Chapter XXI (6)

In the meantime the _Bounty_ was cruising around the South Seas looking for a place to land and at the same time avoid capture. Fourteen of the _Bounty_ crew who had mutinied went ashore at Tahiti and took up native lives in preference to being “stretched by the neck” by His Majesty’s officers if they were caught. Besides, those fourteen men preferred a life among beautiful native girls to that of hard work on shipboard. They used poor judgment, however, for the officers of the _Pandora_ found them and took them prisoners. They were chained like dogs to the stanchions of the ship, and put on rations of bread and water. The _Pandora_ set sail for England where a death penalty would have been dealt to the mutineers, but she struck a submerged coral reef and became a total wreck. That reef is now known as Pandora Reef on the charts. While the _Pandora_ was smashing to pieces on the sharp reef, the officers tried to get away, but they made no attempt to free the prisoners from their chains and they left them to a miserable slow death. They didn’t give them the fighting chance that the mutineers had given Bligh and his men.

Christian had sailed the _Bounty_ to Ruratu. His men grew so restless and lonely, that he advised them each to take to himself a native wife. Fascinated by the white skin of the sailors, their peculiar clothing and strange language, the young native girls looked upon them as gods, and showered gifts of fruit and flowers upon them. Mr. Christian, acting in the capacity of minister, conducted the ceremony, and each man became a husband to a native girl.

The Chief of Ruratu had a daughter Loa-Lea of unusual beauty who offered herself to Christian. This so angered the old Chief that he was planning to exterminate every white man of the crew, along with their native wives who had set a bad example for his Loa-Lea. His plans were frustrated in their inception because Loa-Lea loved the Lily-Man, or “he of the white skin” as she termed Christian, because he treated her with such kindness—such respect. To be treated with deference was a new experience to her, for native women have little or no importance in a tribe other than as creatures of convenience and producers of sons.

Loa-Lea brought news of her father’s plan to exterminate them to her “lily-man,” and Christian secretly departed in the night with all his men, their native wives and Loa-Lea, whom he married.

Christian had heard that the seas were being combed for them, and so he sailed far to the westward to escape His Majesty’s forces. Just as our ship was heading now, the _Bounty_ was heading. Fifteen hundred miles south of the Equator and about the same distance west of the coast of South America, they came upon an uninhabited island.

They had great difficulty in finding a way to land on the island, as there was no beach and the cliffs were almost perpendicular. Christian and a handful of men went ashore to explore the island’s possibilities. On the east end they found a cove, overlooked by a plateau, which had the semblance of great steps up the side of the cliff, as if some sea giant had carved them for doorsteps to his castle. On the table top of the island they found an abundance of fresh fruits, water in springs, and wild birds.

Christian returned to the _Bounty_, called his people together and impressed upon them that if they landed on that island it was to be forever, as he intended to destroy the _Bounty_, and with it gone there would be no means of escape. With one accord the mutineers agreed to colonize the island of rock. They named it after General Pitcairn.

The mutineers set about to strip the _Bounty_ of all metal which they would use ashore. They set their supplies adrift on rafts to float in shore. Those who did not swim in went to the landing in small boats. When the last man had left the vessel, Christian lashed the helm amidships, headed her bow directly into the island and deserted her.

Gathered on the cliff of their new colony, the crew watched the ground swells of the Pacific wash the _Bounty_ in toward the cliffs, until with a mighty crash she struck the wall and sank into the unsounded depth of the sea. Gone forever was their hope of ever leaving the island, but also, gone forever was any evidence of the _Bounty_ to betray them into the hands of His Majesty’s officers.

Each man and wife set about and built a hut and portioned off a plot of land for a home. Every variety of tropical fruit and berries grew in great profusion. There was more than enough of everything for everybody. But in spite of that all did not run smoothly on Pitcairn. Christian was chief. The Bible was the only form of government. Their religion was and is to this day Seventh Day Adventism.

