“Them’s Portuguese Men-o-war, Skipper,” explained Stitches when I asked him what the floating, transparent little blue things were that I saw glistening in the sunlight on the surface of the sea.

“Yep, them little tri-cornered sails on them looks like old Portuguese ships of war, that’s where they gets their name.”

“Are they fish?” I asked.

“Kind of. They is barnacles in the making. When they catch fast to the bottom of a ship with their little blue threads of trailing anchor lines they petrify into shell and that is how barnacles grow.”

I marveled that the little inch high jelly ships could ever turn into the curse of seamen—barnacles! There was a fleet of thousands of them before my eyes.

“As long as they keep moving they is all right, but they are like some cussed folks ashore who, when they stick on to someone else, turn into a damned nuisance,” Stitches concluded. It was another lesson I learned from the sea. Only a few days before we had passed through a floating mass of porous-looking petrified lava—the spewed up evidence of an undersea volcano in eruption. There was so much of it that it gave the appearance of floating land.

“Shore folks call that pumice stone and they grind it up to make tooth paste,” Stitches had said. Why did shore people make everything so difficult for themselves? I used salt to brush my teeth with, not lava from deep sea volcanoes.

“It appears like you was usin’ up a lot of wind askin’ questions with your mouth—and your mind is a-headin’ off to leeward on another tack. Ever since you seen that love dance on Atafu you been moonin’ around.”

Stitches’ words struck home. The beauty of the dance, the thrill of seeing the native girls choose their mates, and the expression of longing on the native men’s faces to possess the girls haunted me. No matter how I tried I couldn’t drive the memory from my mind. I pretended to be interested in ship work, but really just one problem absorbed my mind. I wanted to mean everything to some one person—I wanted to be wanted. My loneliness on shipboard was accentuated after I saw the marriage dance on Atafu. Where would I find a mate? I didn’t have any lotus to wear to make any man choose me. In fact none of the men on board seemed to have the slightest idea of the thoughts constantly in my mind—I was just a nuisance, and no one of them ever showed an inclination to offer himself. I probably never would be taken to a dance where I could pick out my man. Then the thought came: the girls on the island could choose only from the men they knew and the dance was merely a method of selection. After all, getting the man was the important thing and if the native girls had an island full of men to pick from—I had a shipload, so I became encouraged.

I would find my man on board the ship and so I began to look over the crew. First, of course, there was Stitches. I loved him but not as a prospective mate. He looked so much like a wise old turtle, and if I spoke to Stitches about my plan he’d go to Father and I’d get a mug full of salts or a rope’s end on the back of my lap to clear away “crazy fancies.” The rope’s end never really hurt—my body was too tough. But of late my ideas with regard to lickings had changed. They made me furious. I was getting too old to be treated as a child. That’s what I thought. But what I thought made no difference to Father. It was the rope’s end or the salts, clear to the last day we were on the ship.

So it was plain Stitches would not do.

There were the two mates. Strange, but all the time I was on the ship we never had a mate I really liked. I passed them over. There were just four of our old men on board now, Stitches, Swede, Bulgar and Nelson; the rest of the crew to me were just sailors, new men who meant nothing.

I considered Swede again. He was big and strong but he could never stand the test of beautiful girls caressing him without being tempted. Bulgar, well, he was too much of a bully.

I was sitting on the main hatch helping the watch splice ropes into a bumper when the first really concrete idea came to startle me. Nelson was splicing a rope opposite me. Why hadn’t I thought about him? Somehow he was the last one I ever wanted to think about, yet he measured up finer than any of the crew. He could spit a curve, he had hair on his chest. Just looking at him at that moment made me feel funny. I got hot and cold all at once, and my fingers tangled the rope splice.

“Aw, he ain’t the one,” I declared to myself, and I got up and left the hatch. I climbed up to the crosstrees. The more I thought up there at the masthead the more tangled my mind came. Nelson kept coming in my thoughts, but I’d shove him out. That night I stayed on deck very late. The moon was out, and the soft air from the trade winds barely kept the sails full. At four bells, Nelson came to take his trick at the wheel. He didn’t seem to notice me lying in the belly of the spanker sail. He just kept his eyes on the topsails and on the compass. I didn’t dare speak to him as long as Father stayed on deck, but about eleven o’clock Father went below to turn in. The mate was pacing his beat down on the main deck so my way was clear. There is a maritime law that prohibits anyone talking with the man at the helm so I had to do it very quietly.

