Part 14

All I had on was a pair of overalls and a faded blue cotton blouse and me “as-is” underneath. With such a slim margin of safety to go on I probably would have withdrawn but for Nelson.

“Don’t think you’d better try, Skipper,” he said.

As usual, opposition made me stubborn.

“What’s the reason I hadn’t? Gimme cards!” and I plumped myself down.

Swede dealt me a hand. The cards were so dirty and worn and sticky with tobacco juice that it was hard to keep them separate in my hand.

“Ante up, Skipper,” said Oleson.

I looked at my hand; I didn’t even have a pair, but I wasn’t going to let them bluff me out.

“One leg of my overalls,” I piped up.

All except Swede laid down their cards.

“Ain’t you takin’ a chance?” said Nelson, looking at Swede’s drawers.

“No more than she is,” said Swede. “Raise you a whole bloomin’ pair of pants,” he bet, “and I better not lose!”

I could feel my face looked the picture of guilt.

“Two legs of my pants,” was my come-back.

“Call you,” grinned Swede. He showed a pair of jacks and a king, and I showed him a six, seven, a ten, and a queen and threespot.

“Hand over the wardrobe,” he said.

I stared at him. There was nothing under my pants but me. And my pants now belonged to Swede.

“Hand ’em over, Skipper,” he grinned.

Strip poker suddenly had become very unattractive.

“But—but—that’s all I got on,” I stuttered.

“What are you going to do, welsh?”

He stuck his chin out at me and his voice was the essence of contempt as he taunted:

“’Tain’t my fault if you force yourself into a strip poker game on just a pair of pants. What are you goin’ to do?”

I don’t know just what I would have done. Probably I would have taken off the overalls rather than fail to live up to the code of a true sailor, but Fred Nelson intervened.

“Skipper is a girl,” he said, “and she don’t take off nothin’.”

“I’d ’a’ give her my drawers if I’d lost,” protested Swede.

“All right, I’ll give you my pants,” snapped Nelson.

“It’s her pants I won!”

Nelson jumped to his feet.

“Do you take my pants or a punch in the guzzler?” he asked, very quiet, for that was the way he always was when he fought. He could whip any man on the ship except Father and they all knew it. Swede looked up at him and grinned.

“Gimme your pants, Nelson.”

Nelson yanked off his pants, threw them at Swede and sat down beside me in his underdrawers.

“I’m through with this game and so are you,” he said.

“But I want to win back your pants for you,” I pleaded with him. Bulgar, the sly bully of the lot, spoke up. “I know how you can stay in the game without taking off anything, Skipper.”

“How?”

He smiled craftily: “Pay your losses out of the slop chest.”

The slop chest is the sea-going term applied to the Captain’s ship store of gumboots, sailors’ overalls, shirts, socks, sou’westers and shoes, and tobacco. Father invested some of his own money each trip to stock up with supplies and the expenditure was often a big sacrifice for him to make, for money was as scarce as hen’s teeth. There was always something to eat up his profits: the ship had to go into drydock, then there were new canvas, ropes, and paint to be bought, bail for drunken sailors in foreign ports, to say nothing of cargo lost or damaged by storms. As a result Father kept a jealous eye on his slop chest. At sea when a sailor wanted to buy something the cost of the article was deducted from his pay at the end of the voyage.

This precious slop chest was stowed under the bunk in my cabin, and many a time in the night when a sailor had to get a sou’wester or warm socks or something because of sudden inclement weather, I would be routed from my bunk while Father dug under my mattress to get it for him. I had absolutely no sense of the economic value of things, for I never saw any money. Everything to me was an article of trade, and I would just as soon have given a fifteen dollar pair of rubber sea boots in exchange for a pineapple as a three cent piece of calico. The idea that the things in the slop chest were Father’s stores and important never occurred to me.

Naturally, therefore, I hailed Bulgar’s suggestion with delight. Nelson wouldn’t play but the others agreed I could stay in the game and pay my losses from the slop chest. But the next hand was no better for me. I got a pair of kings and I was so delighted with them that I grinned like a full moon as I bet. With one accord Swede, Oleson and Bulgar folded up their hands and wouldn’t bet with me. I was licked either way—if I bluffed they called me, or if I had them they wouldn’t come in, and in an hour of playing I lost three pairs of sea boots, one jersey sweater, ten pairs of socks, four shirts and eleven plugs of chewing tobacco.

“We want our winnings NOW!” they warned me, and I knew it wouldn’t be healthy to hold out on them. Nelson made no further attempt to help. He was evidently disgusted with me.

