Part 2

Our ship’s library, supplied by those well-meaning societies ashore that feel seamen need fine literature to uplift them, consisted of such books as “The Care and Feeding of Pedigree Dogs,” “Modern Science of Surgery,” “Engineering,” Hymn books, Cæsar’s Conquest (in Latin) and other such works guaranteed to inspire the minds of sailors to loftier ideals than the fleshpots. In desperation for something to read at sea the sailors would borrow the books, read them from cover to cover and return them to the library feeling rich in the priceless knowledge they imparted. Even I read them all and Father highly approved because he said they wouldn’t fill my head full of silly notions. Once a sailor fell so low as to bring a sixpenny paper-covered novel on board entitled “Mad Love.” The sailors all read it and I managed to get it by standing its owner’s tricks at the wheel for two whole days. If it wasn’t elevating, at least “Mad Love” appealed to me more than the “Care and Feeding of Pedigree Dogs.” Some day, when I’m rich, I’m going to supply all the sailing ships in the world with real story books to avenge those years of barren reading which were foisted upon us by the uplift societies!

One of the chief accomplishments of our sailors was their spitting. They chewed tobacco and spat the juice freely. They could spit at a crack and hit it without a miss, and one sublimely endowed sailor could spit a curve to windward without mishap! I tried chewing tobacco, but the first time I chawed a hunk Father told me to swallow the juice if I wanted to be a good spitter. Obediently I swallowed a whole mouth full of bitter tobacco juice. The result was as expected. After that lesson I chawed dried prunes which made grand spit. After long weeks of practice I could not only spit at a crack but I could hit it, and it is on record that I spit two curves on a windy day, which gave me a high rating as an able bodied seaman!

When that woman was disapproving of me to John Henry because I lived on a ship, a man-raised child, I wondered if she could even spit straight herself, and if she couldn’t, what did she know about our sea anyhow?

[Illustration]

2 In which an alarm clock and some dried apricots are exchanged with natives for a nurse for me. The ship becomes my cradle

My life at sea started when I was eleven months old. Father had brought me down to the schooner, a tiny bundle wrapped in a blanket. I was so small I would have been lost in his bunk, so Father had Stitches—the sailmaker—make a diminutive hammock of canvas. This hammock was swung from bolts, one sunk in the wall above the middle of Father’s bunk and the other into the stanchion at the foot of the bunk on the outside. The rolling of the ship rocked the hammock more steadily than the most indulgent mother.

From the time he made my baby hammock, Stitches devoted his life to me. For fourteen years he thought of me first, then of the ship, last of himself, and in the final tragedy of our ship, he died to save me. I loved him and pestered him and abused his love as only a child can, but I’ll never forget him.

I first recall Stitches as being the only man in the world older than Father. In reality he must have been close to sixty when I was brought on board. His life was one of the romantic tragedies of the sea, for when he came to sign on the Ship’s Articles he said “I’m a kind of Johnny-All-Sorts, Skipper. I’ve been all the way up and down the ladder from cabin-boy to Captain and back to sailmaker. My name’s my own business, and I’ll sign on in my own way, if you want me.”

“Sign any way you damn please,” answered Father, who knew a sailor when he saw one.

So the old sailor signed the Articles just “Stitches” and that’s the way he was known for more than fifteen years on our ship. In appearance there was no sailor like Stitches. Years of bending over his work as sailmaker had brought his head forward and his stomach protruding full speed ahead. He waddled a little when he walked, and always sat tailor fashion with his legs crossed so that he gave the impression of a mild, wise old turtle upright on his tail. Every man on the ship came to Stitches with his troubles because they all knew that he had forgotten more about the sea than most men ever learn, and he had had so many troubles of his own that he understood.

Stitches must have been born lacking the iron in his soul to make him set his course and hold it. Rather he had chosen to ride before the storms of life, but as a compensation for his successive failures, he had developed his own peculiar philosophy of content that made the crew love him.

Why didn’t Stitches give up the sea? He couldn’t. The sea was in his blood and he would rather stay on a ship in any capacity than live ashore in comfort.

“I’ll drop my final anchor with the wind howling in my ears above and the swish of bilge water below me,” he declared, “and that way I’ll go content.” And when the time came, I’m sure he went content.

I had inherited my father’s lusty lungs, and my crying did not help my popularity with the men trying to sleep on their watch below. The cabin-boy had to heat sea water in a saucepan over an oil lamp for my daily bath which Father gave me. My bathtub was an empty codfish keg, and how I yelled whenever I faced it. The mate usually turned in at nine in the morning and at that time I was always squalling my loudest. He made a remark which cost him his berth when it was repeated to my father.