In time children were born to the mutineers by the native wives, and the children were white. South Sea natives have intermarried so much for generations that their blood is depleted and the white man’s blood predominated.

The sailors call Pitcairn Eden, and rightly perhaps, because a woman was the cause of a quarrel which proved fatal to the whites. One of the mutineers, a Mr. McCoy, had sent his wife to gather sea bird eggs from the rocks on the edge of the cliff. Losing her foothold she fell a thousand feet to the reef below and was instantly killed. As there was only an equal number of women and men, and all of them married, the mutineer, when he became lonely, took to himself the wife of one of the men. That so angered the husband that he killed his wife. McCoy became an outcast, and all the husbands looked upon him as a danger to their happiness. From that time on dissension and intrigue flourished. Several of the mutineers set out in a small boat to find another island, and that left McCoy, Christian, a Charles Adams, and seven other whites with their native wives on the island. The natives there now are the descendants of those families.

Those whites and natives have a colony now without quarrels. They are industrious and God-fearing—but lockjaw is rapidly wiping them out.

* * * * *

The mate came up on the poop deck to where Father was sitting and asked,

“Shall we give the Pitcairn Islanders some rope and canvas this trip, Captain?”

We were only about fifty miles from Pitcairn, and by nine o’clock that evening we would be hove to off it.

“Yes. We’ve lost our cargo, so we might as well divide up our supplies.”

The Pitcairn Islanders wait months and months for sailing ships to come. Very few ships ever go so far off the beaten sailing tracks, and when one does, the islanders offer up devout thanksgiving. Along about nine o’clock, Pitcairn loomed ahead. On the top of it fires were burning. First they appeared on one end of the island, then on the other. They had sighted us. The fires were beacon lights to us, so that we would not strike the shoals by sailing in too close.

“Give them the freedom of the ship when they come aboard,” Father instructed the mate. “These natives never steal anythin’.”

Within an hour from the time we hove to, three boats from Pitcairn were alongside, and about thirty-five islanders came on board. I studied them closely for signs of native blood, but they were as white as I am. They spoke English, simply, and with a peculiar accent. The women were delighted to see me, another white woman. One old dame stroked my hair; a young girl offered to trade her native fibre dress for a pair of overalls.

We went up behind the companionway and swapped the clothes. She thought she had made a grand bargain as she strutted around with my faded blue overalls on. She ran down on the main deck and brought back a tall, quiet young woman, who seemed to be revered by the natives.

“This is Frances McCoy, who is saving our people.” Miss McCoy placed both hands on my shoulders—a custom of greeting probably inherited from her native maternal ancestors.

“Did you have a peaceful voyage?” she asked, and her voice was smooth and quiet.

“No. We had the goddamndest trip we’ve ever had. We struck icebergs south of Tasmania and had to shoot our cargo of salt to hell.”

Miss McCoy turned away from me quickly and looked off to sea, but didn’t speak. McLean, who had heard me talking came over to me and said:

“They never swear on Pitcairn, Skipper,” he explained. I had offended her. On Pitcairn gentleness rules, and cursing is against their law. I couldn’t see how people could express themselves without cussing—but anyhow I watched myself with a terrific strain in my following conversations.

The young native girl in my overalls asked me:

“Have you any books to give to us?”

I was surprised that “white natives” could read, but I was anxious to make amends for my swearing, and asked her and Miss McCoy to come down in the cabin and help themselves. The only books we had on board at that time were books on navigation, a doctor book, and a partial set of the Encyclopedia Britannica with those volumes from N to S missing.

“You can take all of these,” I told them, “and the books on navigation and the charts if you want them.” Miss McCoy grabbed for the doctor book.

“My people are being wiped out by lockjaw,” she said, “and I am studying medicine from books that passing ships give me, so that I can cure them.”

That was why she was so revered by the natives. She was to save their lives!