I went aft to raid the slop chest, but I didn’t trouble to let Father know I was doing it. I lugged my losings forward and paid them to the sailors and sneaked back into my bunk, where I fell asleep with no twinge of conscience.

The next morning Swede came to the wheel in new dungarees, jersey and shoes, Bulgar went about cleaning brass in a brand new shirt and socks and Oleson had two plugs of tobacco sticking out of his back pants pocket. Swede’s outfit caught Father’s eye of suspicion and I held my breath for fear he’d start an investigation. When Bulgar walked right past him I knew I was sunk.

“Where in the hell did you guys get the new outfits—have you been stealing out of the slop chest?” Father inquired. His question made me wonder where I would be the most comfortable, up in the crosstrees of the foremast, or hid down in the lazarette underneath a bale of rope.

“No, sir,” spoke up Bulgar. “We just had a bit of luck, sir.”

Father went below and I knew he was going to take an inventory—so I went aloft and got very busy with a bucket of grease oiling down the topmast. I figured that if I was doing some useful ship’s work when he caught me I would fare better. I hardly had time to get up to the crosstrees, swing into a bosun’s chair and start swabbing grease on when I heard Father’s voice booming out on the deck below:

“Call both watches on deck.”

Keeping one eye on my grease rag and the other on the scene below I didn’t miss a thing. Father made every man on board haul everything out of the fo’c’s’le on the deck where he rummaged through everything looking for the things that had disappeared out of the slop chest. Father yanked the shirt and sweater off Swede and Bulgar and made them strip. I heard the sailors trying to explain that they had bought those articles of clothing ashore before sailing—and Father’s answer to their alibis:

“Any louse that steals on the high seas ain’t worth killin’,” and he landed on Bulgar and knocked him head over heels. They took their medicine sailor-fashion without squealing and Father took their honest winnings back to his cabin—satisfied that he had taught his crew a lesson in honesty!

Swede and Oleson looked up at me in the rigging. I couldn’t hear what they called me but I was sure it was no term of affection, so I decided to remain aloft. I don’t know what they would have done to me but for Nelson and Stitches, who of course knew the story.

“Skipper is a kid and she never had a chance in a poker game with you robbers. It was honest stealin’ on her part and dirty stealin’ on yours and you got what was comin’ to you,” declared Stitches.

“And if you ain’t satisfied and wants to get even, I’m glad to give you some more,” added Nelson and then the cry from the look-out, “Land Ho!” ended the argument.

Our destination, the Line Islands, was in sight.

“You can’t go ashore here, Joan. There’s no tellin’ what kind of riffraff is livin’ on the island.”

Father sailed the ship in as near as he dared without striking any sunken reefs. There was no sign of life that we could see, nothing except myriads of seagulls circling overhead.

“Where do the guano gatherers live?” I inquired.

“In a rocky cave, near the water. They can’t live too high on the island because the fumes of the guano make poisonous gases.”

I climbed the rigging of the mizzen mast so that I could get a better view of the island. I hung on with my toes to the ratlines to keep from falling off, for the swells and backwash from the shore were rolling the ship like a pendulum. I watched carefully for about twenty minutes, and then I saw a tiny black speck splashing in the water. As it came nearer, I saw it was the figure of a naked man, swimming out towards us. He was so burned by the sun that he was almost black.

“On deck,” I called.

Father called back: “Hello?”

“Look at the native swimming out to us. He is just a quarter point off the stern,” and I indicated with my hand to the spot where I saw the man swimming.

“He’s comin’ out to make a bargain with us for a load of guano,” Father answered, megaphoning through his hands. I descended from my perch in the rigging by sliding hand over hand down a halyard. By the time I reached the poop deck, the “native” was within a hundred yards of us. We waved and called to him, and he raised a brown arm in answer. I was dressed in old faded overalls, and wore no blouse. My hair blew away from my face.

“What dialect does he speak?” I asked Father.

“One that you don’t know, so for once you won’t be able to hog the conversation—French!” I had never heard of a French dialect. I knew all the easy languages,—Samoan, Marquesan, Gilbertina, etc. but French was some savage language foreign to me. I wasn’t going to be left out of the greetings, so I hollered as loud as I could: “Hello you!”

The native was right under the stern. At the sound of my voice he looked up. I smiled down at him. “Hello again to you,” I said, and I smiled my best native trading smile. The native, who was a white Frenchman, stared up at me as if I were an apparition. He opened his lips as if to speak, his face flushed under its brown and he turned in the water as if struck by a bullet and swam back for the shore. Father called to him to stop. On he plunged back towards the island, and never once looked back.