“Damned if I ever thought I’d live to see the day when a deep water schooner would be made into a howling nursery.”

Friends of my father along the waterfront in Frisco thought he was crazy to take a baby to sea. We were bound for Chile and thence to Australia. Father’s friends reminded him that the trip was a hard one on account of sudden storms and freak weather off the west coast of South America.

“If I can handle a bunch of squareheads and a scow of a ship in a typhoon, a baby will be easy,” was Father’s answer to their warnings. With characteristic, clear vision he knew his course, and he determined to keep a strong hand on the helm of my life.

That trip, which was my first one, brought all the predicted complications. The patent foods which Father had provided to feed me did not agree with me. I lost weight and became so puny that Father had about given up hope that I would survive until we reached Sydney. There was only one thing for him to do and that was get some kind of food that would nourish me. We would not be in Australia for fifty or sixty days, so he turned in at Norfolk Island to see if he could buy something there to feed me.

“I tried to get a native woman with a small child to come on board and feed you from her breasts,” Father told me years afterwards, “but she was afraid to venture beyond the horizon on a white-winged ship.”

Not to be defeated in his mission, Father sent Stitches in one direction on the island and he went another, seeking some way of solving the feeding problem. Many search islands for treasure, but Father’s exploring was for something more rare on a South Sea island—food for a sick baby. Native children are fed on yarrow roots and raw fish washed down their little throats with coconut milk, but white children can digest no such diet.

After combing the island all day Father returned to the ship, discouraged. He had begun to think finer things of the land than he had when he had taken me from my home to raise on the sea.

At about midnight Stitches came on board. With triumph in his face he rolled aft and asked permission to speak to Father.

“Cap’n, I found somethin’ for the kid.”

Father looked at Stitches’ empty hands.

“Where in the hell is it?” he asked.

Stitches grinned.

“She’s up in the fo’c’s’le now. Come on and sign her on!” and he waddled out of the cabin followed by Father. Father thought “her” was some native woman that Stitches had coerced into coming on board. Stitches led the way under the fo’c’s’le head and pointed to his prize.

“Cap’n, I had a helluva time gettin’ that one, but I woulda got her if I had to kill all that tribe with me own fists.”

Father looked through the shadows under the fore-peak and saw a terrified milch goat. The beast was balancing dizzily on her legs among the anchor chains.

“How’d you get it?” Father asked.

“Well, as I said, Cap’n, them natives wasn’t gonna let me have her, and I figured I’d forfeit my sea boots if I’d let ’em out-talk me with that baby aft wastin’ away, so I trades ’em an old alarm clock and a handful of dried apricots for this here dairy.”

It was the best trade Stitches ever made. Father was so grateful for the goat that he appointed Stitches my nurse and guardian under him with the special privilege of talking back to Father on any matter concerning me without getting his block knocked off. His lesser reward was free tobacco so long as he stayed on the ship. For fourteen years to the day he died for me Stitches exercised all his special rights and privileges to the full. I grew to love him as a second father and I knew I was the mainspring of his life; knowing that, of course I took advantage of him every time I could.

The sailors named the goat “Wet Nurse” and to Wet Nurse and her generous supply of milk I owe my life today. In exchange for her milk Wet Nurse was fed oatmeal and coconuts.

After we put out to sea from Norfolk Island, Wet Nurse got seasick. Father knew that seasickness, like fright, will wear off if you don’t pay any attention to it, so he bided his time. He was rewarded when Wet Nurse got her sea legs and gave milk freely. Stitches always said I had an appetite like a goat’s because I could digest anything—so perhaps I inherited my iron stomach from Wet Nurse. For weeks I thrived on her milk, but it wasn’t to be for long. Wet Nurse was not exactly ship broke in her personal habits. She needed a valet with a broom and pan if ship’s orderliness was to be preserved. The crew took shifts of cleaning the decks where Wet Nurse took her exercise, with the result that she was not popular with the men forward! Wet Nurse got lonesome for her island home, and perhaps for her goat husband. She seemed to choose the hours when the sailors were sleeping to maaa her call. The sound of a she-goat calling her mate is not very beautiful, and it took all of Stitches’ strength to fight off the sailors when they wanted to make Wet Nurse walk the plank! Father treated her as if she were a cabin passenger, and it would have been tough on any sailor who harmed her.

