“McGinty’s back again;He’s dressed up like a dandy,He’s down at Mike’s saloon,He’s drinkin’ wine and brandy . . .”
“McGinty’s back again;He’s dressed up like a dandy,He’s down at Mike’s saloon,He’s drinkin’ wine and brandy . . .”
“McGinty’s back again;He’s dressed up like a dandy,He’s down at Mike’s saloon,He’s drinkin’ wine and brandy . . .”
“McGinty’s back again;
He’s dressed up like a dandy,
He’s down at Mike’s saloon,
He’s drinkin’ wine and brandy . . .”
It was the voice of John Henry singing the old sailors’ funeral dirge “McGinty.” McGinty is the legendary sea captain who sank to the bottom of the sea, and when sailors get drunk their favorite vision is of McGinty arisen from the dead and drinking in waterfront saloons.
“John Henry!” I called as loud as I could.
I got no answer, except his drunken voice rising in the old song.
Then he weaved out from the shadow of the cargo piled on the wharf to stand at the foot of the gangway. He was so drunk he could hardly keep his balance. He made three gallant efforts to place his foot on the bottom of the gangway; finally, by grabbing the hand ropes he pulled himself aboard and toppled over on the deck. I lifted him up and shook him violently.
“John Henry, stand up!” I shouted at him.
He babbled something unintelligible and drooled down his shirt front as I shook him. His bloodshot eyes focused on me and held there.
“Get your Ole Man give me money for whiskey. Got to have whiskey.”
“You’ll get a kick in the seat of the pants, that’s what you’ll get,” I answered him.
“Got to have money for whiskey—only want whiskey,” he insisted, and he started to sob pathetically.
“You’re drunk, John Henry. Come on and get forrard into your bunk.”
He pulled away from me and demanded through his sobs:
“You going to get Ole Man to give me some more money?”
“He isn’t here, John Henry. Come on and get forrard and turn in,” I coaxed him.
“You get me money for whiskey or I’ll croak.”
His body began to tremble. His lips were blue, his eyes fiery and bloodshot.
“I don’t care if you croak or not,” I answered, for I had heard threats like that before.
“All right, gonna croak. You watch me. I’m gonna croak,” and he started forward. I followed, hoping to get him safely to his bunk. Just beneath the fo’c’s’le head he picked up a long piece of rope that was coiled there on a stanchion.
“See this rope? Gonna croak if you don’t get Ole Man get me money, see?” and he burst out crying again. He tied the piece of rope into a hangman’s noose, nine slip knots on a loop, just as he had once taught me to tie it months before. He held the noose up to my face and said once more:
“I’ll croak if you don’t.”
Of course I didn’t believe him, so I just answered:
“All right, John Henry, you’ll feel better when you do!”
Instead of quieting, that seemed to set him off again. He slipped the noose over his head and thrust his face right up against mine.
“Do I get the money?” he half shrieked in his cracked whiskey voice.
Scenes with drunken sailors were no novelty to me. They always made dire threats against themselves, or the captain or their mates, and then they stumbled to bed and forgot it. Now I lost patience.
“You don’t get a damned cent,” I yelled back at John Henry.
It seemed almost to sober him. He straightened.
“You’ll be sorry,” he said, and turning with great dignity he marched out of sight forward with the hangman’s noose around his neck and the rope trailing on the deck after him.
I turned and with what I conceived to be equal dignity marched back toward the gangway. Duty called me. There would be more drunken sailors to drive to their bunks.
I don’t know why I left the gangway after a short ten minutes except that I loved John Henry and felt a vague desire to see that he was all right. But of course I wouldn’t let him know that. I couldn’t sacrifice my dignity as watchman in charge of the ship. So I marched forward very importantly, past the mizzen, past the mainmast and around the cook’s galley and there I found John Henry!
He had tied the rope around the capstan on the fo’c’s’le head and jumped down toward the main deck. There he hung, with his feet scarce six inches from the main deck and the hangman’s knot under his left ear canting his head rakishly to one side. His body was turning slowly on the rope and as I stared his face came around so his popped eyes stared back at me and his wide opened mouth seemed to sneer, “I told you I’d do it.”