“What in hell’s the matter with him?” asked Father of no one in particular.

“Female struck,” spoke up the mate. “These guys spend a lifetime on the islands alone and the sight of Joan with her exposed neck and shoulders and the curves around her hips set him nutty.”

“What was he afraid of me for?” I wanted to know. “I didn’t say anything except hello to him.”

“There’s a lot of things you got to learn about men, Skipper. I seen cases like this before. Sometimes the sight of a female drives them so crazy they kill themselves.”

At that time I couldn’t understand the mate’s explanation. Why should a man be afraid of me? Father sent the mate and three sailors ashore to make the dicker for the cargo. When they returned the mate asked to speak to Father alone. It was obvious that he did not intend for me to know what he had to tell.

I was determined to know, however, so Father took me down into the cabin and explained:

“A man isn’t complete without the love of a woman, some time in his life, Joan. A seagull can’t fly with one wing, and neither can human beings really live alone by themselves and be whole. That man was convicted of a crime in France when he was a young boy about nineteen. The French Government, instead of sendin’ him to Devil’s Island for life, gave him the choice of workin’ for a lifetime on this island. He lives worse than an animal in the foul atmosphere of bird manure. He eats nothin’ but bird eggs and raw fish, and him just catchin’ the sight of you made the man in him realize his aloneness.”

I had never been conscious of my sex before that time. Father’s words impressed me so deeply that I began to wonder about myself.

For three days we hove to while the crew made trips back and forth to the island in our boat with loads of guano. I had lost interest in the loading—I could only think of the derelict on that barren island.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

18 A shanghaied crew and scurvy are poor bunkmates in a White Squall

The following September we set sail for the Gilbert Islands with a load of trading articles to exchange for pearl shell. In our crew were just three old members: Bulgar, the Swede and Axel Oleson. The remaining men were shipped aboard at Sydney.

There was a labor strike on in Sydney at the time and to find a crew of non-union men willing to ship for the voyage was impossible. Father was up against it, but a crew he had to have and he was never a man to be balked by seeming impossibilities.

Now there is a widespread belief that “shanghaiing” as a common practice flourishes only in the stories of Jack London, Conrad and other writers of sea tales, but deep sea captains and sailors know better. So Father in his difficulty sought out a “sailors’ runner,” a ratty-faced little crimp familiar with the waterfront, and made his deal—five pounds a head for a crew.

“I’ll want them aboard ship by five o’clock flood tide. I’m goin’ to sail tonight without waitin’ for any goddamned pilot and tugboat,” he said to the crimp and returned to the vessel.

About four thirty that afternoon a launch sputtered alongside, and the mate and two sailors lowered a Jacob’s ladder over the side. The man on the launch yelled up at them:

“Put over a cargo boom. These beggars won’t come to until you hit the Equator.”

I looked over the side and saw eight lumps of flesh, eight dead men, so it seemed, sprawled over the bottom of the launch like so many sacks of wet wheat. With every roll of the launch the bodies pitched from side to side in grotesque rhythm. Our men rigged up a cargo boom and tackle and the man on the launch slipped a running bowline around one of the limp hunks of flesh.

“Take it away!” he grunted, and the sailors, with my help, pulled up the load.

It was a blond, husky Scandinavian. His body landed on the deck with a dull thud.

“Is he dead?”

The mate only looked at me contemptuously—as if anything could kill a Swede—and threw back the tackle for the next load of flesh. Over and over again they repeated that process until a row of eight bodies was on deck. The mate told me to call my father. I went below, almost sick, for I thought the men were dead. However, I was better trained in the code of the sea than to let anyone see I was affected by the sight of eight men laid out like corpses on the deck of the schooner.

I brought Father back with me. He reached down and picked up the foot of the first man and let it drop back with a lifeless thud on the deck.

“He’ll be a good man on a halyard,” he said, and passed on to the next one. He was a dirty, uncouth-looking person so black with coal dust that he looked negroid.

“What a hell of a mess this is to soak me five pounds for,” and he passed on to the next and the next until he had felt the muscles of each one. Satisfied that he had a good load of “beef” to pull on ropes in a storm or pump ship if a leak should spring, Father signalled the launch to cast off.

Turning to the mate, Father said:

“Take these so and so’s forrard to the fo’c’s’le and lock them in, then come aft and stand by. We’ll sail out tonight anyway and sign those” (indicating the unconscious sailors) “on the Ship’s Articles when they come out of it. You, Joan, take the wheel. I’ll lend a hand to set enough sail to get out of here.”

