and threw it out of the porthole.

That evening we sailed for the Midway Islands. I could hear the scuffling of the crew’s feet on the poop deck above my cabin as they ran about setting the sails. The creak and groan of the rigging and the whistle of the wind through the sails gave me the creeps. Ordinarily the sound of our ship getting under way thrilled me, and I wasn’t content unless I could be on deck helping pull the ropes. But I was afraid to go on deck. I heard Svenson’s voice answering that of the mate’s as he took the helm, and I couldn’t bear to see him again.

When we had been out about a week, I ventured on deck, after I had found out from the cabin-boy that Svenson was on his watch below. I hated him but I was going to repay him in full when I got my courage back. I knew to be a regular sailor I had to cure the sick feeling I got whenever Svenson was near. I had to quit being afraid; I had to get hunk without help. I couldn’t even tell Stitches.

So I schemed and schemed, and I was so eager to get even that gradually I began to stop being afraid. The mate had switched Svenson into the second mate’s watch because he wanted another sailor to fix some sails and Svenson couldn’t sailmake. But he could steer. I found him at the wheel. Here was my chance! Just as I knew better than to squeal on him I was sure he would not dare to squeal on me, no matter what I did. Father had set a course, “Northeast by east, a quarter point east,” and had told Svenson to keep a true course, for we were in the region of some coral reefs, and a quarter of a mile off in navigation would run us aground.

“Keep her full and by and call me if the wind veers a point,” Father instructed him and then went below for a short nap. I knew if Svenson let that ship even get so much as a tenth of a point off the course that he would get hell from Father. Well, I’d help Svenson get his hell!

I climbed on the binnacle box (the box that holds the compass), which was in front of the wheel, and I put my two feet over the compass so that Svenson couldn’t see it to steer by.

“Get the hell out of the way so I can see,” he snarled at me.

“You make me!” I shot back at him. If he took his hands off the helm the rudder would spin around and the ship would be out of control. “Come on, make me get off this binnacle,” I invited him again. Svenson knew I had him. He lost his temper and began cursing me, but he kept to the wheel. I heard the topsails aloft begin to flap. The wind had caught them “aback.” The jibs and mainsails began to luff—and in vain Svenson spun the wheel to get the ship back on her course. Then it was my turn to laugh. I heard the mate, on the fo’c’s’le head where he was fixing a jib, bellow aft at Svenson to pull the goddamned ship back into the wind. The mate ran down the deck to help get her back on course. He wasn’t fast enough though, for Father, who had been watching his telltale compass over his bunk, was leaping up the companionway ladder to the poop. I ran to the windward rail and pretended I was interested in watching some schools of flying fish skim over the water. Father jerked the helm from Svenson’s hand and spun it hard over to leeward. With a slapping crash the booms went over to the port tack, and he got her once more headed up to the wind.

“Joan, take this wheel,” he ordered. I came over and took hold of its big spokes. “Show this cock-eyed so and so sea louse how to steer a course,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, and at that he grabbed Svenson.

“Who in the hell ever told you you were a sailor? What do you mean by letting her run afoul in the wind?” He shouted in Svenson’s face.

“That ain’t my fault, Captain,” whispered back Svenson. “I couldn’t help it.”

“You’ll talk back to me, will you?” and Father sent him flying on the deck with a left uppercut: “Trying to run the goddamned ship on a reef for us, are you?” Svenson jumped to his feet and went for Father.

“Why you white-haired old bastard, I’ll knock the so and so out of you,” and he swung a fierce right to Father’s head. Then the two of them wallowed around the deck, punching and mauling each other in a bloody mess. I’ll never forget the sound of the bones in Svenson’s jaw crunching under Father’s blows.

“I’ve got enough!” cried Svenson, on his back, just as Father’s upraised arm was about to put him to sleep. The mate, who was standing by with a belaying pin in his hand in case of real trouble, lifted the Norwegian to his feet.

“Take him for’ard, and put him in irons,” Father ordered the mate, “and tell any of the crew in the fo’c’s’le that think they can talk back to the captain of this ship that Svenson is only a sample of what’ll happen to them.”

The mate had Svenson by the neck and the seat of his pants marching him forward. Father called after them: “When that piece of ballast gets his eyes open again, I’ll have Joan here show him how to steer a ship.”

Svenson, however, was kept in irons and on rations of bread and water until we reached the Midway Islands, where Father discharged him in disgrace—I hadn’t squealed, but I don’t think Svenson, wherever he is today, feels that he got the best of it.

7
A runaway sea horse

My days at sea were divided up between work, study and play. In fair weather my schedule was crowded. At seven-thirty in the morning I got my breakfast. At eight bells, when the morning watch came on duty, I had to swab down the poop deck, polish the brass work and make up my bunk. My bunk was graced by a mattress of “donkey’s breakfast” or straw, which was the nearest thing to material luxury I ever knew. I never worked very hard at my duties; rather I made them into games whenever I could.

I had to haul up water in a canvas bucket to wash down the decks. I liked that because it gave me the chance to use the bucket to catch things that floated by. Sometimes this led to adventures I had not foreseen.

