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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stitches nodded in partial approval.

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

Father saw the point.

“We’ll tie her up,” he said.

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

Stitches and Father again went into conference.

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

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

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

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

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

The routine was always the same. Before he plunged me into the tank he would roll me on the deck. Then he made me turn somersaults, and box with him. My share of the boxing might be described as down again, up again. As soon as I could get to my feet he would tumble me over with his pawlike hand, and keep that up for about ten minutes. If I cried or protested at all against that rough treatment I got a sound slap on my bottom to “knock that nonsense out of you.” Then came the great moment when, warm and glowing, I was plopped into cold sea water to strike out blindly, and in vain. Holding his hand under my back, Father told me to throw out my stomach and bend my head back to balance. I couldn’t understand how that would help me float because when I put my head back I got my mouth and ears and eyes full of salt water. Then he explained it in words to penetrate my infant comprehension.

“Throw your head back and puff your stomach up until YOU CAN SEE YOUR BELLY-BUTTON.”

Then it became a game, and in my eagerness to see if I could puff my stomach up high enough for me to see that portion of my anatomy, I achieved the art of floating. While I was thus absorbed in watching myself perform, Father took his bracing hand from under my back and left me to my own resources. Once I had learned to float, swimming came easy and I soon outgrew the limitations of the four foot tank. I didn’t think I had, but Father did. The next port we arrived in was Newcastle, Australia, and he chose that harbor to polish off my swimming ability.

When he looked for me to begin another lesson he found me playing with a tame gooney on the deck, perfectly contented. A gooney is a species of gull, dull grey in coloring, and a bit larger than the common seagull. Father had snagged him on a big hook baited with a piece of salt pork, pulled him aboard and clipped his wings so he could not fly away. When we first got him the gooney tried to bite, but by feeding him a few days he became tame, and quite a fascinating toy for me. We had named him “Salt Pork.”

We were playing a game called “Grub” which Stitches had invented for us. “Grub” was a unique game in that it gave me my first philosophy of doing things for myself and increased my propelling powers immensely. The rules for “Grub” were simple. A line was drawn on the poop deck with chalk behind which Salt Pork and I lined up. The goal was a piece of bread on the rail aft by the wheel. At a given signal from Stitches he let go of Salt Pork and off we both went across the deck after the grub; me, a hungry kid and Salt Pork, a ravenous sea bird. I crawled on all fours after it and the gooney ran with webbed feet. If I got there first I ate the bread on the spot as fast as I could cram it down my gullet or Salt Pork would have grabbed it right out of my hand. If Salt Pork got it first I couldn’t get it away from him because he’d swallow it whole without even chewing it.

“Say, Stitches,” called Father from the gangway, “let’s give Joan a lesson in keeping her mouth shut!” He undressed me and took me to the fo’c’s’le head. Two of the crew were cooling off with a nice swim under the shadow of the bowsprit. He called to them to keep an eye on me and without further warning he threw me fifteen feet into the water below. I thought I had sunk to the bottom of the world and would never come up. When I finally did I was so frightened that I started to yell and was rewarded with a mouthful of salt water. There was nothing to hang on to, so I had to swim. My father and Stitches on the jibboom above laughed at my struggle. Of course there was no danger for me as the two sailors could have pulled me out in an instant. It seems useless to add that I learned to swim in deep water very rapidly.

Father, evidently satisfied that Lesson Number One in practical nautical knowledge was a success, remarked to Stitches:

“See how quick she shut her mouth when she hollered about nothing! If every woman could learn to keep her mouth shut at the age of two they’d be better off.”

Every day after that, during the weeks we were in Newcastle, I was thrown overboard. I came to love it and soon was a strong swimmer with an instinct for action instead of noise!

From the time I was two years old until about my sixth birthday nothing startling impressed itself on my baby mind. Ours was just the usual routine of a trading schooner: Seattle to Sydney with lumber and from Sydney it was “bound to the South Sea Islands for copra,” loaded with red calico, cheap knives, soap, tinfoil, anything shiny to catch the eyes and thrill the hearts of the natives.

We cruised from island to island picking up half a ton of copra here, a quarter ton there until we had filled the hold, and for a deck load we got generally about five hundred bundles of sandalwood. Of course we took lots of smaller stuff, but copra and sandalwood were our staples from the islands.

Copra—the word itself is common to sea traders, but to landlubbers it is a strange expression found in stories of the South Seas.

Copra is the meat of coconuts dried in the sun. The natives break open the nuts and lay them out on woven mats to rot. The rotting process in the tropic heat brings out the oils and acid of the coconut. It takes about three months of drying process to make the copra rotten enough to be ready for market. The natives load it in bales of reeds and carry it off the island in canoes to waiting ships.

In appearance copra is dark brown and fibrous. No copra is first class until it is so putrid that vermin infest it. The stench of it is almost unbearable. In its ripe stage copra is highly explosive. During the war many uses were found for the stuff. The waste of its matter was used for ammunition, the oils to preserve foods for the soldiers, and the acids were invaluable in surgery.