One day, when I was about two years old, our ship was caught in a white squall off Lord Howe Island. A white squall is a sudden wind storm that rises without warning on the barometer and its velocity is so great that it will sweep the sea with huge waves ten minutes after it starts. Wet Nurse was standing by the galley door looking wistfully at the cook in the hope of getting an occasional scrap or two from his pans, when the squall hit the ship.

Whipped by the wind the vessel listed far over to leeward and great seas washed over the decks. I was tied in my hammock below, for Father had called all hands on deck. The crew was reefing down the topsails and battening down the hatches. Father stood at the helm steering the ship out of the belly of the swells to keep the seas from swamping us. Everyone forgot Wet Nurse. A giant green wave came over the fo’c’s’le head, washed over the galley, put out the cook’s stove and drove Wet Nurse against the bulwarks. With a shudder the vessel hove to the windward side and another sea smacked her deck with such force that it lifted the fore hatch from its cleats and sent it swirling to the lee bulwarks pinning Wet Nurse beneath its wreckage.

She lay crippled and terrified and nearly drowned under the debris until the storm subsided. The mate and Stitches found her, and lifting her gently, as if she were a person, from beneath the hatch, they carried her up to the poop deck to my father. She had broken both her legs and several ribs were smashed in. Father, who has always had a gentle hand with animals, carefully set her legs in splints and bound her ribs with bandages made from small pieces of canvas. Then he lay Wet Nurse in his bunk beneath my hammock. In spite of everything he could do for her, Wet Nurse died that night. She was given a regular ship’s funeral. The ship hove to for five minutes, as her body, sewn in sailcloth and weighted with a piece of chain, was committed to the deep.

And the next day I went on regular sailor’s diet.

[Illustration]

3 “A ship is called a ‘she’ because her riggin’ costs more than her hull.”—Stitches.

Father had devised and carried out the scheme for nourishing a baby at sea, but another and more difficult problem for any man is clothing womenfolks.

When I was two years old I could walk and say “goddamned wind.” That was my first sentence, which I picked up from the mate. I had outgrown my baby dresses—so something had to be done about it. On deep water vessels the crew, as well as the mates and captain, usually wear coarse dungarees and heavy woolens in cold weather, white cotton undershirts and short cotton trousers in the tropics. Shoes are worn only in port as it is too dangerous, as well as too expensive, for sailormen to walk around the slippery decks in leather soles.

When I began to walk by holding on to the rail of the poop deck we were off Easter Island, getting a load of guano, which is bird manure used for fertilizing purposes. It would be months before we hailed the mainland, so again Father was ingenious in solving a difficulty. I had to have something to wear! Father turned the fo’c’s’le into a sewing room. His seamstresses were Lars Erickson—a Dane, Scotty—an old Scottish sailor who had only one snag tooth in his mouth and that brown from tobacco stain, and the trusty Stitches.

These men were commissioned to make my wardrobe. They cut a small pair of pants from Stitches’ well worn dungarees and made little suspenders on them. The button-holes were works of art embroidered with infinite pains by Stitches. While they were engrossed in their sewing a Hungarian sailor who was a bit of a bully, by name “Gooney” Bulgar, leaned out of his bunk and remarked:

“You ladies of the sewing circle will now adjourn an’ tea will be served in the Cap’n’s parlor,” with which he waved an effeminate, coy hand in the shellbacks’ faces.

It was never definitely settled which of them landed on him first. Bulgar claimed that Stitches had scratched him with his needle and none would bear witness that Scotty and Erickson hadn’t used a steel marlinspike on him. At any rate he resembled a piece of raw hamburger steak when they brought his limp body aft to my father to be revived. If there is one thing prevalent on shipboard it is he-men, and any suggestion that impugns their virility has to be settled with belaying pins to the finish. Whatever really happened, the event is recorded in the Log Book as follows:

“This day at sea, the 27th of September, Able-Bodied Seaman Gustav Bulgar fell, in the course of duty, off the fo’c’s’le head on to the main deck and was badly injured. Treated by Captain. Given dose of salts and wounds painted with Friar’s Balsam. Captain found it advisable to fine seaman Five Dollars for carelessness.”