“For years our people have begged nails and canvas and ropes from ships so that we can get enough material to make a ship to sail away in to the mainland. I am going in to get medicine and I will bring it back here to stop the deaths caused by lockjaw. There is a kind of a thorn, which when it pricks a person, gives him lockjaw,” she explained. No wonder Frances McCoy, the descendant of a pirate and mutineer, is looked upon as a saint there.

Out of gratitude for the books and charts I gave them, the two women gave me a beautiful screen made of skeleton leaves, painted with the juice of wild berries and a small chest of carved coral. After our bargain was made, we joined the others on the hatches on the main deck. One of the descendants of Christian was asking about the war.

“In the Bible we read of far-off countries going to war against each other. Is England at war now? A sailing captain of a German full-rigged ship stopped off here about three months ago and said he would never again trade with us.”

I hadn’t heard anything about the war that I could understand. I knew that the price of copra had gone up because “soldier’s foods were preserved with copra oil,” but it was just as indefinite in my mind what war was as it was in the minds of the natives.

Then the conversation skipped from war to music. One of the men asked if we had an organ to give them.

“What in the hell is the use of an organ in the South Sea Islands?” I asked. The “hell” had slipped out, but young Christian answered before anyone noticed it:

“We had one but the salt air has rusted it, so now it will give no music. Next time you come here will you bring to us another organ?”

I guess the Pitcairn Islanders thought in America we could pick organs off trees or something, so naïve and sincere were their requests.

At about midnight Father told the natives they would have to leave. Sadly they departed, begging us to sail to them again, and thanking us for our gifts to them. A Pitcairn Islander, when he is making a trade, doesn’t drive a bargain like regular natives. They put down a commodity such as two bunches of bananas in front of you, and then they say:

“I have made you a present. Now please, you will make me a present.”

It is our cue to give them a “present” in return, and if it doesn’t meet with their approval, they take back their present and say, “I do not make you a present.”

I was triumphant as we sailed away from the island of white natives. I had a dress instead of overalls, feather fans, the screen and a box of coral.

Father was leaning against the spanker mast watching the sails belly out in the wind when I went to him.

“Hey, look, Father, all I got just for a few old charts and books,” and I displayed my treasures.

“Charts? What the hell are you talking about?” he shouted.

“I gave them all the old charts I could find below and the books on navigation and they gave me all these things,” I explained.

He didn’t stop to hear any more. He took me by the back of the neck and almost carried me down in the cabin.

“Now what did you give them?”

I pointed to the empty place where the charts had been.

“How in the hell can I navigate now?” he shouted. This sounds calm as I write it, but Father wasn’t calm. His face was blue he was so mad.

“I’ve heard you tell the sailors lots of times you were so good at navigating that you didn’t need charts,” I answered.

I was sorry a moment later I had traded away my overalls for that native dress, as the dress was no protection for the rope’s end that tattooed my behind. I got a licking, but Father to this day has never bragged about his navigating abilities where I could hear him! But he was too stubborn to go back to the island for his charts. He had to steer by dead reckoning the rest of the trip.

After that visit to Pitcairn, I could see why everyone who has been there wants to go back. Maybe I’ll go there again some day myself. I have heard since that Frances McCoy finally got off the island in a boat which took the natives three years to build, to America. She landed in Seattle, where she began to study medicine as she had dreamed. However, within three months of the time she landed in Seattle she died a pitiful death of brain fever. She was not accustomed to the noise and confusion and strange life of cities and it struck her down before she could attain her ambition of mercy.

16
The clouds came down and the sea reached up to meet them and out of
their travail a sea monster was born!

I had settled down for a snooze on the mizzen hatch, bored by the monotony of a dull tropic afternoon, when Father’s voice shook the air with a “Clew up the topsails! Down with the foremain and mizzen!”

“Aye aye!” came from the mate on watch. “Aye aye!” echoed the sailors forward, as they ran to their places at the several ropes. We were taken “aback.” Slap! smack! went the sails against the rigging as the wind caught them from the opposite tack.

