Part 9

Father was retained on full salary during the official investigation of the wreck. Then he learned how much law, justice or right mean to greedy and selfish men. The tugs belonged to the same company that owned the _Star_. If the responsibility for the wreck was fastened on the two captains of the tugboats, the corporation faced enormous damage suits from the families and dependents of the hundred and eleven dead men. So the owners used every bit of their influence and resources to protect the guilty tugboat captains. The verdict acquitted them—the blame rested on the gale! And thus they settled the most famous and most unnecessary wreck in American maritime history. My father was fired in disgrace with the remark: “We have no ship for you now.”

That was the way he was rewarded for his effort to procure the “justice” he had promised his men when they wanted to avenge the murder done by the crews of the tugboats. The slogan went from Alaska to Seattle after the verdict: “Don’t kick Power.”

Fifteen years of faithful and intelligent service in the Arctic swept away in a night! Father could never go North again. The bodies of a hundred and eleven men on the rocks of Coronation Island would drive him to murder. He bought an old schooner and turned to the opposite end of the world, the South Seas, warmth and maybe forgetfulness!—But he still carries the bitterness and hate in his heart!

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[Illustration]

12 A cursing contest and a hangman’s noose

Most of the men I knew were typical old shellback sailors, a species of human that began to go out with the increase of steam vessels until now the type is almost extinct. The shellback was unlike any other human, a law unto himself, with few wants and a large philosophy of content that was none the less real because he grumbled all the time. His ration of tobacco, enough money for grog, and a few days in port at the end of a long sea trip to blow his pay on some skirt, satisfied his creature desires. For mental relaxation he cursed the ship, cursed his officers, cursed the grub and cursed the cook, and withal, he wouldn’t have traded places with any king on his throne.

The shellback’s attitude toward the sea was all his own, and quite typical of the breed. He loved it—he lived on it. He expected to be on top of the waves all his life and beneath them when he died. And so fatalistic was he, that half of the deep sea sailors never learned to swim! Stitches expressed the attitude best.

“What’s the use of learnin’ to swim?” he argued. “Any sailor dumb enough to fall overboard oughta drown and if he’s washed overboard he couldn’t swim anyhow—so what’s the use?”

“But Father made me learn to swim,” I protested.

“That’s different,” grinned Stitches. “You see, Skipper, the Captain knows a woman ain’t got sense enough not to fall overboard. Now if you was to fall overboard and couldn’t swim, some dumb sailor, whether he could swim or not, would jump in and get drowned trying to save you; but bein’ as you kin swim, if _you_ fall overboard, nobody don’t worry—they just toss you a rope and you pull out by yourself and the Captain don’t lose no good sailor. All that happens is you come back aboard and you get your stern tanned with a rope’s end to warm up the chill. No ma’am! Captain ain’t goin’ to let no good sailor go dead tryin’ to save a woman.”

Quite unconvinced, I puzzled and puzzled over Stitches’ point of view, but it was not until some years later, in one tragic moment, that I learned how wide can be the difference between a man’s philosophy and his action in a crisis.

Next to Stitches the most interesting shellback I ever knew was John Henry, a withered old seaman close to seventy, with a cracked whiskey voice and a face so furrowed that it looked like the relief map of a mountain range. He chawed a hunk of tobacco incessantly and the juice drooled down his chin, leaving a little yellow rut marked in his whiskers. He had sailed the Horn a hundred times, to hear him tell it, and he would have been a captain long ago instead of a common seaman, only a captain couldn’t get drunk in public on the waterfront—so John Henry preferred not to be a captain. But for all his shortcomings, John Henry was a real seaman. An ordinary gale was music to his soul and a hurricane seemed to take off thirty years—for no young man could hold to the foot ropes aloft better than he and few could steer a dangerous course as well.

We shipped John Henry at Frisco and in a week Stitches’ nose was out of joint, for John Henry had quite won me. He would sit for hours, on his watch below, and teach me to tie intricate sailor knots—everything from splices, monkey fists, running bowlines, Turk’s heads, true lover’s knots to a hangman’s noose.

“I bin in every jail from Seattle to Port Said,” he confided, “an’ I can learn you every kind of a knot they use for killin’ off undesirables.”

Stitches was disgusted.

“Damned old shellback! Teaching you how to tie knots to get rid of undesirables, is he? I dunno nobody as undesirable as he is. If he had what was comin’ to him, somebody’d tie a knot for him long ago. Mebbe they will yet.”