Staring into those popped eyes I couldn’t cry out—I couldn’t move; and then after what seemed a million years the body turned on the rope and the face went away from me, releasing me from my speechless terror. I shrieked, and whirling away I ran aft, down into the lazarette and hid underneath a pile of old canvas. I heard the rats running to safety at my approach to their domains in the dark. I had killed John Henry! I had killed John Henry! Over and over in a numbing pain the words rushed to my brain!
I don’t know exactly how long I stayed there before I heard voices on the deck above me. I was afraid to come out of hiding. I could tell by the excitement that John Henry’s body had been found. A few hours before in the afternoon I had been sore at him for encouraging me to curse and now he was dead!
Weak, and still shaking with fright I found my way on deck. I saw Father and a group of strange men on deck surrounding a figure covered with canvas.
I called to Father:
“Here I am. I didn’t do it—honest I didn’t.” And I crumpled over crying.
Father picked me up and held me in his arms.
“What makes you think you did it, Joan?” he asked, so quietly and tenderly that I told him the whole story.
Johnny was buried in Brisbane, but I have never to this day wanted to tie a hangman’s noose.
old sailor pointing
sailors in front of the hotel
13Ideas about Women
“Womenain’t going to do you no good, Joan. Takin’ them by and large they’re mostly liars anyhow, and the ones you find around the waterfront is just plain head winds.”
We were tied up at the dock in Brisbane, Australia, when Father delivered his dictum. I knew he meant by “women” the gold-toothed, plump barmaids and the laughing sweethearts that swarmed around every arriving ship to get the sailors’ pay, or beg curios from them. Those women had always been objects of curiosity to me and Father knew it.
“If any of them women try to talk to you, you go below and don’t have anything to do with them, understand?”
I understood and promised to obey. I did not imagine that there was any danger of my not obeying, for two reasons. First, I was afraid of women. Second, they were all much too grand and beautiful ever to pay attention to me. Father had planted that fear of my own sex in me to keep me from picking up with chance women. He was afraid I would learn things from them that would destroy his years of careful protection of my ideals. He never let me look at myself in a mirror.
“You’re an ugly kid, Joan, so you won’t gain anything from looking at yourself in a mirror.”
It would have been worth a sailor’s life to offer a mirror to me and in all the years I was on board I don’t believe it occurred to any of the men forward. Aft, there was only one looking-glass, a small cracked one used by Father when he shaved in port, and even that he kept carefully hidden from me. My only chance to see myself was in the rain barrels on deck. If you think you can get a good idea of your personal appearance by looking into a rain barrel on a swaying, rolling ship, try it. My face used to ripple back at me like a blurred cabbage. As far as I knew I looked exactly like that image reflected in the rain barrel, so of course I believed Father when he told me I was so ugly that women ashore looking at my face would laugh at me.
Since then Father has confessed he made me think myself hopelessly ugly so that I should never be conceited. He said it was one of his dreams for me that I should be unspoiled and be beautiful inside. But, I did not know that then, and I believed all he said about my personal appearance.
How I used to envy the barmaids and the sweethearts about the docks! To me they seemed so beautiful and the sailors were always so glad to see them. No sailor, save old Stitches, ever seemed really glad to see me. The crew all thought I was a nuisance. Father’s warning was unnecessary. I would not have dared to speak to those beautiful land women.
The day after he so put me on my guard I was sitting on the skylight aft, watching the cargo boom dip down in the hold and bring up a rope-net full of copra and swing it over to the dock where the stevedores dumped it into a big dory. McLean and Axel Oleson were on duty at the mizzen hatch where they bellowed orders to the crew below to get the “barnacles off their sterns and load up the nets quicker.” The men below seemed in no mood to hurry, judging by Oleson’s remarks to them, for he traced their ancestors to dubious origins in English and Scandinavian. It was no novelty to me to hear such talk—it wasn’t even varied enough to keep me interested.
