Part 17

“Nelson!” I whispered. He looked up to where I was lying.

“Huh?”

“Are you like all sailors? Are you in love with the curves of the sails too?” He was startled by my sudden question, but after a moment he said:

“Hell no! I ain’t in love with no skirt, imaginary or real.”

I couldn’t think of any answer to that so I kept quiet. He looked at me so steadily I thought he’d let the ship get off her course. After several minutes of silence he said in a voice that sounded as if he was talking about a cargo of copra:

“Skipper, you know you’re a pretty kid.”

I thought he was being sarcastic. I jumped off the sail and ran below where I threw myself on my bunk and cried. I hated him for making fun of me. Hadn’t my father told me I was ugly? Why was Nelson just rubbing it in? I hated him, and for hours I lay awake wishing the ship would sink and he would be the first one to drown. But in spite of everything, the next day I found myself forgiving him. It was Sunday and we had the inevitable duff cake for dessert. Instead of eating my piece I stowed it away in my overall’s pocket to give to him, for the fo’c’s’le didn’t rate desserts. He stood his trick at the wheel that afternoon from two to four. He didn’t even look at me when I came on deck, but I walked past the wheel and stuffed my hunk of precious cake in his hand. He took it and began to eat it. I sat on the skylight and watched each swallow go down while my mouth watered for just a taste of the dessert I took joy in sacrificing for him.

“This is good grub,” he said between mouthfuls. The last bite went into his mouth but a corner of it fell to the deck. Oh, if he wouldn’t see it I’d wait until he left the wheel and pick it up and eat it myself! I stood guard from my perch on the skylight over that piece on the deck. When Oleson came to relieve him, Nelson’s big bare foot stepped on the piece of cake by accident and ground it into some tobacco juice on the deck!

Fred Nelson was a Dane. He had yellow hair and light blue eyes. He was about thirty years old, and as strong as three average men. He was the only man I had ever seen that had gold hairs on his chest—and those curly ones. He was different from the rest of the crew. He wouldn’t let me play strip poker. When he looked at me he made me wish I didn’t wear overalls. I imagined there was an expression in his eyes of hunger when he looked at me, yet he avoided speaking to me whenever he could. He had been on the ship for six years and never in all that time did he show fear in a storm or shirk the hardest job.

I did everything that I could to worship at his feet, without letting him know of it. One hot night, about a week after the duff cake disappointment, I was sleeping in the lifeboat which was hung over the stern. I awoke and through half-closed eyes I saw Nelson hacking a curl of hair off my head with his pocket knife. He was breathing fast as if he had been running hard. I began to tremble from head to foot and a pounding in my head and throbbing in my chest nearly made me burst, but something inside told me to pretend I was still asleep. After he took my curl he walked softly away and disappeared forward. I never let Nelson learn that I knew what he had done. Somehow I felt it was a secret he wanted to keep. I began to keep away from Stitches and Father. I just wanted to hide where no one could see how I felt.

Nelson never acted as though he had cut off my hair that quiet night. A few days later I heard him telling Swede and Bulgar his ambition as the three of them sat whittling sticks in the scupper near the mizzen mast.

“I stuck by this barge ’cause I’m workin’ for a job of second mate. Ever since I left the old country I been plannin’ to get officer’s papers,” he said.

“There ain’t nothin’ in being a second mate. Responsibility at sea and standin’ watch in port. Not for me!” volunteered Swede with all the contempt in his voice he could master.

“Some day I’ll have a ship of my own,” went on Nelson, “and she’ll be the fastest full-rigger afloat.”

“You mean you’re going to be a Captain Nelson?” I asked. He looked straight at me. Again I felt my face flush hotly. “Yes, and there ain’t going to be no women-kind on my ship when I’m Skipper. Women belongs on land,” he answered.

I couldn’t stand it, I fled aft and hid again—away from myself.

“What are you moping around about, Joan?” Father asked me that night. “Lately you been pale as a white squall, and so quiet you must be sick. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing—except that I wish I was a million miles away from here. I wish I was never on a ship. I wish I was on land!” I cried at him.