One of the most common uses of copra is in the manufacture of linoleum and some forms of paper. I often wonder when people are walking on the linoleum in their homes if they realize that the substance of it came from the savage islands of the South Seas.

In trading between the islands, Australia and the States in my early years our greatest rival and bug-bear was the barkentine, Mary Winklemund, a three-master under the command of Captain Swanson. A barkentine by reason of its rig, square yards on the fore mast, is naturally faster than a schooner and the Mary Winklemund for years won every race with the Minnie A. Caine, whether it was from Hawaii to New Zealand or from Samoa to Seattle. My father and Captain Swanson were rivals, both in shouting the praise of their ships and in pride of their navigation, but Swanson had the edge. He would beat us by a few hours, by a few days, and on occasion by two months. Father always blamed the bad winds and incompetent sailors, and said that Swanson was afraid to carry as big a load as we for fear of sinking. But in spite of his alibis, the fact remained that in every nautical endeavor Swanson made us look like a leaking lifeboat in a hurricane.

Naturally to a man of Father’s combative temperament being beaten was bad enough, but Captain Swanson, not content with winning, never let a chance go by to rub in the victory with heavy-handed sea humor. As a result Father, I believe, would have run his ship on the rocks or jumped overboard himself, if thereby he could have scored on that “goddamned, squareheaded Sea Hog,” as he always delicately described his rival. How Father did even up the score stuck in my mind because it was combined with the memory of my first attempt at the age of six to get rich quick.

We were anchored in Double Bay, Sydney, my sixth winter, and Swanson sent word to Father to come aboard the Mary Winklemund for dinner. Father sent back word that he would accept free grub even on the Winklemund. I was delighted, for I welcomed any opportunity to get off our own vessel. As we were leaving in a small boat to scull over to the Winklemund Father turned to me and said:

“Swanson is trying to show off to me what good grub they serve on his packet. I’ll paddle you if you dare eat like you enjoy it.”

When we boarded the Mary Winklemund by means of a Jacob’s ladder thrown over the side, Captain Swanson met us. He showed us around his ship which was newly painted white from stem to stern. He pointed out the ship’s fine points, not forgetting to tell just where and how much she excelled ours. Father was getting madder and madder all the time and I was afraid he would blow up and go back without waiting for dinner.

“And just to show you how much better and cheaper I manage my ship,” concluded Captain Swanson, “look at this.” He reached into a barrel and brought out a small piece of something that looked like dirty marshmallow.

“See that, Captain?” he boasted. “Well, I had a whole barrel of it. Used it to oil down the masts this trip, saved me buying oil. Maybe if you was to oil down the sticks on your ship you could sail faster.”

Father took the substance from his hand, and smelled it, and looked up. I was surprised to see all the mad had gone out of his face.

“Got any more of this?” he asked, and there was a twinkle in his eye.

“Naw, I ain’t got no more. When we struck hot weather it stunk to high heaven so I throwed it over the side.”

“How much have you got left?”

“Just about a bucketful in this barrel,” he answered. “And I told the ship’s chandler he could have it. He asked me for it.”

“The hell you say,” observed my father, and I thought I saw him smile. “You’re a smart old barnacle, aren’t you, Swanson?” Swanson puffed in pride, and led the way to the dining saloon. There before us was a meal intended to impress Father with its luxuriousness. I looked at it glumly, remembering Father’s words, “I’ll paddle you if you eat like you enjoy it.” How could anybody eat all that food and not show enjoyment? He must have seen what was in my mind for he slapped me on the shoulder, exclaiming: “Forget it, Joan. Eat all you can and enjoy every bit of it. I’m going to.”

I had my mouth full before they were in their chairs, but, once squared away, I never saw Father eat so much or enjoy it so heartily. When he finished he pushed back his chair, looked at Swanson and burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” asked Swanson uncomfortably.

“Nothing, you big squarehead, but do you know what that grease is you threw overboard?”

“Naw. I found it floating off the Gilbert Islands. Saw some sea birds picking at it, so I put off a boat and investigated. Looked like good grease so I hauled a couple of barrels aboard and used it like I told you to grease down the masts.”

“They’re fine sticks, Swanson,” grinned Father. “They ought to be, greased down with a hundred thousand dollars worth of ambergris.”

Swanson gulped and turned pale. His eyes were almost popping out of his head.

“Huh? Ambergris?” he gasped.

“Yes, ambergris!” shouted Father. “Worth thirty-two dollars an ounce. And you threw a barrel of it overboard. You threw away a fortune, you goddamned, ignorant, stingy squarehead.” And Father lay back in his chair and roared with laughter.

Swanson was livid now. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?” he yelled. “Only don’t forget this—there was twice as much stuff there as I took. I know where it is and I’ll go back and get it.”

“Good luck,” laughed Father, “if you can find it again you’re entitled to it.”

“I’ll find it,” were the grim parting words of the squarehead Captain.

Going back in the small boat to our ship I asked Father what ambergris was.

“Whale vomit,” he answered.

I couldn’t see what was so funny about Swanson throwing away whale vomit so I persisted in questioning further.

“What’s it good for?”