I was beginning to get tired of watching when from my perch on the skylight I saw a pretty woman coming down the dock. She walked slowly as if she wasn’t sure of her destination, but when she drew close enough to the ship to be noticed she became all smiles. She pretended she didn’t see McLean and Axel on deck, but I could tell she did see them by the careful way she avoided looking at them. She came up the gangway, which was just forward of the poop deck and spoke to me.
“Hello, little girl,” she said.
I got all goose flesh, I was so thrilled at being noticed. All thought of Father’s warning vanished.
“Hello,” I answered. “Where the hell are you going? Have you got business on this ship?” I was being very nautical, as it was my one chance to show off my authority.
She was so fluffy and soft-looking, surely she couldn’t hurt me. Now she was staring at me—at my overalls and my bare feet sticking out beneath them.
“You know you’re a bloody pretty kid,” she said. I flushed to the roots of my hair. It was the first time I had ever been paid a compliment. I studied her face closely to see if she was just making fun of me, but she seemed sincere.
“Aw, hell, I’m not as pretty as you, Miss!” I replied, taking in her high heel buttoned shoes and her hat with flowers and ribbons on it. “And you smell good, too.” That vision of loveliness was bathed in cheap perfume, but to me it was divine compared to the stink of the rotten copra being hauled out of the hold.
I had no way of judging women except from the conversation among the sailors that I had caught. I thought every woman’s character was measured by her ankles and her hips, for often I had heard the sailors say: “a good pair of hips and little ankles is worth nine months’ pay.” So, using their standard of perfection of womanhood, I measured the woman who stood before me. She was perfect.
“Got any glad rags, Kid?” she asked.
“No, but I’ve got some tapa cloth and two tortoise-shell bracelets with pearl in them,” I answered, hoping to impress her.
“I mean, haven’t you got any pretties to go around with gents? I bet all the sailors aboard here are nuts about you.”
“No, they ain’t,” I answered hastily. “If I ever lay down on the job of pulling on ropes when I’m needed, or get in their way when they unload a cargo, they kick my pants for me.”
She became very much interested in me.
“Say, what do you stick on this bloody barge for? You ought to be down with me and the girls where you’d be appreciated.”
“You mean leave the ship?”
“Sure, I’ll get you a swell job with me and the girls down at the Union Hotel.”
It sounded wonderful to me. I was tired of staying on the ship, day after day in port, with no one to play with. Perhaps I would find companions ashore. I was sure no harm could come from just going with her for a little while. For a moment I hesitated, then one glance at her thin ankles and her broad hips assured me that she must be a good woman. Proudly I followed her down the gangway, and as I passed McLean I told him to tell Father I was going to take a job at the Union Hotel for a few days until the ship was ready to sail.
How set up I was to be walking along the dock with this beautiful woman who thought I was pretty!
The Union Hotel was a small, dingy-looking place about a block from the wharf. I had passed it several times on my walks ashore with Father, and I had heard the sailors speak of it as the “Seamen’s Rest.” They always grinned when they said that and I wondered why.
“Come in and meet my lady friends,” urged my new friend. I accompanied her gladly. The stuffy interior of the cheap waterfront hotel seemed the height of elegance to me. We entered the “pub” (English for saloon).
“Where’s the job?” I asked, for on shipboard the first thing a man did was to get to work. Then I discovered that my guide and her “lady friends” were barmaids.
“Here, sailor-girl, you take this end station, and you’ll get lots of tips. Sometimes the blokes gives as much as sixpence if we smile pretty.”
I was so pleased to be accepted by those women that I put my conscience out of its misery about leaving the ship and went to my station behind the bar. I was having a lot of fun until some sweating stevedores came in.
“Beer for us,” was their order.
One of the group I recognized as the cargo tally man from our dock. He seemed shocked to see me behind the bar drawing foamy mugs of beer.
“Say, does your old man know you’re here?” he asked suspiciously.