“I set you ashore once and you ran away, so now I ain’t going to let you go navigatin’ on the land until you can steer a clear course. I seen too much of what livin’ ashore does to women,—it fills their heads so full of ballast that real cargoes such as common sense haven’t got any place. I’ll not cast off your hawsers from the ship until you can sail in fair or foul weather by yourself without runnin’ aground.” Those were the only words of warning my father gave me, and I don’t know to this day if he knew the turmoil I was in. If he suspected I was in love he didn’t let me know it! We arrived in Newcastle, Australia, a few weeks later. As usual, the crew went ashore after the long sea trip, to frequent the pubs along the waterfront. The second mate got in a drunken brawl and was put in jail. Swede, Bulgar and Oleson just kept away without reporting for duty for a week. One day Father left the ship early in the morning to attend to chartering a cargo of coal and left me on board. We were anchored out in the channel. The only others on the ship were the Jap cook, Stitches, and Fred Nelson.

“You’re the most sober man I got, Nelson,” Father said. “You take the day shift of watchman while I’m ashore.”

“Yes, sir,” came back Nelson, pleased that Father had noticed his sobriety. It would stand him in good stead when he came up for a second mate’s license.

Along about noon I got so lonesome for someone to talk to that I sought out Nelson. I found him down in the hold of the ship coiling up ropes and otherwise cleaning the hold ready for its next cargo. I slid down a rope to the keel. Nelson didn’t even speak to me, so I asked:

“Can I watch you work, Nelson?”

“You’re the Skipper’s daughter, so I suppose you can do anything you damn please,” was his unpromising answer.

I sat down on a big coil of rope and let my feet hang over but they didn’t quite reach the floor of the hold. For perhaps half an hour I sat there. I was thinking. Nelson was working. Neither of us said a word. All of a sudden Nelson turned quickly towards me and before I could realize what was happening he grabbed me and kissed me! My head swam. I felt dizzy. I was thrilled and frightened. All in a confused instant the thought that I was bad because I liked that kiss stabbed my consciousness. I wanted to run from the hold up to the sunlight, but I couldn’t move. My first grown-up kiss from a man! If only the bottom of the ship would open and swallow me.

From what seemed miles away I heard Nelson’s voice speaking to me. He had walked back to his chore of cleaning and from there he said:

“How did you like that one, huh? That was just what you was aching for, wasn’t it?”

So he blasted my illusion. For that kiss _was_ just what I had been aching for but I could have killed him for putting my thought into words.

Through a daze I heard him continue:

“You better not tell the Old Man I kissed you. He’d raise hell with me.”

I had no intention of telling Father about that kiss. I climbed out of the hold to the deck. I felt that every one would see when they looked at me that I had been kissed for I thought that kiss stuck out like a flaming mushroom on my face.

When Father returned to the ship that night he looked at me and didn’t see anything wrong.

Long days of loading on coal passed, but I avoided going on deck when I knew Nelson would be on duty. How I treasured that kiss! Each morning when I washed my face I was careful to leave untouched the portion the kiss was on, with the result that my countenance gave the effect of a clean swept beach with a dark circle left by a receding tide in the region of my mouth. I was preserving as precious that kissed spot because how did I know I would ever get another one.

My happiness was complete until my father got a good look at my face while we sat at the dining table. The reflected light from the skylight overhead betrayed me. Father saw my dirty face.

“What do you mean by coming to the table without washing your face?” he demanded. I never thought so fast for an excuse in my life.

“I can’t wash around my mouth, Father, because it’s all chapped and it’s too sore.”

Father rose from the table, clutched me by the suspenders of my overalls and propelled me to the sink in the pantry. “Too sore to wash, huh?” he said and he took some sandsoap (the kind used to scrub down the decks) and a rag. With them he wiped the kiss, or what was left of it, from my face forever. I think in that moment I felt I suffered my greatest tragedy. I didn’t want to see Nelson again for fear he would think I wanted him to kiss me again. I did want him to, that’s why I avoided him.

When the cargo was loaded Father went ashore to bail his crew out of jail. He found all of them except the second mate willing to come back and ship out. The second mate refused to be bailed, and it put Father in a hole because officers for American ships are difficult to get in a foreign port.

“Why don’t you make Nelson second mate?” I ventured to Father when I heard him grumbling about his bad luck with crews. The idea appealed to him, for he said to the first mate:

“Send Nelson aft to me, Mr. Owens.”

I was delighted. If Nelson was made an officer I would see him every day at the table. We would eat together—oh, the thrill of that thought! To eat with him three times a day for a six months’ voyage! I could be friends with a second mate, according to Father’s code of discipline, but not with a common sailor.

Nelson came into Father’s quarters very much ill at ease.

“Yes sir, Captain. You sent for me, sir?”

“I’m going to ship you out as second mate. If you make good from here to Adelaide, I’ll indorse your license for Officer’s papers. Get your sea bag aft, at once. Your duty begins now,” and Father turned to his bills of lading as the way of dismissing the conversation.