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

“Huh?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can I watch you work, Nelson?”

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

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

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

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

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

Through a daze I heard him continue:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Send Nelson aft to me, Mr. Owens.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why are you going to leave, Nelson?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mate had no patience with Father’s fears.

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

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

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

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

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

“Did a rat leave the ship?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where away?” returned Father.

“Quarter point off the bow, sir!”

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

“That’s it! Take a look, Joan.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I ascended the mast to be near Father.

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

“Yes, sir!” I replied, for when he used that tone to me “Yes, sir” was the only thing to say. I stuck my head out of my porthole watching the phosphorus in the water make the sea look as if it were on fire until I became too sleepy to sit up. I got my family of cats from the chartroom and put them under the blankets at my feet. Under the covers their eyes looked just as the phosphorus in the water did. I mention those kittens because they played a big part in the “trouble” Father had predicted. He had always forbidden me to take the cats into my bunk.

“Bedbugs and cockroaches can’t be avoided in bunks but cats can be, so don’t you let me catch you taking them to bed with you.”

I put my own interpretation on that advice. I couldn’t catch the bedbugs and roaches but I could catch the cats. I kept them under the covers so their protesting meowing wouldn’t reach Father’s ears. Then I fell sound asleep. I was wakened by a heavy rain squall and stiff wind which shook the ship. I lay in my bunk listening to the seas slap the porthole above me. I heard Father shouting above the wind to the crew, and faintly the answering calls of men came back. Shallow water when it becomes rough rocks a ship unlike a deep sea storm. The difference in the rolling made me peer out the porthole. A sudden jolt of the ship threw me flat on the bunk. If only that wind would blow steadily and not in jerks—but I was asleep before I could form any more opinions.

I don’t know how long I was asleep before I awoke in a fit of coughing. My eyes burned. I rubbed them with my fist but they watered and stung more. I quit rubbing them but they hurt even more and then I could hardly breathe. It was pitch dark in my cabin and I thought I was having a nightmare. My senses began to dim and I felt as if I were going a long way off from my body. The scuffling of feet on the poop deck—hoarse shouts—confusion, then a cry that pierced my dulled brain sent a chill of fear through me.

“Fire!”

“Fire! Fire!” The words were repeated and echoed hollowly in the wind. “Fire!” That was what I was thinking the phosphorus in the sea looked like. I tried to wake up. Surely I was dreaming.

“It’s in the after-hold.”

“The paint locker is burning!”

I couldn’t move from my bunk for I was paralyzed with fear. Over and over in my fast dimming consciousness I could hear “Paint Locker.” “Fire!” The curses of the men above grew faint. I could feel the kittens scratching under the covers at my feet to get out but I could make no effort to help them. Had there been a light in my cabin I would have seen the dense smoke choking the air—slowly suffocating me. Why couldn’t I move? Why didn’t some one help me? But too well I knew the code of the sea that reckons one life as little where the safety of the ship is concerned.

The floors of the cabin were caulked with tar and oakum. Fire from below had burned the underpinnings and the tar was boiling in the cracks.

On deck Father opened the lazarette hatch and flames six feet high burst out. The cargo of copra in the hold was a blazing inferno! Copra is highly explosive. The rubbing and grating of the stuff in the freak storm had caused spontaneous combustion. The flames licked up from out the open hatch and overcame the mate. Father’s face was burned, and his hands blistered. The wind swept down into the hold and fanned the fire into a vicious furnace.

I finally managed to get out of my bunk and found my way by groping through the smoke to the chartroom. I could smell where the companionway was by the rush of fresh air that poured down from it. But the air only served to fan the gasping licks of fire that had eaten up through the cabin floor into a blaze. I tried to reach the companionway door. Clad only in a flour sack nightgown and in my bare feet I picked my way over the hot tar on the floor to the ladder leading to the deck. Then I remembered the kittens I had left to smother under the covers in my bunk.

I felt my way back to the cabin and blindly reached for them. I found them huddled in the farthest corner of the bunk. The ship gave a sudden toss and sent me sprawling to the floor with my arm full of kittens. They dug their claws into my bare flesh and held on. I tried to get back to the companionway, but the fire had eaten through from below. I stood on the edge of the chartroom unable to go farther. My feet were burned and the pain was almost more than I could bear. The smoke choked me. It stung and burned my eyes. The kittens were clawing at the raw flesh around my breasts.