On the end of a halyard John Henry was chief chanteyman. One day I was helping haul in the slack of the fore topsail and he said:

“You gotta eat more beans before you can pull like a regular sailor. Women ain’t no use on a ship except to eat up grub.”

Then he burst into a chantey that sailors sing about “Womenfolk on Ships,” and put my name in it.

This is the song:

“Sweet Joan, a maiden of fourteen years old, Not once in her life had been kissed. Except by her cats and her dogs, I been told, And the beauties of life she had missed.

“And OH! how she longed for the love of a man But all seemed to turn her away. Till one day she set on a capital plan And put it in form this way.

“Now sailors are jolly good fellows, thought she, To take a trip she’d a notion, For sailors oft get very blue out at sea, And—girls are scarce on the ocean!”

“Aw, what the hell do you mean by that?” I asked. “I can do something that nobody in the fo’c’s’le can do and that is, I can navigate. Father’s taught me how to find our position by the Southern Cross at night,” I boasted.

“Yeh? Well, I still says women ain’t got no place on shipboard. Why, they can’t even talk like sailors,” and he spat a juicy stream with unerring accuracy through the hawse hole on the port side of the ship.

He had thrown down the challenge to me to make good as a sailor. I was no frail little Captain’s daughter that the sailors slew each other to get. I had to win them! From that day on I never lost an opportunity to emulate a deep sea sailor in every way.

At night in my cabin I rubbed my hands over rough rope to make callouses. I began to practise every swear word I heard the sailors use. After a month of careful observation I was able to curse four minutes in succession and never repeat a word. When I had them all down glibly I waylaid John Henry.

“Listen, you bastard,” I started, and then I traced his ancestors from several kinds of animals down to biological defects in himself and compared him with every known form of low life and waste products imaginable. When I finished my four minute tirade I stood on guard, thinking he would make a pass at me. Instead he listened intently, then his face broke into a grin:

“You’re improvin’, Skipper,” he complimented me. I was so elated at winning his approval that I thought I would try my vocabulary out on my father. I went up on the poop deck where Father was sitting, smoking his pipe.

“Tell me to do something,” I invited him.

“Now, what are you up to?” he asked suspiciously.

“Just you tell me to do something as if I was a sailor in the fo’c’s’le,” I repeated.

“All right,” he replied, pleased at what appeared to be my desire to work. “You get a chip-hammer and chip the rust off the anchor chains. They got to be given a coat of red lead to keep them from rusting away.”

Then I let fly with my newly acquired sea language. I got as far as one-half minute of it when I felt myself going through space toward the cabin below with my father attached to my collar and the seat of my pants.

“Where in the so and so did you hear any such language as that?” he shouted.

“From you when you’re tacking ship and the wind won’t catch the sails,” I answered, wishing I had never learned them.

“I’ll be goddamned if you ever heard your father curse,” he yelled. “I’ll break your damned neck if I ever hear you curse again—do you hear?”

I heard him. The whole ship heard him with glee. Stitches said he embarrassed the flying fish! Father went on:

“Your mouth ain’t fit to put grub in after such language,” he roared, “so you don’t get no meals until you forget every curse word you know!” and with that he tied a rag over my mouth and went after a piece of rope to warm my posterior.

I was in my bunk, my mouth tied up and my behind too sore to sit on. What I thought of John Henry was worse than the words I had memorized to impress him. I’d get even with him if I died in the attempt. Lying down there on my stomach I couldn’t understand where the justice of it came in. I had tried to be a regular sailor and had got the worst of it. However, I was far from licked—I mean in spirit.

I amused myself by watching some bedbugs parading on my straw mattress. Then they gave me an idea. I caught a few and put them on me. At least I could be lousy, and so that much nearer to perfection as a seaman!

At twenty minutes past five the cabin-boy rang the supper bell. I was hungry, but I didn’t dare to leave my cabin. I stuck my head out of my porthole and watched the foam making pictures on the water. From experience I knew that was the easiest and surest way to make myself sleepy. Next morning I awoke, ravenously hungry and oh, how repentant my empty insides made me!

I found Father behind a rapidly disappearing bowl of oatmeal in the dining saloon.

“Hey, I’ll never curse any more if I can eat,” I promised him. He grunted his forgiveness, then added:

“We’ll be in Brisbane along about noon today. Don’t you dare leave the ship.”

“Can’t I be the watchman in port and save you the wages?” I inquired, eager to get back in his good graces again.

“That wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I don’t want none of the crew ashore in this port. I’ll have to bail them out of jail for drunkenness, and I haven’t got the time nor the money to do that.”

“I won’t let any of them get away,” I assured him.