I stood near grinning, I was so happy. I saw Nelson’s face flush bright red. He looked at Father. Then he looked at me and back at Father again. The flush had gone out of his face and his mouth made a straight line.

“I have to refuse, Captain. I don’t want to be a second mate. I’d like my discharge, sir,” Nelson said, almost defensively.

Father turned on him as if he hadn’t heard him rightly.

“Are you a damned fool or just plain crazy? What do you mean, ‘don’t want to be a mate?’”

“That’s it, sir. I’d like to be discharged,” came back Nelson. My heart sank. Why did he want to leave? It was the dream of his life to be an officer and he was throwing away his first chance.

“Then get the hell off this ship and not a damned cent of pay will you get!” bellowed Father at him. Nelson left the cabin. I followed him, and ran after him. I caught up to him and pulled his arm to hold him back.

“Why are you going to leave, Nelson?”

Nelson took me by the shoulders and shook me. I was crying and I didn’t try to hide my tears. It was the first time any sailor had seen me bawl but I wasn’t ashamed. The awful fear—the ghastly loneliness of the prospect of losing Nelson—gripped me.

“Aw, what the hell, Skipper. If I stay on this ship as second mate I’d be seeing you every day, three times a day, even at meal times.

“An’ if I was to be near to you like that every day I’d be makin’ love to you, see?”

“But isn’t that what you would want?” I asked, for it certainly was what I wanted—what I dreamed of.

“Sure, Skipper, but being so close like to you, this packet wouldn’t be big enough for us both. You never had a chance—why, you ain’t growed up yet, and any man’d be a dog to make love to a baby like you.”

With those words Nelson turned from me and walked forward in great haste.

The next morning he went over the gangplank with his sea bag without looking back even to wave good-bye to me as I stood in the rigging watching him go. That was the last time I ever set eyes on Nelson. I have learned since that he was killed in a race riot on the docks in Galveston.

Of course I know that land folks would think Nelson a fool—a dear, chivalrous fool. Maybe—but I’ll never forget him.

[Illustration]

21

“You pull for the shore, boys, Praying to Heaven above, But I’ll go down in the angry deep With the ship I love.”

With the red of the ship’s waterline weighted deep in the water we sailed from Newcastle with a cargo of coal. Father shipped a new man in place of Nelson, a John Johnson. Father could have shipped a thousand sailors but none of them would fill the place in my life that Nelson did. John Johnson was a bully second mate and he handled his watch with an iron hand, but when off duty he was as gentle as the down on an albatross’s wing. Johnson had great difficulty with his pronunciation of “J.” His Norwegian origin was very obvious.

“Are you a Dane?” I asked him the second day out. I hoped he would say yes, because then he could in a way remind me of Nelson.

“I bane no Dane. I am Norwegian,” he boasted. His accent was so marked that the crew used to sing when he was out of their hearing:

“Yumping Yimminy! Yacob yumped off the Yib Boom with his monkey yacket on. Yeesus! What a Yump!”

We sailed for weeks and June found us in the tropics. June is the hurricane season in the South Seas when freak storms, baffling winds and dangerous currents menace seafarers.

Father was on watch almost constantly at night. He would make frequent trips to his cabin to watch the barometer, only to return to the deck and pace up and down.

“Are we going to nose into a blow?” I asked Father.

“There’s more than a blow going to strike us, Joan. I got a feeling in my marrow that we’re a-headin’ for our last anchorage,” he said. Father, like all men of the deep sea, was superstitious, but, of course, when accused he denied it vigorously. The crew of a ship are guided by the Captain. If the Captain grows restless and worried the men suspect that he has gotten wind of impending disaster. What it is about the sea that whispers warnings to those who battle it I don’t know, but that there is something, I am sure.

“There’s a Jonah on this vessel.” Father spit the words out to the mate on watch. The mate cast a suspicious glance at Bulgar, who was at the helm.

“It ain’t him,” Father said with finality. Bulgar heard the discussion but he appeared to be oblivious to it. He just went on chewing his wad of tobacco and spitting with unerring accuracy into the codfish keg near the wheel. Occasionally he lifted his eyes from the compass to watch the full spread of wind-taut sail. The topsails were set and pulling, and when the weather permits topsails it is a sign of fair wind.

The mate had no patience with Father’s fears.

“There ain’t nothin’ to jaw about with this fair wind, Cap’n,” he argued. “We had a good trip so far. Only one man, that Swede, had to be put in irons for trying to kill the cook.”