The realization that I was going to die seemed a relief. I became calm. If I died, the terrible pain would stop. I stood perfectly still, just waiting, for I couldn’t move another step.

On deck pandemonium had broken loose. The sails slapped and ripped. The deserted helm spun dizzily around leaving the ship at the mercy of the choppy sea. Then, from what seemed millions of miles away, I heard an agonized cry. I recognized the voice of Stitches:

“Joan?”

I tried to answer him, but all I could manage was a whispered, “Here I am.”

“Joan! Skipper! Where are you?”

Oh, wouldn’t he ever find me! I couldn’t help myself. Smoke and pain and panic overcame me. I couldn’t speak another word. I heard his voice coming nearer—and then a numbness crept over me so that I hardly knew what was happening. Stitches came down the companionway from the forward entrance and into the dining saloon. Finally his arms found me and my cats. Picking me up in his old arms he carried me over and out of the fire which was licking up in scarlet tongues of flame all over the deck of the cabins.

Just as he reached the top of the companionway ladder Stitches dropped with a gasp under me. We struck the deck and lay there side by side. Then the sight of the sky, the wind and rain on my face, the fresh air in my lungs brought me to. I staggered to my feet, and bending over tried to arouse Stitches. He was dead! He had crowned the years of his devotion by giving his life to save mine. He had done his job the best he knew how and he would go under the waves with his ship for his coffin—a sailorman found his last anchorage! No matter how long I live Stitches will be a memory of the sea that nothing will erase.

I could see they were lowering the lifeboat off the stern. I caught Stitches’ body under the arms and tried to drag it to the poop deck. Swede saw me.

Rushing over he jerked me from Stitches, dragged me to the poop deck and flung me into the lifeboat.

On the poop deck by the spanker mast were two kegs of gasoline used for starting the donkey engine forward to hoist cargo in port. They were lashed to the deck with chains. If the fire reached them the ship and every one on board would be blown to bits. They were lashed too securely to be chopped away in time to save them from the fire which had already eaten through to the poop. There wasn’t a second to be lost.

“Pull away to leeward, then head for the lightship,” shouted Father. He didn’t even stop to see if his command was carried out. He and the mate and two of the sailors were bailing up canvas bucket after canvas bucket of sea water to throw on the fire.

The ship began to fill with water from the open scuttles. The weight of the sea water in the hold sank the vessel deeper, but it forced the fire up through the decks. The Minnie A. Caine wallowed like a stricken thing under the vast weight of water. I worked back to a place in the stern of the dinghy. Then I discovered the cats were still clinging to me. Afterwards I found they had sunk their claws deep in my flesh. At the time I scarcely noticed the pain.

Father and the mate stayed on the poop deck until the burning vessel sunk to the water line when they plunged overboard, jumping clear of the hull. The ship tossed by a big swell capsized over on its beam ends. A hissing, bubbling sound came from her as the flames were buried in the sea. Father and the mate swam to the lifeboat which was leaking badly. The tropic heat had warped the seams in it and it was filling faster than we could bail it out. The rain, the spray from the waves and the thick smoke from the smothered fire made vision impossible. I could barely see the other figures in the lifeboat. The men pulled long strokes towards the shore.

We were about a hundred yards away from the ship and through the maze of smoke all we could see were the topmasts sticking above the sea. The wind was freezing and the cold rain wet us through and through. My nightgown was poor protection against the wind and water, but I was so terrified I wasn’t conscious that I was nearly freezing.

“Pull! Pull! Pull!” Father’s voice set the beat for the men at the oars.

“Are all hands here?” he asked. Swede, Bulgar, Oleson, the mate, cabin-boy, Johnson and me were the only ones to answer the roll call. The Jap cook had jumped overboard and failed to make the lifeboat. Stitches’ charred body was somewhere cradled in the burnt hull of the ship. Over the roar of the wind and rain the buoys kept up their monotonous warnings—and shorewards the riding light of the light ship traced semi-circles against the sky as her masts rolled heavily in the onshore breakers. We were about a quarter mile away from the wreck when the smoke cleared. Father gazed back at his ship, which looked like some glorious living thing struck dead. It was too much for Father to endure. With a gurgling sound of agony in his throat he pulled in his oar:

“O Christ!” I heard him gasp. Then he stood up, trying to plunge into the sea and return to his beloved ship. Only the strong restraining arms of Swede and Oleson kept him back. He struggled like a maniac.