“Joan, ambergris is worth thirty-two dollars an ounce. He threw away about sixty thousand dollars worth just through ignorance.”

“Well, what’s the good of whale vomit? Why is it worth money?”

“Perfume companies use it as the base for rare perfume. And I wish to Christ I could find some.”

“Why don’t you try and find what Captain Swanson left?”

“Because anybody but an old fool like Swanson would know that sea birds eat ambergris. What he left is gone long ago. I only hope he does hunt it. It will keep him off the trade route for six months.”

And that is exactly what happened. Captain Swanson spent six months looking for his ambergris and found nothing. But Father told the story in every port and nowhere Swanson went did seafolk allow him to forget it.

I couldn’t forget ambergris either. If Swanson could find it why couldn’t we? There must be some way of locating it.

But the more I thought the more discouraged I became. A few barrelsful of ambergris in a whole ocean—not much chance of finding that. Then like a flash the idea came to me. It was so simple I wondered why Stitches or Father or some other sea captain had not thought of it. All I had to do was just to make the whales in the ocean sick at their stomach and they would belch forth ambergris enough to fill our ship. And that much I figured would be worth millions and millions and Father would never have to worry about bad trading seasons or port charges any more. We put to sea in a week and were headed for the Union Group of islands about twenty-eight degrees latitude South, one hundred and sixty-seven degrees longitude West. There ought to be some whales around there. I thought if I poisoned the water in the sea all the whales would be sick. The only drawback to my scheme was that I didn’t have any poison, so I made some of my own.

I begged an empty codfish keg from the cook and poured some cold split pea soup in it. I hated split pea soup so I was sure that was poison. Then I emptied the spittoon from the wheel which was full of tobacco juice and spit into the soup. To this I added tar and some dead rats. The finishing touch was some dead cockroaches. I caught them and mashed them up in the mixture, and then, positive that I had concocted a potion to ruin all the whales, I waited for nightfall.

About ten o’clock that night I slipped to the lee rail and dumped my poison into the sea, and waited. For hours, I waited, straining my eyes against the darkness, searching the water for some signs of ambergris to float. At four bells I turned in, and spent the rest of my night at my porthole looking for a promise of a seasick whale, but of course there was none. My scheme to poison the entire ocean failed, and when the cook found that I had wasted a pot full of good pea soup, I got a licking for my effort. To this day the only consolation I have for my failure is that when I detect rare perfume on beautiful ladies, I speculate with pleasure as to what they would think if they knew the base of their scent was whale vomit!

As long as I was a baby the sailors thought me a grand toy to play with and make a fuss over but when I grew old enough to become a bother their kindly attitude was frequently subject to change.

Of course it is the common belief that when a captain has a girl aboard ship the sailors slay each other to get the captain’s beautiful daughter—that her very presence on shipboard uplifts them and inspires them to lofty ideals.

That might be the case in novels, but in real life it is far more practical! Never in all my experience did any sailor attempt any act of violence to gain my favor. Their acts of violence, at times, were directed against me instead.

It was on our next voyage after Father squared accounts with Captain Swanson that I saw my first real mutiny and felt what it was like to have an entire ship’s crew against one. It all came about in the most natural way from being caught in the doldrums with a short water supply.

Our ship carried our fresh water supply in a tank under the fo’c’s’le head and in two iron tanks lashed on the poop deck just aft of the spanker mast. These tanks contained in all about five thousand gallons of water, to be used by sixteen people over a period of from eighty to one hundred and twenty days at sea. It was a precious commodity and it was guarded zealously by the cook whose job it was to portion it out daily, three cups to a person. In the tropics the water became so hot and stagnant that “wigglers” came out in it. Wigglers are small worms which hatch in the water. It is an old maritime law that every “off-shore” vessel must carry a certain amount of lime juice as a preventative against scurvy. A drop of lime juice in a mug of water kills the wigglers and thus enables the consumer to drink water without live stock in it. To this day old English sailing ships are referred to as “lime juicers,” and that name came down to them from the old custom.

We had been out eighty-three days from Mukelteo, bound for Brisbane, Australia, with a million feet of lumber. The water supply ran very low, and the residue was so alive with tiny wigglers and germs that it was like a death warrant to drink it. The cook came aft and told Father that a plague would come on the ship from that water. The stench of it was terrible. Even the rats were boldly searching the decks for something fresh. We were in the doldrums, about eleven degrees south of the Equator. The ship just wallowed in the glassy sea, and seemed to crack and shrivel in the heat. There was no shade anywhere. The sails hung limp and useless, like unstarched linens. The bedbugs and roaches seemed to multiply by the million.

“All hands on deck,” ordered my father, and the mate repeated his order to the men sleeping below. In a few minutes the entire crew were on deck.

“There’s no more water, men, until we hit a rain squall. The glass is down and I look for a squall, so stand by with kegs and catch all the rain you can if you want fresh water.”

There was a mad hurry to get kegs to catch the rain. The men brought everything from salt pork barrels to empty tomato tins and placed them under the booms and scuppers. The cook and a sailor put a barrel under the drain on the main deck just below the poop deck to catch the water that washed down the poop.