“Sheet in the jibs!” Father took the wheel from the helmsman and sent him forward to lend a hand on the halyards. I leaped up the ladder to the poop deck. The wind had begun to hum with a vicious steadiness from leeward. The sky darkened over with rioting grey clouds and the sea became a funereal black.

Over the roar of the wind and the falling sails, Father called:

“Waterspout to leeward!”

I looked where he pointed and saw the horizon in turmoil. As I watched, the clouds appeared to come down and the sea reach up to meet them. It was as though the great God of Storms had mated the sky and the sea in anger so that out of the resulting travail might be born the “terror of the sea.”—Then, swaying and bending like a thing alive, whirling always with tremendous momentum, a gigantic hourglass sped with terrific pace across the waters, wearing blackness about it like a woman’s trailing cloak. To me its base seemed the horizon, its top the middle of the sky and its path led straight across our bow.

“Get the wind under your tail and give a hand here,” called Father.

“What’s going to happen?” I yelled.

“We’ll all be sucked to hell if we cross its course. This damned wind is shooting us right into the belly of the spout.”

I grabbed half of the spanker boom tackle and tried to sheet in its slack. As the sail luffed I got in a few feet, only to lose them when the ship rolled back to leeward and snatched the ropes from my hands.

“Pull in the tackle,” ordered Father as if he were commanding a regular sailor. I gritted my teeth and hauled again, but in vain. The wind was too strong for my single strength. Closer swept the waterspout, swelling and reaching like a living monster eager to destroy relentlessly anything in its path.

Down on the deck the men sweated and heaved on the ropes to get down the sails. Still the ship went forward, the current and wind taking us ahead at the rate of two knots an hour with no sails up, except the truant spanker sail that I couldn’t haul in. I heard Swede groaning and calling a breathless chantey as he led his watch lashing down the main boom. Bulgar, Nelson and McLean were straddled on the foot ropes of the jibboom struggling to lash down the jibs which flapped and ballooned.

It was all chance and our fate rested in the lap of the gods.

Now there are all sorts of sea traditions and superstitions about waterspouts. Some grave scientists who never went to sea write learnedly that a waterspout does not and cannot sink a ship. But no sailor ever would agree with those scientists and when you consider on the one hand that waterspouts are tornadoes on the ocean and on the other hand see what tornadoes do to cities on the land the justice of the sailor’s attitude seems evident. A spout starts when a whirling, funnel-shaped cloud hanging from a bunch of storm clouds dips down and hits the water. The swirling wind starts a swirl of water and just as the land tornado picks up a house and drops it a quarter of a mile away, so the water tornado picks up its swirling column of water and carries it along. Surface fish, driftwood, anything in its path goes up to tear, like a huge hourglass, across the sea. But so temperamental is the sea tornado that anything which changes the current of air, will break its hold and the swirling upraised column collapses, dropping its tons on tons of water back into the sea to crush anything beneath.

And, caught apparently right in the path of our waterspout, that was the fate we faced. It is funny in a crisis how little things catch your attention. With that waterspout racing toward us on the wind, the men had to cling on with their knees and stomachs to keep from being whisked off into the sea. I had never seen any of our crew show such real fear in my life. They were as pale as the white canvas they were trying to reef in, for a waterspout was no ordinary hazard. No calculations or navigations could estimate what dizzy course it might take. I found myself listening to the frenzied cries of the sea birds that came down from the sky to seek the protection of the sea against the angry chaos of the air above. Whenever sea birds fly low on the water in a storm it is proof that the winds of the heavens are too vicious—too conflicting for their wings. Rats leaving a sinking ship are not as fatal a sign to mariners as defeated sea birds. The smaller birds lasted longer under the beating of the wind than the big ones. An albatross, with a spread of six feet of wings, flapped helplessly in the valley of the swells.

For the first time in the midst of danger my father didn’t sing. He bit his lips together in grim determination and never once took his eye off the fast approaching waterspout. He turned the helm and threw the ship into the belly of the swells, a move that no sane navigator would do under ordinary conditions, for a vessel is at the mercy of the sea once she loses her balance in the trough of the breakers.