After that slight interruption to their sewing, the three men resumed, and turned out a complete wardrobe for me. Scotty had an old pair of rubber sea boots that were worn out at the bottoms so he cut off the tops, and turned out a pair of tiny rubber sea boots for me. With the remaining scraps he fashioned a sou’wester oilskin hat for me. He was at a loss for something to line it with, as the only available material on the ship was cast off clothing. A sailor never does anything by halves, and unless that sou’wester was lined, it was not complete in his estimation. As he was taking a mental inventory of the material he could lay hands on in the fo’c’s’le, “Pimples,” the cabin-boy, came in. It was his first trip at sea. He had come to get experiences so he could be a famous writer of sea stories like Jack London. He was still so green in the ways of the sea that he wore shoes and socks. Pimples had won his cognomen by his complexion which was caused half by adolescence and half by the food which fell to his lot after the crew and captain had eaten the best of it. It was unfortunate for Pimples that he intruded into the fo’c’s’le at that moment, for Scotty saw his shoes and socks.

“Come here, Barnacles,” he cooed to the cabin-boy. “Come closer so I can see how big your muscles are getting now you are at sea.”

Pimples came over to him eagerly, happy to be recognized as an equal by a regular sailor. When he was close enough, Scotty tripped him, and sat on his stomach. While Pimples squirmed, Scotty took off his shoes and socks and, holding a brown woolen sock up for the others to see, he shouted:

“Here’s the lining for the sou’wester,” and then he booted the luckless cabin-boy out of the fo’c’s’le.

When the little clothes were finished and the sock-lined oilskin cap proudly displayed, the sailors called in the Jap cook, Yamashita, to approve of their handiwork. The cook looked at them and then snorted with Oriental disapproval:

“Where nightgown for Missy? No damn sense sailor got.” He went back to his galley and presently emerged with two bottles and three flour sacks. The bottles contained cake frosting coloring, red and green. He took some string and dipped it in the red and made red string, and then dipped some more string in the green. These colored strings he used to embroider intricate cross stitch designs on the neck and arms of the flour sack nightgown and dress. In spite of his many washings of the sacks to remove the printing on them, a dim memory of the words, “Pure as the drifted snow,” remained on them forever.

I wore overalls all my life on board the ship. Father kept me dressed as a boy in fairness to the crew and for my protection. He did everything in his power to keep them and me from becoming conscious of my sex. When I was big enough to wear them Father bought me regular men’s size overalls. They buttoned in front and I was very proud that even in my clothing I resembled the sailors.

The first time I wore a dress after I left the ship I didn’t know how to walk in it. The skirt got tangled up in my legs and kept me from taking long sea strides. I had to wear underclothes with a dress and they seemed to stifle my body that was used to salt soaked overalls next to a bare skin. It was a tragic day for me when Father informed me that with a dress I had to wear shoes and stockings. The shoes hurt my feet and the cotton stockings itched—but more of the impediments of civilization later.

To go back to my babyhood—When a young lady is big enough to walk, able to say “goddamned wind” and to occupy the attention of three tailors, it is obviously time to begin thinking about her education. Father and Stitches consulted gravely.

“The fust thing she’s gotter learn, Cap’n,” argued Stitches, “is to keep from fallin’ overboard.”

“All right,” agreed Father, “every time you catch her near the rail, paddle her bottom.”

Stitches nodded in partial approval.

“That’s all right, too, Cap’n, but kids is natcha’lly ornery and their sterns gits calloused, awful fast.”

Father saw the point.

“We’ll tie her up,” he said.

So they put me at the end of a fifteen foot rope tied to the wheelbox on the poop deck. That was fine for a few days until in a sudden blow I got the rope around the steersman’s feet, with the result that my head and his stern nearly broke the deck and the ship got off her course.

Stitches and Father again went into conference.

“In one week she’s slipped her hawser twice and tripped up the steersman. We gotter try somethin’ else, Cap’n,” urged Stitches. Father thought it over.

“Sooner or later she’s pretty sure to go overboard anyhow, so you’d better teach her to swim.”

“That’s a fine idea, Cap’n,” replied Stitches, “only I don’t know how to swim myself.” Which is one of the queer things about the sea: more than half of the sailors can’t swim.

“You fix a tank. I’ll teach her,” decided Father.

Just aft the mizzen mast, Stitches rigged up a canvas tank about four feet square and equally deep. This was collapsible, so that when it was empty it could be folded up and put in the cabin out of the way of the storms. It was a sailor’s job to fill it with sea water every morning. This he did by throwing overboard a canvas bucket in which he baled up a hundred gallons of water to fill it. When it was full he reported the fact to my father. Then Father would go to my hammock, get me and carry me down to the tank. I was a wiggling, squirming, protesting bundle of muscular little girl, as husky as a seal, and full of objections to the idea of being pulled out of a comfortable warm hammock and plunged naked into a cold sea dip.