No sailor tried to sleep any more. They sat huddled in the scuppers looking thirstily at the deceitful clouds that drifted by and disappeared to the horizon with their refreshing cargoes.

Night came, and still no sign of rain. Just at sunset, at about a quarter point off the starboard bow, appeared the end of a rainbow, dipping right into the sea and making an arch of vivid colors, which dissolved into the mist of a rain squall a mile away. It was aggravatingly near, and the men bent every inch of sail to hurry the ship into its midst to catch some of its rain, but just within a hundred yards of it, the little gust of wind died, and once more the sails hung limp and impotent.

That night for dinner we had a sticky mess of salt dried codfish. Its odour was so bad from the intense heat that the only way it could be swallowed was to smother it with mustard and hold your breath, to kill the smell.

“This damn stuff stinks,” observed the mate, whereupon he proceeded to pick out the remnants of fish from his teeth with the prongs of his fork. I was just old enough to recognize the expression on my father’s face as a sign of trouble.

“Yeh? Well any time you get disgruntled about the menu on this packet, just write me a letter and I’ll file it in my correspondence.” The mate’s remark, however, spoiled his appetite and he shoved the dish of ill smelling fish at the cabin-boy.

“Chuck that overboard.”

For my dinner I had boiled lentils, which only accentuated my thirst, as the salt fish had increased the men’s.

At sea a very little thing will start a feeling of mutiny, and thirsty, dried-up men, scorched by heat and discouraged by no winds and bad food, are like dynamite to handle. They started to quarrel among themselves, viciously. Father anticipated trouble. Right after dinner he sent me to my bunk.

“And if you hear anything on deck, you stay below,” he added and swung up to the poop deck. He searched the horizon for some sign of a storm to bring relief. If another day passed and no fresh water fell, there was no foretelling what uprising would occur. The sky was red, and the old legend, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight” gave no promise that the morning would bring water.

Father heard the men mumbling in the scuppers, for in some way they blamed him for their plight. Old Stitches, whose loyalty to father was like iron, came up on the poop deck beside him, and casually started to smoke his pipe. Beneath his nonchalance were grim, tight lips. He knew there was going to be trouble, and he wanted Father to know he was still swinging a belaying pin on his side.

I could feel something was going on that I didn’t understand, and whenever I felt there was something being kept from me I just had to find out about it. So after I had been sent to bed, I sneaked back on deck and hid out of sight of Father. Nobody on the ship was asleep. I could hear the men stirring and grumbling for’ard.

Hour after hour passed, and in the deadman’s watch, which was from twelve midnight until four, the men broke. Larsen, who had always been one of the best sailors, led the rest of the crew up on the poop deck, seething and snarling.

“What do you want?” roared my father.

“Water!”

“Where in the hell will I get water for you?” Father asked, as he eyed the men who were closing in on him.

“Water,” came the accusing chorus again.

Stitches put down his pipe, and edged closer to Father.

“The barometer is low, we ought to run into a squall ’fore daybreak,” explained Father.

“Yeh? Well we want water NOW, do you hear, and if you don’t give us some, you and your goddamned ship will be sucking water in hell!” And with that two of the sailors jumped for him, and hit out with terrific blows, the blows of thirst-crazed men. Father hit back, and his punch was like a shot of steel. Stitches struck blindly with the belaying pin. Blood smeared the deck. I could hear a sickening, crunching sound of bones breaking. Slowly, one by one, the two of them backed the cowed men on to the main deck. I scuttled back to my berth and hid myself under my straw mattress.

Stitches came below and I heard him fumbling in the gun rack near my bunk.

“Nothin’ like being watchful in nights like this,” he said, and he came back on deck with two rifles. For the rest of the night the two of them stood off the men on the deck below.

Morning came early, for the sun rose at five-thirty. I was on deck early, too uncomfortable to stay below, and fretful from thirst. About six o’clock a black cloud which looked like a splotch of ink on the sky appeared on the horizon. A light breeze scurried it towards us. In ten minutes it was upon us, and rain fell in great cool sheets on the swollen decks and the parched lips of the men. They fought each other for places at the drains to grab the first water. They were like frenzied, caged animals suddenly loosed on raw meat as they opened their mouths to let the rain pour in.

I stood on the poop deck, under the spanker boom, and the water fell on me. It was so cool, so caressing, so life-giving! I couldn’t soak enough of it in, it seemed, so I took off my overalls, and let it rain on my naked body. I was so absorbed in my fresh water bath that I was oblivious to the men standing on the main deck to catch the water that washed off the poop. I would do my bath up right! A real fresh water bath with soap!

Naked, and unconscious of the threats of the men who objected to my being in their way, I ran forward to the galley and asked the cook for some soap. He made soap from the grease drippings of the salt pork. To the grease he added lye and kept the conglomeration in a kerosene can under his bunk. I grabbed a handful of it, and began smearing it on me as I ran aft once more, and up to my place under the spanker boom. I was a mass of sticky bubbles, and the rain carried them, after they washed off me, down the drain into the waiting kegs of the crew. The soap suds ruined their water. Two of them leaped up on deck by me and were about to choke me when my father interfered. He grabbed me by my slippery body and put me behind him, while he ordered the men down on deck.