With almost an agonized screech he called the crew aft:

“For the love of Christ get this spanker in before we go nose in to croaking.” Swede, the mate, Oleson and McLean, who had come in off the jibboom, clambered up the deck. They hauled on the spanker tackle. The rope wouldn’t give to their pulls. A knot had become tangled in the block on the end of the boom, and that boom was swinging out over the sea about fifteen feet.

“Send a man out to clear it,” ordered Father. Nelson volunteered.

“Now hold on out there,” the mate advised him as he started out the swinging tackle, holding on with his feet and shinnying along like a monkey on a stick. Once when the vessel rolled heavily the boom dipped to the water and the waves lapped Nelson, almost sucking him under. But he held fast. The other sailors stood at position on deck ready to haul it in the second the block was free.

After what seemed hours, but in fact was only a few moments, Nelson called: “Take it away,” and with one accord the men on deck began to pull in the truant boom. Nelson hung on to the boom as they pulled it in. The boom on a big ship is handled very much as you handle the boom on a little fishing boat. There is a pulley block fastened to the end of the boom and a pulley block fastened to the deck and the boom is controlled by three strands of tackle running over the two blocks, the free end of the tackles being cleated down on the deck. To help in the handling of the boom as it swings over and to ease the strain, the block on deck is fastened to a steel coupling which slides along a three foot steel rod riveted at each end to the deck. This coupling is enclosed in a steel lined wooden box or hood to protect the coupling from rusting. The block itself is outside the hood and slides along the top of the grooved opening. The wind had eased a little and the boom began to swing over so fast that the tackle showed a few feet of slack. However, the strain had been so heavy that the steel coupling had jammed slightly at the end of the rail. McLean reached down in the opening at the top of the hood to push the steel coupling free and hurry the boom over. Then the wind suddenly veered back a point, caught the spanker and slung it over the side again with a terrific jolt. A gruesome shriek of pain split the roar of the wind and rattle of ropes and McLean fell in a heap over the hood. His arm, just above the elbow, had been caught and crushed in the grip of the steel coupling. The wind backed up the force of the boom that held taut the tackles.

McLean was moaning. I heard a stifled, agonised “O Jesus” come from him. But a man’s life is of little consequence when the fate of a ship is at stake. That boom had to be hauled in or lost, no matter what happened to McLean. But with the man’s arm crushed in the jammed coupling and his body lying across the block the boom could not be pulled in.

“Chop away the jaws of the spanker boom,” came Father’s voice. No man could be spared to do anything for McLean until the ship was safe. Nelson had found his way back along the boom, holding on to the leachings of the sail and was safe on deck now. With axes and crowbars the crew set about chopping away the spanker boom. Better that it sink into the sea than push us on into the path of the waterspout. I ran below and brought back a big mug full to the brim with whiskey for McLean. We had no chloroform or morphine on board, but the whiskey at least would help him to endure. In my innocence I thought later it might knock him out completely. He lay over the block, quiet except for a low monotonous moaning. His breathing was very shallow. The veins in his temples bulged in big throbbing cords. I poured the entire mugful of whiskey down his throat. It might have been water for any effect it had. The men hacking for their lives at the jaws of the boom and the rigging had done their work. The boom crashed into the sea taking with it riggings and stanchions of the railing. But even free of the boom the ship went forward.

“We haven’t got a chance,” I heard Father mutter. He saw the waterspout was traveling at a course and speed sure to bring it close up across our bow.

Suddenly he shouted: “Joan, get my rifle!” I turned to run below for it and as I was disappearing down the companionway I heard his next command:

“Every man below the decks!” I could hear voices mumbling dissent, and Father’s voice rose above the crew’s as though he were beating them with his voice: “Get the hell below, you goddamned fools, or you won’t have a Chinaman’s chance!”