I’ll always remember the morning I tried to catch the sea horse. A sea horse sounds very formidable for a ten-year-old girl to go after with a canvas bucket because naturally when one says “sea horse” many people compare it to a huge clumsy sea animal weighing hundreds of pounds. But the sea horse is quite different. He is a funny fish from two or three inches to a foot long. I call him a funny fish because for a fish he can’t swim any more than a cockroach, but he has a tail that he wraps about a piece of seaweed or any drifting thing. So he meanders over the ocean with his head out of water at such an angle that from a short distance he looks like a horse’s head—hence his name.

It is only about once in a blue moon that any sailor catches a sea horse, so of course at ten it was the dream of my life to land one.

What a thrill it was that morning when leaning over the side, bucket in hand, I saw floating just beneath me a sea anemone on which was a tiny sea horse riding as if the sea flower was its throne, and the sea horse was king of the ocean. What an opportunity! The morning was calm, the flat sea like glass, and the lazy ship crawling along at scarcely three knots an hour made fishing conditions ideal. The sea horse was a transparent, gelatine-looking blue. I could see the tiny threads of blue veins in its insides. I lowered the bucket under the anemone and started to haul it up, but the water carried it floating off. I threw the bucket at it again. In the foam it had disappeared. I watched carefully and was rewarded by seeing it reappear again near the stern of the ship. I ran to the taffrail and plunged the bucket again after it, but missed it by about two feet. There was not time to pull up the bucket and make another cast. The stern of the moving ship would pass the drifting anemone. I saw my life’s ambition slipping away from me. I wouldn’t fail!

That miss gave me a wild desire to possess the sea horse or die in the attempt to get it. Without a thought as to the utter foolishness of what I was doing I jumped overboard after the sea horse! When I landed with a splash in the water I heard Stitches’ voice shout:

“The skipper’s overboard!”

Such a hullabaloo that started on deck. Father had come up, the cabin-boy, Bulgar and Axel Oleson. They were huddled at the stern rail. The mate and Swede were unfastening the leachings on the dinghy to lower it over after me.

“Keep your head up, Skipper,” called Stitches in a frantic voice. He couldn’t swim a stroke and his helplessness to aid me as he wanted to was funny. He kept calling instructions to me.

The wake of the vessel was washing the sea horse farther away from me. Instead of swimming back to the ship and grabbing hold of the life line that Father threw after me, I swam lickety-split astern after my prize—the ship going on in one direction and I in the other. I never got many opportunities to get off the ship and I was exhilarated at my freedom. I was free—my goal was the rapidly fleeing sea flower. I knew I would achieve my ambition!

“Tread water,” came the bellowing voice of my father through his cupped hands. “Don’t get scared and you’ll be all right.”

I turned my head to look at him, sent him a smile, waved my hand at him and plunged on after my flower. I would no sooner swim within easy reach of it, so I thought, than a gentle wave lapped it out of my grasp. I forgot the gang on the ship who were trying to call me back. With several swift strokes I overtook the sea horse on its flower chariot. I grabbed it in my fist. The anemone crushed in my hand. Triumphant at catching it I turned back to catch up with the ship. Father had hove to in the little wind that was wheezing out of some straggling clouds. The mate was in the lifeboat with Stitches and Bulgar. They were pulling for dear life after me. With the thrill of my success still tingling in my soul I decided to give the men in the lifeboat some work. I had jumped overboard with my overalls on, so stuffing my prize in my front pocket I turned about and began swimming away. I swam as fast as I could. The men in the lifeboat pulled with longer and swifter strokes. I plowed on a few yards and then turned and waved a hand to them to come and get me. I heard them begin to curse the air blue. I trod water until they almost got up with me, then I dived under the water, and came up a few yards behind them and started back to the ship. By the time they got the lifeboat turned around I was way ahead. It wasn’t every day in my life that I was important enough to get the whole crew off duty to chase me around the ocean and I was making the most of it!

When I got under the shadow of the stern, just far enough away to clear the suction of the rudder, I looked up to the deck and saw the crew laughing—that is, they were all laughing with the exception of my father.

“That damned old sea horse thought he could get away from me but I got him,” I called up, grinning in my success.

“Come up this rope at once,” roared Father.

Hand over hand I climbed up the piece of halyard he lowered over to me. My hair was streaked in wet strings over my face as I stood on deck dripping in front of Father. Before he could say a word I put my hand in my pocket to bring out my beautiful anemone when to my dismay the thing I brought forth in my fist was no dainty colored flower but a dirty piece of seaweed that looked like a hunk of rotten sponge. In the water in its bed of blue sea it had the beauty of a lace-like piece of coral, but in my hand it was a brutal disillusion—just ugly seaweed. My heart sank in disappointment—the thing I had wanted to possess for its loveliness didn’t exist. Whatever philosophic reflections this might have started were checked abruptly by my father’s voice.

“Turn over that skylight,” he said.

Obediently I draped my body over the skylight with my back part exposed heavenwards.

“This will teach you to run away from this ship,” and he gave me a whipping with the end of the rope he had thrown to me to climb aboard with. The licking didn’t really hurt. It took a pretty healthy whack to hurt me anywhere physically. But the comedown! The blow to my pride! To be turned over a skylight and licked on the pants before a circle of grinning sailors—and for what? Merely for jumping overboard in mid-ocean and stopping the ship. I could hear the mate who had chased me in the lifeboat laughing the loudest. Would I ever recover? As if the sea horse and the anemone hadn’t treated me badly enough.