Then he turned to me.

“What the hell’s the big idea?” he yelled, so enraged with me he was pale.

“It feels so goddamned good to get cool in the fresh rain,” I answered. The humor of my remark didn’t appeal to him. I could see I was going to get another licking, and my bare body was a good target for a rope’s end!

“I’ll teach you to spoil fresh water,” he said, and he went forward. He returned with a handful of the soap!

“Now open your mouth. You’re so anxious to be washed clean, just taste that,” and he washed the inside of my mouth with the rotten soap.

And I’ve never wanted to be washed clean since then!

As I grew up, strong and healthy, I had three very simple ambitions in life: to be able to hand, reef and steer; to spit as far as any Swede could; and to get as much food, if not more, than anyone else. On sailing ships the food is portioned out in what is called “whack;” that is, so many ounces of food per week is allotted to each person. There was no way of definitely estimating the exact number of days a trip would take, as we depended entirely on winds to blow us to our destination.

We carried no fancy foods—there wasn’t room for anything except plain necessities in the storerooms. Lentils, rice, salt beef pickled in barrels of brine, dried codfish, powdered milk, dried prunes and apricots for desserts on holidays, and lime juice. The stores were stowed in an after-hold and were kept under lock and key. Only the Jap cook and my father had keys to that sanctum of grub and they guarded them relentlessly. The locked storeroom made life a bit difficult for me. I never seemed to get enough to eat. For instance, breakfast consisted of a big dish of cooked oats, dry bread and coffee. When the cabin-boy rang the breakfast bell it had the effect of a fire alarm and we all stampeded to the dining saloon. The first one that got to the table grabbed the bowl of mush and scraped off a big pile on his plate. I soon learned to grab the quickest. I developed in me the ability to take care of myself. Once a week, on Thursday, we had duff pudding. Duff day at sea was always an occasion. The cook prepared a sticky, glutinous mess of steamed suet and flour and put a few raisins in it. Plum duff it was called, but I always thought the cook put the pudding at the top mast and tossed plums at it, always missing, for I never could find any fruit in it. Weeks became important to me because of the plum duff pudding, and instead of saying of the future, “next week,” I always calculated next duff day, or two duff days ago. Frequently the salt horse, as the pickled beef was nicknamed, stank so that I couldn’t eat it, and neither could the sailors without drowning out the smell with mustard pickles, and holding their breath as they swallowed it. Sometimes by way of variety of menu, the bread took on the appearance of raisin bread, but the raisins were unfortunate cockroaches that had dived into the dough when the cook was kneading it. Little fresh meat additions like that never killed our appetites.

The final blow to my father’s æsthetic sense came one day at lunch time. Father bit into a crust of bread and then his face became livid with anger.

“Slops!” he yelled at the cabin-boy. We had a new boy every trip. “What kind of so and so does the cook call this bread? It stinks of perfume like some barmaid.”

“I don’t know, sir. The cook just baked that bread fresh this morning,” answered Slops. There was never any love lost between the cabin-boy and the cook and I think that Slops was enjoying the prospects that confronted his enemy.

I tasted the bread. It tasted of perfume, or rather of bay rum, the stuff the Jap cook always smelled of, but I couldn’t figure out how it had got into the bread.

Father left the table and hurried forward to the galley, with me in his wake.

“Yamashita! Come out of your rat hole.” The cook, trembling in fear, looked up from where he was sitting on the edge of the bunk.

“Yes sir?” he asked, as he continued washing his feet.

“Let me see the pan you mixed this bread in.”

Yamashita looked up at Father in all innocence and replied, “This pan, Captain. This pan I wash my feet in!” Father let a snort of rage out and grabbed at the cook. He shook him within an inch of his life, and would have hit him if the cook had been anywhere near his size. I beat it aft to get out of the fight, for the cook was my friend.

Every time I got a chance to sneak forward to his galley I did so, and would sit on his lap listening to his stories of Japan. I would tolerate his tales, just so he would let me sit on him and smell his bay rum. The odor of it was exquisite to me, for everyone else on the ship smelled of rope and tobacco. I often measured a person’s worth by the smell of him. One day an American consul’s wife came aboard, and she smelled of some delicious powder. When I got a good sniff of it I said to her:

“You don’t stink like men do, do you?” I intended it for a compliment, but the woman took umbrage and left in great haste, mumbling something about the uncouth persons that lived on ships!

No two days at sea were ever alike. Even in the monotonous trade winds, with the breeze so steady that the wheel could be lashed down and the ship would keep on her course alone, something would happen. It was on such a day as that that John McLean, an able-bodied seaman, won my heart. He was a huge, lumbering sailor with more muscle than brain, and was so crabby that the other sailors were afraid of him. He was always friendly with me in his rough sort of way because I would sit by the hour at his feet and admire him. On his chest, which was covered with hairs, he had a tattooed, full-rigged ship under sail that was one of my prize sights. If he was in a good humor he would undo his shirt and let me see that ship, then wiggle his chest so that the ship looked as if it were in a storm. Then he would bulge out his chest muscles and the ship looked as if it were under sail in a fair wind, or else he relaxed his chest and it looked becalmed in a lifeless sea.