Swede had caught the cook in the act of putting a dead cat into the slumgullion, as ship stew is termed. Cook was holding out the salt beef for himself and pawning off dead pussy. Taking fo’c’s’le justice in his own hands Swede caught Cook by the back of the neck and began to shake the liver out of him. The cook managed to get his meat cleaver and attempted to assassinate Swede. There would have been a dual murder in the galley if Bulgar and Oleson hadn’t intervened in time. Father put Swede in irons for attempted murder, but we needed the cook, so all that happened to him for bad conduct was forfeiture of one month’s pay.

“Been nothin’ but trouble ever since we sailed from Newcastle. Two men at the pumps night and day to keep down the water leakin’ in the hold. Fights in the fo’c’s’le. Joan not eating, and I been dreamin’ about a broken anchor.”

To make matters worse a large rat came up on deck one night shortly after that, looking for water. I tried to catch it to play with. I chased it off the poop deck, down the main deck and into the scupper. I had it cornered behind a rain barrel and was just about to grab its tail when it darted back into the scupper. In its fright it ran out a hawse hole and fell into the sea.

“My old rat got away from me, Stitches,” I confided. Stitches was aghast with fear.

“Did a rat leave the ship?”

“No, I chased him overboard,” I answered.

“Don’t you tell your Old Man a rat left the ship. He’s like a seethin’ volcano now, ready to erupt ’cause he can’t lay his finger on trouble he smells in the wind,” Stitches warned me.

Despite Father’s fears we reached the island of Ruratu, discharged the coal there, picked up a load of sandalwood and cat’s eyes for a deck load after we had collected nine hundred tons of copra and sailed for Adelaide, South Australia, our destination.

The mate, cocky about the ship-shape condition of the vessel under his supervision, reminded Father of his groundless fears on the out trip.

“But we ain’t in home port yet,” Father persisted.

So he kept up his vigil. After seventy-one days we were due to sight land if Father’s navigation was correct. Sailors were stationed at the masthead and on the bow as lookouts.

“Land off the starboard bow, ho!” wailed Swede from his post at the foremast crosstrees.

“Where away?” returned Father.

“Quarter point off the bow, sir!”

Sighting land after seventy-one weary days at sea was a great relief to Father. He hurried below, after giving a direction to the man at the wheel, and brought up his binoculars. He gazed steadily through them as if he were trying to bring the land closer through the glasses.

“That’s it! Take a look, Joan.”

Through the glasses I saw a little cone-shaped shadow on the horizon. Land!

“It’s the sou’east point of Australia,” opined Father. He climbed half way up the rigging of the spanker mast and clung to the ratlines. “We’ll hit Bass Straits tonight!”

Then Father slid down the rigging to the deck and spoke to the mate:

“The Straits are a helluva passage to make at night. There’s no moon out to navigate by. All hands on deck—stand by.”

Although the Straits are one hundred miles across, that leaves little room for a sailing ship to beat and tack in. There is a channel of deep water running through the center of the Straits where the currents are less deadly. The sweep of the Pacific meets the rushing tides of the Indian Ocean. Mountainous promontories rise on the coast of South Australia and the jutting saw-toothed coast of Tasmania guards the southern end of the straits. Baffling winds and treacherous cross currents stirred by the vortex of waters from three oceans, the Pacific, Indian and Antarctic meeting, make sailing dangerous. Sometimes the wind dies suddenly shut off by a mountain range only to kick up again in a fury from an opposite direction. It is no feat at all for steam vessels to go through the Straits but a sailing ship is at the mercy of the winds and tides.

Almost like magic the land loomed larger and larger, until the blue haze faded and we could distinguish Wilson Promontory. It looked like a huge whale asleep on the water. It was about four bells in the evening and the tropic light was rapidly fading into a soft gray.

“Clew in the topsails! Sheet home the jibs!” called Father suddenly. It isn’t just duty that makes sailors over-eager to hasten a ship’s arrival in port. They are contented until they sight land and then they become restless.

“A sailorman can sniff a drink in the wind a hundred miles out to sea,” Stitches declared.

In less than five minutes the topsails were fast and only the flying jib was set. Father went aloft with his binoculars. Far off to leeward I saw a vermilion-colored lightship jerking at its anchorage near the shore.

Eight bells struck! The watch changed. The moaning of buoys came out of the darkness to warn us of reefs and shallow water.

I ascended the mast to be near Father.

“You turn in, Joan. If any trouble comes, keep out of the way, do you hear?”