I brought up the rifle and handed it to him. He had lashed the wheel. “Throw a canvas over McLean,” said Father through his teeth, “and then you get below!” Nelson had already got a big piece of canvas and he completely covered McLean with it. I ducked below without hesitation; I didn’t know what was going to happen. I wondered if Father was going to use the rifle to kill McLean and mercifully end his suffering. I hadn’t been below two minutes before I heard the report of his rifle! Then several reports followed in rapid succession and Father came running down the cabin himself, first closing the hatchdoor on the companionway.

“The shot busted it,” he said simply.

We went to the lee portholes and looked out. Father said the shots from his rifle had started new currents in the air that broke the rhythm of the waterspout. Like a wounded beast the spout seemed to stagger and then collapse, dropping tons on tons of water, fish, and driftwood back to the sea. The spout when it collapsed was nearly half a mile away but the low heavy black clouds it came from were already over us and now they opened and emptied themselves just above the ship.

Did you ever see a cork under a waterfall? That was our ship beneath that downpour. Father had known what was coming and had saved the crew by forcing them below, for not one could have kept on the deck under the force of that bombardment with the ship pitching and wallowing in the conflicting currents and undertows like some blinded thing.

McLean covered with canvas and held fast by his crushed arm was the only living thing exposed.

I felt trapped down there below. The air was suffocating. The pressure of the humidity was so great that my pulses beat rapidly and I broke out in a cold sweat. Then in less than fifteen minutes the rain stopped abruptly, the clouds disappeared, the sun burst forth and the sea calmed as though nothing had happened.

“There won’t be a whiff of wind now,” Father said with disgust. With typical sailor fatalism he had dismissed the horror of the waterspout but he hadn’t forgotten the trapped man above.

“We got to get that poor beggar out of that trap,” he said, referring to McLean. I went on deck with Father to help him. We lifted the canvas off McLean’s body. He lay cramped over in a doubled position, softly moaning.

“Can you stand it for another few minutes, old man?” Father asked.

He seemed to come from far away to answer: “Jesus, Captain, take a pop at me with your rifle and finish it. I can’t stand this!” His eyes were bulging in excruciating pain.

“Why, you goddamned bawling sissie, shut your face or I’ll leave you squawking there all night!” Father yelled at him. The voice was terrible to hear but there were tears in Father’s eyes. His bullying tone of voice was a trick to give McLean the guts to stand the ordeal he had to go through.

I was still shaking with fright from the terror of the waterspout as Father spoke to me and sent me below to get some iodine and his razor. When I brought them on deck to him he was leaning over, examining the steel couplets that had clamped McLean’s arm.

“I’ll have to cut your arm off, McLean. It’s the only chance in hell you got to get out of this steel trap,” he said.

McLean looked at Father, saw that he meant it, and that it was the only way to save him, and he forced a smile.

“Go ahead, Captain, but do it quick,” he begged.

Father beckoned me to stand over McLean and keep his head lifted up. I got my arms under McLean’s shoulders and heaved him up in a semi-sitting position. Bulgar and Swede held his legs. Another sailor brought a couple of buckets of sea water. Father twisted a tourniquet of rope around McLean’s arm. Then he swabbed the arm just above the place where it was gripped by the steel, and cut in with his razor. McLean tried to watch him, but bracing his back with my leg, I put my arm across his eyes so he couldn’t see himself being butchered. Bulgar and Swede jammed down on his legs to keep him from thrashing about. In about a minute Father had all the flesh sliced away from the bone. He leaned over to Swede and whispered. Swede went over to the rail and got a steel belaying pin. He raised it over McLean’s arm. I saw Father nod and say “Now.” And Swede brought the belaying pin down across the exposed bone of McLean’s limb and broke the bone as clean as a hound’s tooth.