“It’s none of your business,” I answered. The girls giggled and encouraged me to go on. “Besides, I can knock your block off if you squeal on me.” Again the barmaids cheered me on. The other stevedores gathered around and began guying him, but the tally man persisted:
“I’ve known your father off and on for fifteen years and I’m going to take you back on board ship for him.” He reached over and pulled me by the arm to hasten my departure.
“I’m warning you to take your hands off me or I’ll knock your block off,” I snarled at him. I was thrilled at being the center of attention. I wanted to show off in front of the barmaids how strong I was and how well I could scrap. The tally man seemed to have but one thought—to get me out of the place in a hurry even if he had to use force to do it. I was equally determined to stand my ground. He tried to pull me to the door. I swung around on him and hit him as hard as I could. The girls cheered me again. I hit the tally man once more, then he took me by the shoulders and shook me like a rag.
That was too humiliating; I saw red. Hitting, kicking, butting with my head, I sailed into him. Taken by surprise he went down. The barmaids let out squeals of delight—the stevedores roared with laughter. We were on the sawdust floor of the pub, rolling over and over, punching and clawing. He didn’t want to hurt me and I wanted to kill him. That made it almost an even fight.
For about three minutes we were at it and then I found myself flat on my face with one of his hands gripping my neck and my own right fist held up between my shoulder blades. It was the hammerlock hold I had seen used in sailor fights and I was completely helpless.
“Now, you little hell-cat, you march back to that ship,” he growled, and lifted me from the floor, pushed me out the door, and walked me down the dock to the vessel. I had a cut lip and a black eye. The tally man called to McLean:
“Say, you better watch this kid until her father gets back. She was hanging around a bar down at the Union Hotel—and that joint’s a bed house.”
I hurried below and washed the blood from my face, ashamed that any of our sailors should see me licked. But no matter how I scrubbed I couldn’t erase my black eye so I decided to get in my bunk and not attract Father’s attention to me. It seemed I always remembered to obey Father after I had forgotten to!
When Father returned to the ship he came in my cabin and asked:
“What are you turning in so early for?”
I took great care to lie face downwards so he couldn’t see my eyes as I told him:
“I don’t feel very well. Guess I don’t want any supper.”
What relief! I could see Father hadn’t heard of my humiliating defeat at the hands of a tally man in the Union Hotel.
“If you’re sick, there’s no use bellyaching about it. I’ll fix you up a dose of salts and that’ll get the kinks out of you.”
He brought me a coffee mug half full of epsom salts. I swallowed the stuff and then I lay there thinking deep and unkind thoughts about women. The laughter of the barmaids as I was marched out of that pub by the tally man still rang in my ears. My soul was bitter within me and I swore to myself that I would never again trust a woman—not even if she smelled of perfume to high heaven and had inch-thin ankles!
But I wasn’t to get off from my latest escapade as easily as I had thought. I was still lying in my bunk, trying to figure out how I was fooled by that barmaid, when I heard a man’s voice in the companionway asking:
“Can I see the Captain? I gotta tell him something he oughta know.”
My heart sank. The voice was that of the tally man and I suspected that he had come to tell on me. I wasn’t left in doubt long, for soon I heard Father’s indignant voice asking:
“Do you mean to tell me that my kid was in a pub with a barmaid?”
“Yes, Captain, and she started a brawl there. It’s pretty dangerous business to leave a girl like her hang around the waterfront. I wouldn’t let a kid of mine do it, no sir!”
Their voices dropped to an indistinguishable mumble of words, but I knew the result would be serious. I’d get even with that tally man before he knew it! I’d teach him to squeal on me after he had given me a black eye. Whatever thoughts I had about the matter left me when Father came into my cabin. He wasn’t angry, as I expected him to be. Rather he seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful. He sat on the edge of my bunk and after a pause, he said:
“Joan.”
“Huh?” I murmured, with my face still hidden in my pillow to hide my telltale black eye.
“Turn over and look at me.”
“I know what you look like,” I countered, still face downwards. “You haven’t changed since I saw you a couple of hours ago.”