At about two o’clock we pulled into the harbor after sailing up the long Brisbane River. The Customs officials came aboard and sealed up our stores and tobacco. Then came the port doctors to examine the crew.

“Have the crew strip and line up on deck for examinations, Captain,” instructed one of the doctors. “Everyone of them has to be vaccinated before you can land here. We’ve got some smallpox ashore started by sailors off a ship from China and the Philippines and the harbor is under quarantine.”

I hurried down to the main deck to take my place in the line-up of the crew. I was the last in the line. The doctor looked at me curiously, and then said,

“Well, well, little one, if you aren’t the very picture of health,” and he pinched my muscles, admiringly.

“No, I’m not,” I assured him, “I have had everything that sailors have, worse than they get it. You better vaccinate me good,” I advised. “I even have bedbugs on me.”

That doctor looked horrified, but he dug into my arm with three long scratches even deeper than the men’s. It hurt like the devil, but I was very proud at that moment because I had as many as John Henry and just as deep. To this day I carry those scars—proud proof of my equality with sailors.

Before Father went ashore with the Customs officials he admonished me again to let no sailor have shore leave.

“The mate will be busy discharging cargo, and I may not be back before late tonight, so you keep your eye on the gangway.”

I took up my station at the gangway and chawed on some dried prunes. They were as close to seamen’s tobacco as I dared attempt. The cabin-boy tried to go ashore, but I pushed him back. One or two of the sailors made a bluff at sneaking past but I stood in the middle of the gangway with a belaying pin and forgetting Father’s lesson, I laid down the law in language to make John Henry proud. Each time they retired, defeated, but chuckling.

I was hot in the sun, but I didn’t care. Proudly I stood my post until six o’clock, when the crew knocked off discharging. Then came the supper bell, and of course, no one could expect me to stay on guard at grub time. In my father’s absence I sat in his place opposite the two mates. After I had finished my meal I picked my teeth with a fork just as I had watched the second mate do so many times before. I wouldn’t have dared to do that with Father present.

I strolled up on deck to take up my gangway watch again. If any sailor got ashore it would be over my dead body, I promised myself. I sat there for fully two hours.

There was no sign of life from the fo’c’s’le. Not one man came out to cross that gangway and go ashore.

“Huh!” I gloated to myself, “they’re afraid of me. They know they can’t get away with anything with me here watching.”

I was so full of my own sense of importance and authority that I didn’t suspect anything queer in the silence forward, until the cabin-boy came aft, after taking the dinner basket back to the galley.

“All them guys forrard is ashore and I’m going to go ashore too,” he sniffed at me contemptuously.

“What?” I asked, too surprised to believe I had heard him aright.

“Sure, they all went ashore while you was eating your grub. Nobody left for’ard except the cook.”

What could I do? I had gained Father’s respect only to lose it when his back was turned. I thought at first I’d go ashore and find the sailors in the saloons and bring them back on board before Father got back. That plan wasn’t wise, though, for, if I left, the cabin-boy and the two mates might go ashore in my absence and I would be a complete failure.

I took up the belaying pin and perched myself on the top of the gangway, and waited. I waited until long past midnight before I heard a human sound on the dock. Suddenly my ear caught a thick, throaty song dimly coming from among the cargo piles on the dock:

“McGinty’s back again; He’s dressed up like a dandy, He’s down at Mike’s saloon, He’s drinkin’ wine and brandy . . .”

It was the voice of John Henry singing the old sailors’ funeral dirge “McGinty.” McGinty is the legendary sea captain who sank to the bottom of the sea, and when sailors get drunk their favorite vision is of McGinty arisen from the dead and drinking in waterfront saloons.

“John Henry!” I called as loud as I could.

I got no answer, except his drunken voice rising in the old song.

Then he weaved out from the shadow of the cargo piled on the wharf to stand at the foot of the gangway. He was so drunk he could hardly keep his balance. He made three gallant efforts to place his foot on the bottom of the gangway; finally, by grabbing the hand ropes he pulled himself aboard and toppled over on the deck. I lifted him up and shook him violently.

“John Henry, stand up!” I shouted at him.

He babbled something unintelligible and drooled down his shirt front as I shook him. His bloodshot eyes focused on me and held there.

“Get your Ole Man give me money for whiskey. Got to have whiskey.”

“You’ll get a kick in the seat of the pants, that’s what you’ll get,” I answered him.

“Got to have money for whiskey—only want whiskey,” he insisted, and he started to sob pathetically.

“You’re drunk, John Henry. Come on and get forrard into your bunk.”