“Gee, McLean,” I exclaimed, “do you think I could ever have a ship on my chest?”

He moved his wad of tobacco to the other side of his cheek, looked at me scornfully and then condescended to answer:

“Naw, can’t be tattooed like me unless you got hair on your chest.”

That finished me, for my chest was as smooth as a piece of silk. But I wasn’t to be outdone. I went to my father and asked him what made hair grow on people’s chest. That question played right into his hand because he replied:

“Hair on your chest, Joan? Well, let me see. I warrant if you was to eat your pea soup every meal that would grow hair on your chest.”

And I hated pea soup, but if it was necessary to cause a growth on my chest like McLean’s, I would endure it. So for weeks I ate the pea soup with the secret consolation that some morning I would awake with a thick crop of hair on my chest. We arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, and still no hair on my chest. I was worried for fear I would probably never be able to grow any, so I went to McLean who was in the hold of the ship unloading copra.

“McLean,” I confided, “I’ve looked every morning for nine weeks and there isn’t any hairs on me yet—not even any fuzz. What shall I do?”

He grinned, one of his rare indulgences, and said:

“Hey, Skipper, is the Old Man aboard?”

“No, he isn’t. He’s up at the American Consul’s office this morning.”

McLean continued to grin for a moment, then said:

“All right, Skipper. We got an hour to knock off at noon, and I’ll take you up to be tattooed.”

“Really, McLean? You’re not filling me with wind?” I could hardly believe my ears.

“Sure. I know the best tattooer this side of Tokio. He’s just a quarter of a mile from here, back of the fish store and ship chandler’s.”

I was elated. I was to be like a real sailor, tattoo and everything! McLean had offered to take me and have it done because in his inarticulate way he liked me, and in his own mind he was being very generous to pay for me to be tattooed. It never occurred to a deep sea sailor like him that girls are not tattooed.

At noon time I was ready, waiting for him at the gangway. I had put on my sailor cap which was an old mate’s cap elaborately embroidered with anchors and little ships and fish by the sailors. McLean kept his promise to meet me, and hand in hand we walked up the dock. My feet hardly touched the ground, I was so happy. We plotted what we would have put on me. I decided I wanted a naked lady in red tattooed on my forearm, a full-rigged ship on my breast and an American flag on the bottom of my foot so I could stick it out of the porthole and make it look as though I was waving a flag. If I was to be tattooed I was going to do it up right!

As we walked up the dock I saw Father standing by the warehouse talking to the boss stevedore. I was so exultant that I let my enthusiasm get the best of my discretion and I yelled at him:

“Ain’t I swell? I’m going to be tattooed all over like a sailor.”

Like a shot he wheeled around and said, “What?”

“I said I’m going to have a naked lady tattooed on my arm near my elbow so I can move my arm and wiggle her stomach like she was dancing.”

A murderous look came on his face. I turned around and saw McLean hotfooting it down the dock back to the ship! I followed him in haste, for Father grabbed me by the seat of my pants and the nape of my neck and propelled me along the dock at double speed.

“I can’t leave you for five minutes but that you get into some kind of deviltry, so now I’ll teach you how to behave.”

He took me up on the poop deck and tied me to the wheel in full sight of the sailors. My heart was broken with disappointment, but no tears for mine. I stood there and swore all the words that I knew, and at that age my vocabulary included enough adjectives to keep me swearing two minutes without repeating a word.

As if it wasn’t humiliation enough to be tied up like a bad puppy, the mate came aft and heard me swearing. I started all over again when he came near and looked at me. I could have murdered him for laughing at me. He listened to me going it and then scratched his head and said:

“I’ll forfeit my grub if you can’t cuss as good as if you had hair on your chest.”

Oh, the music of his words! I pulled my jumper closer together so that he couldn’t see if I had hairs or not, but having him think I did have hair on my chest was almost as good as really having it, so the day wasn’t lost after all.

I was seven years old when I first met Fear, and what happened at the meeting and what followed did more to shape my character and life than anything I can remember. For I learned the important lesson that if I stuck to the code of the sea never to squeal, no matter what happened, but to fight my own battles in my own way—I could win against odds, provided I licked Fear.

It all came about through Stitches teaching me to fish. Of course careful old Stitches had too much sense to start me after deep sea fish, for they are so heavy and powerful that one might have yanked me overboard before help could reach me.

“You can practice gettin’ little ones first, Skipper,” he said, as he baited a line with a cockroach for me. “If you get a pull, take your line in easy.”

I fished every day for weeks, and never got so much as a nibble. As I hadn’t had any luck deep sea fishing, I tried casting my line in the harbor at Sydney. Father was ashore attending to bills of lading, and the crew were cleaning up the ship, painting, chipping paint and reeving on new canvas.