“A bucket of sea water, quick,” called Father. They poured two full buckets of water over the stub of McLean’s arm. Ocean water is the best disinfectant against blood poisoning there is on a ship. I hated the job we had to do, for I could feel McLean trembling like one stricken with palsy. Blood sputtered out of his arm over the deck and over us. He began to laugh in a delirious frenzy. I kept hold of his head and four sailors gripped and held him so he couldn’t move until Father had stitched up the shreds of flesh with catgut and a surgical needle. Then we carried him below and put him in my father’s bunk. He had small chance of living, but Father kept that spark alive with big doses of whiskey every half hour. He left me to attend him, for he had duties on deck that were more serious. With the spanker boom gone, the rigging destroyed and no wind to steady us against the rising cross swells, there was danger of us “shaking our sticks (or masts) out.”

For twenty-four hours the crew labored clearing the debris. They set up a makeshift spanker sail, “jury rig” it was called, in place of the boom. The horror we had been through was duly written down in our ship’s log as follows:

“Thursday, p.m. 160 latitude, 32 longitude sighted waterspout.
Shots from rifle broke it. Seaman J. McLean laid up unable to
work. Crew busy clearing ship’s deck.”

Four months later McLean left the ship. There is no place on a ship for a one-armed sailor.

17
Strip poker and female struck—which of course have nothing to do with
each other

When I was about sixteen, we took a trip to the Line Islands to get a cargo of guano.

“What in the hell is the use of getting a ship full of bird dirt?” I asked my father as we neared our destination.

He was balanced on the taffrail cleaning and oiling his sextant when I approached him.

“Well, besides stinkin’ worse than copra and bein’ a rotten cargo to carry through the heat of the tropics, it’s used for fertilizer and ammonia. Land folks ain’t so particular what they use to make their food grow,” he said.

I was keenly interested, for we were going to a part of the South Seas that was unknown to me. So much has been written about the colorful atmosphere of the South Sea islands, but little has been said about the tragedy that inhabits some of the desert rocks along the Equator known on the charts as the Line Islands.

No tropical foliage flourishes there, no sea blue lagoons, no fruits, flowers and long golden beaches enhance their nakedness. They are barren reefs, spewed up out of the sea by submarine volcanoes. As you approach them they look like snow-capped rocks with a fringe of white foam edging them from the breakers that crash against their cliffs. The screech of white gulls fills the air for miles around. The guano islands are the home of the sea fowl. There they lay their eggs in mating season. Millions of birds find those rock islands every year. The rocks are hardly fit for human habitation, yet a few men survive on them.

The French government owns the greatest number of those guano islands, and the income from them amounts to a small fortune every year.

I’ll always remember my trip to those places for two reasons. First, it was on that voyage that I was introduced to the mysteries of strip poker and second, I saw a man so “female struck” that he swam a mile through a rough sea to get away from me.

The night before we sighted the Islands, Fred Nelson, Swede, Bulgar and Oleson were sitting in the lee scupper under the fo’c’s’le head playing poker by the dim green glow of the starboard running light. I wasn’t allowed forward of the mizzen mast unless my Father was with me, for that was the sacred domain of the crew. However, I went forward every time I got a chance, when Father wasn’t looking. This particular night I waited until I heard him snoring on his settee before I tried it. Running along in the shadow of the sails on the leeward side I came upon the four men in the midst of the game.

They didn’t pay the least attention to me. I stood by and watched them for about five minutes and then I butted in.

“Deal me a hand, will you?” I asked.

Swede looked up at me and then spat a big stream of amber juice over the rail. Oleson pretended he hadn’t heard me, and Bulgar just scowled his disapproval of my presence. However, Fred Nelson was more sociable.

“Sure, Skipper, you can play next hand—but I advise you not to. This is strip poker we’re playing.”

For the first time I noticed certain oddities in the men’s appearance. Swede had on nothing but his underdrawers. His shirt and dungarees were piled beside Oleson. Bulgar’s pipe and leather belt were in front of Nelson. When the hand was finished Oleson handed over his clasp knife to Nelson also.

“See what it is? Now do you want to sit in?” asked Swede.

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.

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.