He pulled away from me and demanded through his sobs:

“You going to get Ole Man to give me some more money?”

“He isn’t here, John Henry. Come on and get forrard and turn in,” I coaxed him.

“You get me money for whiskey or I’ll croak.”

His body began to tremble. His lips were blue, his eyes fiery and bloodshot.

“I don’t care if you croak or not,” I answered, for I had heard threats like that before.

“All right, gonna croak. You watch me. I’m gonna croak,” and he started forward. I followed, hoping to get him safely to his bunk. Just beneath the fo’c’s’le head he picked up a long piece of rope that was coiled there on a stanchion.

“See this rope? Gonna croak if you don’t get Ole Man get me money, see?” and he burst out crying again. He tied the piece of rope into a hangman’s noose, nine slip knots on a loop, just as he had once taught me to tie it months before. He held the noose up to my face and said once more:

“I’ll croak if you don’t.”

Of course I didn’t believe him, so I just answered:

“All right, John Henry, you’ll feel better when you do!”

Instead of quieting, that seemed to set him off again. He slipped the noose over his head and thrust his face right up against mine.

“Do I get the money?” he half shrieked in his cracked whiskey voice.

Scenes with drunken sailors were no novelty to me. They always made dire threats against themselves, or the captain or their mates, and then they stumbled to bed and forgot it. Now I lost patience.

“You don’t get a damned cent,” I yelled back at John Henry.

It seemed almost to sober him. He straightened.

“You’ll be sorry,” he said, and turning with great dignity he marched out of sight forward with the hangman’s noose around his neck and the rope trailing on the deck after him.

I turned and with what I conceived to be equal dignity marched back toward the gangway. Duty called me. There would be more drunken sailors to drive to their bunks.

I don’t know why I left the gangway after a short ten minutes except that I loved John Henry and felt a vague desire to see that he was all right. But of course I wouldn’t let him know that. I couldn’t sacrifice my dignity as watchman in charge of the ship. So I marched forward very importantly, past the mizzen, past the mainmast and around the cook’s galley and there I found John Henry!

He had tied the rope around the capstan on the fo’c’s’le head and jumped down toward the main deck. There he hung, with his feet scarce six inches from the main deck and the hangman’s knot under his left ear canting his head rakishly to one side. His body was turning slowly on the rope and as I stared his face came around so his popped eyes stared back at me and his wide opened mouth seemed to sneer, “I told you I’d do it.”

Staring into those popped eyes I couldn’t cry out—I couldn’t move; and then after what seemed a million years the body turned on the rope and the face went away from me, releasing me from my speechless terror. I shrieked, and whirling away I ran aft, down into the lazarette and hid underneath a pile of old canvas. I heard the rats running to safety at my approach to their domains in the dark. I had killed John Henry! I had killed John Henry! Over and over in a numbing pain the words rushed to my brain!

I don’t know exactly how long I stayed there before I heard voices on the deck above me. I was afraid to come out of hiding. I could tell by the excitement that John Henry’s body had been found. A few hours before in the afternoon I had been sore at him for encouraging me to curse and now he was dead!

Weak, and still shaking with fright I found my way on deck. I saw Father and a group of strange men on deck surrounding a figure covered with canvas.

I called to Father:

“Here I am. I didn’t do it—honest I didn’t.” And I crumpled over crying.

Father picked me up and held me in his arms.

“What makes you think you did it, Joan?” he asked, so quietly and tenderly that I told him the whole story.

Johnny was buried in Brisbane, but I have never to this day wanted to tie a hangman’s noose.

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[Illustration]

13 Ideas about Women

“Women ain’t going to do you no good, Joan. Takin’ them by and large they’re mostly liars anyhow, and the ones you find around the waterfront is just plain head winds.”

We were tied up at the dock in Brisbane, Australia, when Father delivered his dictum. I knew he meant by “women” the gold-toothed, plump barmaids and the laughing sweethearts that swarmed around every arriving ship to get the sailors’ pay, or beg curios from them. Those women had always been objects of curiosity to me and Father knew it.

“If any of them women try to talk to you, you go below and don’t have anything to do with them, understand?”

I understood and promised to obey. I did not imagine that there was any danger of my not obeying, for two reasons. First, I was afraid of women. Second, they were all much too grand and beautiful ever to pay attention to me. Father had planted that fear of my own sex in me to keep me from picking up with chance women. He was afraid I would learn things from them that would destroy his years of careful protection of my ideals. He never let me look at myself in a mirror.

“You’re an ugly kid, Joan, so you won’t gain anything from looking at yourself in a mirror.”