“Let me go, you ——s. Let me go!” he cried.

In this crisis the mate, Johnson, saved Father and us.

“The lifeboat’s sinking, Captain,” he said.

Those words brought Father out of his frenzy of grief at losing his ship. For the first time in my life I saw Father cry. He covered his eyes with his hands as if to shut out the sight. The weight of our bodies in the life boat opened up the already leaking seams.

Father reached through the rain to where I crouched in the stern and grabbed my arm. In a voice that became suddenly calm—he was once more the master in command, he said:

“Joan! Swim for it, kid,—the lightship.” He pointed to the pin point of light which was about three miles away. “Swim slowly and high out of water. And breathe deep, Joan, as deep as you can.”

“Yes, sir!” I answered, trying to hide the terror of the long swim.

“If you get all in—float. Take it easy, girl. I’ll be right behind you.”

He had only time to finish those words when the lifeboat filled with water up to the gunwales. If I had to swim no nightgown was going to get in my way to drag me down. I tore it from me, but the drenched kittens still clung to my flesh. I filled my lungs with a deep breath and jumped out of the lifeboat. When I came up in the choppy sea I was conscious of only the pain caused by the salt water on my bleeding cuts and scratches. Each stroke I took was like a knife cut, and I couldn’t shake the drowning kittens off. Perhaps to those cats I owe my life, for the pain made me so mad I fought on and on, toward the lightship which seemed to go farther away instead of closer. I could hear the others swimming near me, just the “cut-splash—cut-splash!” of their strokes. I had swum about a mile against a high running sea with the cats on my back. I was exhausted, so I trod water and drank the fresh rain that poured down. That is a trick for deep sea swimming—to drink rain water which absorbs the salt water that is swallowed.

Two of the men, Swede and Johnson, were ahead of me. Swede began a song. It was his bravery, his daring to sing in the face of near death that put courage into me. If Swede could sing then I could hold out too, for wasn’t I a regular sailor, and here was a supreme test.

I plowed on through the seas. I thought I had been swimming hours, when Father’s voice a few yards abreast me called:

“Just ahead now—there she looms!”

That was all I remembered until the next morning at daybreak. I came to on the iron deck of the lightship with only a man’s vest on my naked torn body. A strange man was bending over me. He turned out to be the keeper of the lightship.

“She must be a damn fine swimmer because young things is hard to kill.”

He lifted me off the deck and carried me to his warm cabin where I lost consciousness again. The cats were gone! Somewhere in that last quarter mile they were lost.

Late that afternoon I awoke. The engineer of the lightship gave me a warm suit of dungarees and a heavy sweater to wear, and then we learned what had happened. The look-out on the lightship had seen the fire on board. He attempted to launch a small boat to come to rescue us when the Southerly Buster squall arose and made the feat impossible. He and his men watched from the crow’s nest on the mast all night through. They saw the ship capsize. Through powerful binoculars they scanned the sea for a sign of us in our lifeboat. At almost daybreak Swede and Oleson reached the lightship, then followed Johnson, the cabin-boy and Bulgar. Swede swam back to get me and he dragged my limp body to the lightship. The lightship keeper threw over a running bowline which Swede made fast around my stomach and back and they hoisted me on deck. Father and the mate were the last to be pulled aboard.

We stayed on the lightship for three days. Father couldn’t speak. He stood by the rail for hours at a time just staring out towards the sea. He refused food. I tried to talk with him but he didn’t hear me.

“From a skipper to a bum!—I’m through forever now,” he finally said, more to the sea than to any person, as the Government cutter from Melbourne steamed alongside the light ship to take us ashore, in answer to the S.O.S. call sent by the lightship Keeper.

And Father was through too. The day of steam ships has come. Old sailing captains have no place any longer. My father was seventy years old, and broken by the wreck. He is living ashore now, near the coast on the Pacific, but his spirit is not on the land—it is far off in the tropics dreaming of a fair wind and the stars of the Southern Cross to steer a course by.

THE END

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