Part 4

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!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

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.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

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?”