“Yes, I have changed. I’ve changed my mind about you.” I didn’t know what to think about his sudden tack, so I stalled for an opening to defend myself:
“Can’t you let a fellow sleep that don’t feel good?”
Father took me by the shoulders and turned me over. He didn’t say a word about my black eye, he seemed to overlook it.
“Joan, we’re going to be here in port about thirty days. I gotta get a new foremast set in, and a general overhaul of the vessel when the cargo is discharged.”
I still couldn’t see where he was heading.
“You’ve disobeyed me for the last time. But I’m partly to blame, so I’m not goin’ to punish you. Only when you get big enough to go with barmaids and fight with men, it’s time to put some thought on your future. I’ve got a lot of thinkin’ to do about you, Joan—a lot of thinkin’.”
And he went away leaving me vastly relieved, only had I known what was to come out of his thinking I would have been more worried than ever before in my life.
Father kept me on board ship all during our stay in port, with only occasional walks along the waterfront in his company. We sailed with a cargo of wool and ballast for the United States. We were going to Frisco to get a load of lumber.
After ninety-three days of uneventful sailing we sighted the Farallone Islands off the Golden Gate. A tugboat steamed out thirty miles to pick us up. How excited I was to see the smoke of that tug coming toward us! When it came within hailing distance the captain called through his megaphone:
“Want a tow?”
“How much?” called back Father.
“Four hundred dollars to inside anchorage.”
“I’ll see you in Hell first,” answered Father.
“Two hundred dollars,” came back the tugboat captain.
“I’ll sail this bloody ship right up to the ferry building under her own canvas,” came Father’s reply.
Cursing, the tugboat captain let out a string of degrading opinions of the kind of master Father was—and Father returned the compliment. My father holds a license as pilot of San Francisco harbor so he didn’t even have to hire a pilot or a tugboat to get inside the Heads. The tugboat steamed alongside us at half-speed, ready to throw us a hawser if the wind died and we were forced to be towed in, but Father entered the Golden Gate, sailed past Mile Rock Light House, dipped the flag in salute to the lighthouse keeper, and came to safe anchorage off Alcatraz Island. He let go the hooks and waved a superior good-bye to the indignant tugboat captain.
There was a brisk breeze blowing over the Bay and hardly a cloud overhead. To the eastward rolled the hills of Berkeley.
“Your mother’s over there, Joan. I’m going to ship you off this trip.”
I stared at Father.
“You mean me leave the ship?”
He didn’t look at me as he replied:
“Yes, it’s high time you had a woman’s care of you.” That was the first he told me of his plan to send me ashore to live.
“Are you going to quit the sea too?” I was filled with terror. Not to be on the ship any more—ever? Never to steer a course under the Southern Cross—reef a sail in a storm, never to set a halyard to the rhythm of Swede’s chantey?
“No. I’m goin’ to stay on this ship as long as she floats. I’ll stand by her until she goes down under me.” He looked away from the hills out towards the sea. Little did Father realize when he spoke those words that they would come true!
I was going to live on shore with my mother and brothers and sister. I didn’t even remember what my mother looked like. She was only a beautiful symbol to me—something far off and not quite real that had been painted for me in words from my father—and not someone real that I could live with. But now I must. Father would make me. It seemed too terrible to endure.
The Quarantine officers and Customs officers passed us. There was nothing then to keep me from going ashore. Father packed my canvas sea bag full of my belongings. It bulged with my sea boots, my oilskins and sou’wester. I wrapped my little boats carefully in burlap and carried them under my arm for they were too precious to trust to careless hands. My other treasures were a jaw of shark teeth and an octopus in a big can of alcohol.
Stitches came aft to help load my things into the dinghy to go ashore.
“Ain’t you ever comin’ back to us, Skipper?” Stitches asked me in a hoarse voice which was barely audible. I hadn’t realized until then that I’d be leaving him behind. I couldn’t leave Stitches, for I loved him.
“Can’t you come to the land with me, Stitches? You can live with me for always,” I said.
Stitches didn’t answer me; he just sort of blew his nose and looked away.