I felt a nibble; the line twitched, and I pulled with all my seven-year-old strength on it. On the hook was a flat fish about six inches long with huge bulging eyes. He wiggled and squirmed, but I got him in my fist and called to anyone who could hear to come and see my catch. Alex Svenson, a Norwegian sailor, who was holystoning the poop deck, came over to look at my fish.

“Ain’t he a whopper?” I asked him, full of pride and enthusiasm. Svenson picked up the fish in his big paw and grunted a negative.

“This is a bloody bullfish. It ain’t no good to eat,” he said, and he ground the fish under his heel and laughed at my tears of disappointment.

No one ever fought my battles except myself, and this insult to my first catch was cause for war.

“That’s my fish, you bloody squarehead,” I shouted at him, as I grabbed my shining treasure and stuck it inside the bib of my overalls next to my skin.

“I’ll kill you for making fun of my fish,” and I kicked Svenson on the shins as hard as I could. But kicking a six foot Scandinavian on the shins with bare feet is not to be recommended. I only stubbed my toes and the more I kicked the more they hurt and the louder Svenson laughed. Ordinarily he was vile-tempered, but now my helpless rage seemed to please him.

“Say, you got a helluva lotta spirit, ain’t you?” he grinned in my face.

“You killed my fish. I’ll kill you, do you hear? You just wait!”

“Now be a nice little girl and don’t get your temper up and I’ll give you a big box of candy.”

I was young enough for the prospect of candy to be a pacifier for any woe. My father never let me have any, and the rare occasions when the sailors sneaked it to me made me regard heaven as the place where you got all the candy you wanted.

Wiping away my tears with a fishy hand I forced a smile.

“I bet you ain’t got any candy,” I challenged him.

“Well, don’t you squeal to Stitches or the Old Man, and I’ll give you a whole box just for yourself.”

I promised him I wouldn’t betray him, and he went forward to get it. I twisted up my fish line in a neat coil while I waited for him. Presently I saw him coming aft with something concealed behind his back.

“Where is it?” I asked, a bit suspicious that he was only fooling me.

Svenson looked up the deck to make sure no one was watching him.

“Come on down in the cabin. Some of these stool pigeons might squeal on you,” he said.

“Hey, sailors ain’t allowed in the after quarters,” I protested.

Svenson snarled something out of the corner of his mouth, and then he shook me by the shoulders.

“Do you want this candy or don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“All right then, shut your trap and come on down below.”

I followed him down into the chartroom. He made no show of giving me any box of candy.

“Where is it?” I asked.

Svenson held out a five pound box of candy wrapped in shiny paper and tied with lots of pink ribbon. I grabbed for it. As I did so he snatched it away just out of my reach.

“Oh no, you don’t! Give me a kiss and you can have it.”

“You said you’d give me the candy because you killed my fish.” I couldn’t understand why he still held the candy as another bait.

“Come on with the kiss or you don’t get it,” he insisted.

I looked at his tobacco-stained mouth and the yellow stubs of teeth that showed when he spoke. He looked horrible to me, but it was a five pound box of candy and it would be all my own and I had never had a whole pound of candy in my life, and I thought it would be worth even kissing Svenson for. I pursed my lips up to kiss him as I had kissed my father, my kittens and sea birds.

“Here’s the kiss,” I said.

He put his face down close to mine and I remember now how hot his breath was in my face. His mouth was twisted and his eyes narrowed and for years after in every horrible dream I ever had I saw Svenson’s yellow teeth and narrowed eyes. . . .

I forgot the candy and turned to run. He made a noise in his throat like a snarling animal and grabbed me up in his arms. His face was against mine. He forced my mouth open and kissed me—horribly! One of his hairy arms nearly crushed my ribs and his big paws patted over my body as I kicked and struggled. With his face against mine I couldn’t make a sound. I managed to get my fingers in his eyes and tried to push them in. Suddenly he dropped me so that I fell to the deck of the cabin and he ran out of the chartroom and up to the deck. I scrambled to my feet and scurried like a rat to my own cabin, slammed the door and threw myself on my bunk. There I beat my hands against the wall and bit into my straw pillow to keep from screaming.

I don’t know how long it was before I felt Father’s hands shaking me.

“For the love of Christ, what’s the matter, Joan?” he kept saying above my muffled sobbing.

“Get out of here, I hate you! Get out of here! Get out!” I screeched at him. I didn’t want to be touched; I just wanted to hide in the dark somewhere to get away from the feeling of Svenson’s kiss.

Then I remembered the fish in my breast. I put my hand down and brought it out. When Father saw it he asked:

“Say, are you bawling over a dead fish?” He was annoyed at what he thought my childish sentiment. I didn’t have time to answer him, for he left my cabin abruptly. I lay down again in the bunk clasping my dead bullfish and shivering with fear. Father came back with a big can of Epsom salts.

“Now, no more of this nonsense. What’s the matter with you anyway? Are you sick?”

“No, Father, I just—I—” I couldn’t finish for I knew the penalty of squealing on anyone in a fight. Sailors don’t do that; they take their beating and settle with the offender at their leisure. I felt that if I told on Svenson I wouldn’t be fit to be a regular sailor, and it was Father himself who had drilled that code into me.