I was just short of sixteen at that time, husky and as strong as most men, and I felt myself to be as good a sailor as ever held a ship to a course. I went up on the poop deck to the helm, unleashed it and pulled with all my strength on its spokes.

“Hard over,” called Father, and I slowly turned the big wheel.

“Hard over” means to turn the wheel completely around. Under my hands the wheel didn’t turn as quickly as it should have, and Father let out a volley of curses at me that made the sky blue, but it also put vitality into me or scared some more strength into my arms, for I pulled the helm around as the wind caught the topsails and we glided out the Heads for the Gilbert Islands.

It was a hard week, that first one out, for the men were so drugged and beaten that they were slow in regaining consciousness. Three sailors, Father, the cook and myself navigated that big schooner, which in fair weather ordinarily required sixteen men to handle. I took the helm in the daytime, the sailors stood by the fore and main masts and the cook tended the jibs. Father slept in his clothes.

On the fourth day out we ran into the electrical storms off Lord Howe Island. Lord Howe is a barren island off the Australian coast, around which all the fury of the China Sea, Indian Ocean and South Pacific gathers. I’ll never forget it—lightning so blinding and near that it made our eyes blur with blue shadows! Thunder which rattled so loud and so close that it reverberated on the deck!

And then, right in the midst of the thunderstorm the wind suddenly veered from southeast to north—northwest and we had to tack ship to keep from running aground.

The mate went aloft to free a tangled block from the mizzen topsail. He had reached the crosstrees and was straddled on them to balance himself as he freed the rope from the block. The lightning rods on the tops of the mast were alive with fire—they looked like huge gas jets aflame on the top of each spar. I was at the wheel, tied there by two ropes to keep from washing overboard in the seas that were sweeping over the poop deck. Father looked up to see if it was all clear aloft so he could let go the mizzen boom to tack over, when a streak of lightning made him cover his eyes with his hands to keep from being blinded. At the wheel I put my face down in my overalls’ bib, and I guess the other men hid their eyes from the fiery onslaught of streak lightning, for not one of them saw just what happened. The mate aloft must have touched a ring bolt of steel on the mast and received the full shock! He dropped from the crosstrees to the deck, and his body was crushed into a mangled pulp by the fall. Before anyone could reach the spot where he fell a green sea swept across the deck and carried him overboard! It was too horrible—too gruesome! I crumbled inside. I don’t know what would have happened to me if a sea hadn’t washed over the poop and almost smothered me with water bringing me to.

The ship was “around” or tacked, and we were trying to hold her head up to the wind and keep her out of the belly of the swells to avoid capsizing. We couldn’t possibly hold out much longer as the terrific strain had told on her strength. There seemed only one thing to be done as a last resort—revive the shanghaied sailors.

Father went into the fo’c’s’le and attempted to rouse them. They only moaned and turned over and slept, or didn’t move at all. It was four days later, exactly eight days from the time they were sent aboard ship, that they regained consciousness. The crimp had made a good job of them. He had first drugged them and then his gang beat them to lifelessness. Of the eight only two were sailors; the others were not worth their beans at sea as a crew. One was a waiter, another a truck driver, another a coal passer, another a cattle man and still another a hopeless dope fiend. The crimp had had a hard time finding heads to make up his blood money of five pounds apiece, so he had raided a waterfront saloon and made a wholesale slaughter of the available men he had found standing at the bar. All of them except the two sailors were seasick and cowardly of the storm.

With the mate dead and a bunch of landlubbers for a crew in one of the worst storms of the South Pacific, Father turned into a savage. The men had to sign on the Ship’s Articles as seamen. It is maritime law that every man voluntarily sign his own name to the Articles, and in doing so, he becomes liable to obey the laws of the sea as dictated by the master of the ship. Once those men had put their signatures to the Articles, Father had them! They didn’t want to sign, but when he invited them to sign or get off and walk, they wrote their names willingly.

Immediately after signing, the coal passer and cattle man made the mistake of refusing to go aloft to shift the topsails in the storm. Father took his revolver and pointed it at them.

“You dirty blank so and so’s, you’re sailors now. Get aloft and make fast those sails or you’ll go over the side. Swimming isn’t crowded around here,” and he pointed to the seething ocean to windward. They went aloft.

The entire trip up through the islands was like that. Father was captain, mate and part of the crew and I was chief helmsman. The crew were unwilling prisoners, and they made life aboard a lively hell for us all.