“I’m coming back some time, Stitches,” I promised. I saw his old hands shaking as he tied my bundles up. He seemed to delay the parting by fumbling around. I gave him my ships to hold and I went below to change into my dress and hair ribbon. When I came up on deck the crew had disappeared off the decks. Weren’t they going to say good-bye to me? Even Stitches was nowhere to be seen.
“Come on, cast off now,” Father called.
Bulgar and Oleson were in the dinghy below waiting to row Father and me ashore. I climbed up to the rail and started down the Jacob’s ladder when I suddenly remembered something I had forgotten. I dashed back on deck and made for the cabin.
“Now what the hell?” called Father after me.
I grabbed my four kittens I had forgotten and put them in a flour sack, then I went up on the poop deck to where my pet seagull was in a packing-case cage.
“Come on, Old Man, we’re going ashore,” I told the gull as I put him under one arm. Then I swung the sack of cats over my shoulder, and once more I went to the Jacob’s ladder to disembark.
What a fine bunch of barnacles the crew were, I thought, when I couldn’t see them anywhere. Just as I went over the side I spotted them—Stitches was behind the mizzen mast pretending to be looking the opposite direction from me; Swede and the Jap cook were peeking out at me from the donkey-room forward. Fred Nelson acted the queerest of all of them. He appeared to be absorbed in polishing the brass on the binnacle, but he polished the one spot so steadily I thought he would wear it out.
“Hey Skipper,” he called: “Here’s somethin’ to remember the ship by.” He came down to me and handed me a plug of Star Cut Plug Tobacco. “It ain’t much, but it’s wishin’ you a fair wind for your westin’.” His face seemed white and drawn. He looked at me so hard I thought he was looking right through me.
“Pile down here and quit your dawdling,” Father ordered from his seat in the dinghy.
A funny lump came in my throat. It felt as if I had swallowed too big a hunk of oatmeal and it had stuck in my windpipe. I couldn’t make the feeling go away. I was afraid I would start to blubber at leaving the crew forever and especially my adored Stitches, so I yelled out very loud as I descended the Jacob’s ladder:
“So long, everybody. I won’t ever forget you.”
seagulls over the water
14I find navigating on shore full of shoals
Inthe small boat Father asked why I had brought the gull and what was in the flour sack.
“My belongings!” I answered.
“Your mother’ll never stand for that junk to clutter up her house. You’re a landsman now, Joan, and things is going to be different.” I couldn’t understand why Father didn’t give me the devil instead of talking so low and quiet-like. I thought he was glad to get rid of me because I was always such a worry to him.
The ride on the ferry boat across San Francisco Bay to get a train to Berkeley was an experience I’ll never forget. A crowd gathered around me on the ferry to look at my seagull and the octopus in the can. The kittens squirmed around in their sack but I didn’t open it because I was afraid they’d get away from me. I didn’t realize then that I was a freak sight. I thought all the people who grouped around me wanted to be friends, so I took them into my confidence freely. They smiled and looked at one another as I talked. I was telling them about the South Seas; how I got the little octopus; what the name of our ship was. No one did any talking except me—the crowd just stared at me and listened.
At the Oakland Pier we got a train. The conductor came along and tried to take the seagull and bag of cats away from me. He wanted to put them in the baggage car, but I protested, and he let me keep them. When we arrived in Berkeley Father took a taxi from the station up to my mother’s house. I was all eyes at the surrounding view, the rolling hills, the houses with neat lawns, trolley cars, groups of laughing boys and girls strolling along the streets. I forgot the ship for an instant. In my transport of joy I could think of nothing but my new life.
We got out of the cab in front of a two-story wooden house. We walked up a path and through a gate that had two tall posts on either side of it. On one of them was a weather vane—a whale on a stick that spun around in the wind. It had been there for years and Mother used it to watch for shore winds to blow my father home. A tangled mass of bright-colored flowers lined the walk. A huge climbing vine with flowers the color of South Sea coral hanging from them half covered the porch. They were roses, the first I had ever seen. The appearance of the house made me think of a contented turtle asleep in seaweeds. I couldn’t get enough of the beauty of the garden. I felt Father’s hand tugging at my arm.