“Answer me, are you sick, or is this just a show of bad temper?”

“I’m sick,” I wailed in a weak voice. I knew what would follow. Father made me take a big dose of salts and then told me to go to bed.

“You don’t get any supper. You probably been sneaking something to eat that wasn’t good for you, so no food for you until we get your stomach cleaned up.”

I didn’t mind swallowing the salts, for it got Father away from me, and I was afraid I would tell him the truth if he asked me many more questions or accused me of being a blubbering child.

I didn’t come out of my bunk all the next day. I stayed there with my fish. The fish began to smell bad so Father took it away from me and threw it out of the porthole.

That evening we sailed for the Midway Islands. I could hear the scuffling of the crew’s feet on the poop deck above my cabin as they ran about setting the sails. The creak and groan of the rigging and the whistle of the wind through the sails gave me the creeps. Ordinarily the sound of our ship getting under way thrilled me, and I wasn’t content unless I could be on deck helping pull the ropes. But I was afraid to go on deck. I heard Svenson’s voice answering that of the mate’s as he took the helm, and I couldn’t bear to see him again.

When we had been out about a week, I ventured on deck, after I had found out from the cabin-boy that Svenson was on his watch below. I hated him but I was going to repay him in full when I got my courage back. I knew to be a regular sailor I had to cure the sick feeling I got whenever Svenson was near. I had to quit being afraid; I had to get hunk without help. I couldn’t even tell Stitches.

So I schemed and schemed, and I was so eager to get even that gradually I began to stop being afraid. The mate had switched Svenson into the second mate’s watch because he wanted another sailor to fix some sails and Svenson couldn’t sailmake. But he could steer. I found him at the wheel. Here was my chance! Just as I knew better than to squeal on him I was sure he would not dare to squeal on me, no matter what I did. Father had set a course, “Northeast by east, a quarter point east,” and had told Svenson to keep a true course, for we were in the region of some coral reefs, and a quarter of a mile off in navigation would run us aground.

“Keep her full and by and call me if the wind veers a point,” Father instructed him and then went below for a short nap. I knew if Svenson let that ship even get so much as a tenth of a point off the course that he would get hell from Father. Well, I’d help Svenson get his hell!

I climbed on the binnacle box (the box that holds the compass), which was in front of the wheel, and I put my two feet over the compass so that Svenson couldn’t see it to steer by.

“Get the hell out of the way so I can see,” he snarled at me.

“You make me!” I shot back at him. If he took his hands off the helm the rudder would spin around and the ship would be out of control. “Come on, make me get off this binnacle,” I invited him again. Svenson knew I had him. He lost his temper and began cursing me, but he kept to the wheel. I heard the topsails aloft begin to flap. The wind had caught them “aback.” The jibs and mainsails began to luff—and in vain Svenson spun the wheel to get the ship back on her course. Then it was my turn to laugh. I heard the mate, on the fo’c’s’le head where he was fixing a jib, bellow aft at Svenson to pull the goddamned ship back into the wind. The mate ran down the deck to help get her back on course. He wasn’t fast enough though, for Father, who had been watching his telltale compass over his bunk, was leaping up the companionway ladder to the poop. I ran to the windward rail and pretended I was interested in watching some schools of flying fish skim over the water. Father jerked the helm from Svenson’s hand and spun it hard over to leeward. With a slapping crash the booms went over to the port tack, and he got her once more headed up to the wind.

“Joan, take this wheel,” he ordered. I came over and took hold of its big spokes. “Show this cock-eyed so and so sea louse how to steer a course,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, and at that he grabbed Svenson.

“Who in the hell ever told you you were a sailor? What do you mean by letting her run afoul in the wind?” He shouted in Svenson’s face.

“That ain’t my fault, Captain,” whispered back Svenson. “I couldn’t help it.”

“You’ll talk back to me, will you?” and Father sent him flying on the deck with a left uppercut: “Trying to run the goddamned ship on a reef for us, are you?” Svenson jumped to his feet and went for Father.

“Why you white-haired old bastard, I’ll knock the so and so out of you,” and he swung a fierce right to Father’s head. Then the two of them wallowed around the deck, punching and mauling each other in a bloody mess. I’ll never forget the sound of the bones in Svenson’s jaw crunching under Father’s blows.

“I’ve got enough!” cried Svenson, on his back, just as Father’s upraised arm was about to put him to sleep. The mate, who was standing by with a belaying pin in his hand in case of real trouble, lifted the Norwegian to his feet.

“Take him for’ard, and put him in irons,” Father ordered the mate, “and tell any of the crew in the fo’c’s’le that think they can talk back to the captain of this ship that Svenson is only a sample of what’ll happen to them.”

The mate had Svenson by the neck and the seat of his pants marching him forward. Father called after them: “When that piece of ballast gets his eyes open again, I’ll have Joan here show him how to steer a ship.”

Svenson, however, was kept in irons and on rations of bread and water until we reached the Midway Islands, where Father discharged him in disgrace—I hadn’t squealed, but I don’t think Svenson, wherever he is today, feels that he got the best of it.