“There’s your mother, Joan.”
I looked up, and there I saw my mother standing in the doorway. She was wiping her hands on her apron and crying and laughing all at once. My first impression of her was of a round, chubby little woman—round and delicious, like a duff pudding that looked so good I could eat it. Her skin was very white, her eyes as blue as the water in a lagoon, and the wisps of grey hair that fell on her forehead reminded me of white sea spray. I couldn’t take my eyes off her—my mother! I had seen her five years before when she came to a lumber camp in Oregon to see Father, but the memory of her was blurred. Father’s romantic picture of her was more vivid in my mind than my actual recollection. She was so different from any woman I knew. Dressed in a faded blue house dress with a white collar fastened with a shell pink coral brooch—wiping her hands on her apron—always will that picture remain with me. I didn’t know what to say to her. She was expecting her seafarers home, for Father had telephoned her from San Francisco. Was I as much of a surprise to her as she was to me? I expected my mother to be gruff like Father but her voice was gentle—she was all softness.
What did daughters do when they met their mothers?
Father threw his arms around Mother and lifted her from the floor. He hadn’t seen her for five years! I felt a twinge of jealousy at being left out. I had always been most important to Father and Mother was usurping my place. She left Father’s arms and gathered me to her. Her hands were so soft and smooth they felt funny as they petted me. She seemed so weak compared with sailors. Her arms didn’t have as much strength as one of my toes. Physical strength was my ideal and she did not have it. I knew she was somebody wonderful but she was going to have to prove it.
“Speak to your mother,” Father said.
I eyed her up and down, from truck to keel, before I answered:
“Are you going to let me have my seagull and cats here?”
Mother laughed and said:
“You can keep them in the back yard.”
With that compromise settled, I let down my barriers of hostility. I don’t know whether I was thrilled at being in a house that was a home or whether I was terrified. I remember I felt shut in and cramped, and my brothers and sister standing around staring at me as if I were a mirage instead of a real person didn’t put me at my ease.
“Joan, you change your dress because it is dinner time. We have dinner for the boarders at twelve o’clock,” was the next thing Mother said.
“I haven’t got any other dress,” I answered. My voice, attuned to the open sea, boomed like a cannon in that small room.
“Don’t talk so loudly,” cautioned Mother.
My mother, to help make both ends meet, kept boarders from the University of California.
“They are professors, dear. You can sit at the same table with them.”
“Are professors all men?” I wanted to know. Mother said they were men, the ones that lived at that house.
“Because I don’t like women,” I added.
My sister retired from the room. She was a very proper young lady and she didn’t approve of me at all. That noon I met the boarders. They were introduced to me, and then they began firing questions at me from all sides.
I thought they were nice, friendly men who were interested in the sea, until they took sides against me.
“Do you mean to tell us thatyousawa native child actually being born?” came the horrified voice of the professor of economics.
“Sure I saw it. You didn’t think she stopped having her baby just because I was there, did you?” I retorted. Those professors thought I was lying. What did they know about the sea, anyway? Then, contradicting another statement I had happened to make, came the retort:
“In our civilized world today there is no such thing as slave trading.” The bewhiskered professor across from me brought his hand down on the table with a smack as he said it. He was trying to show me up and it got under my collar.
“The hell there ain’t,” I cried back at him just as hard and so much louder that he drew back in his shell.
“Sssh! Joan!” It was Mother’s voice from the head of the table. I guess she thought I would drive away her boarders.
“I won’t sssh!” I cried just as loud as ever. “He’s trying to make me out a liar. Ask Father, he’ll tell you.”
“Sure there is slave trading today,” said Father grudgingly. “It’s called blackbirdin’ in the South Seas. Some sea captains on sailin’ ships take cargoes of natives and ‘contract’ them for a pound apiece for five years to the planters in Northern Australia. When the natives have been worked almost to death the planters pay the sea captains to take the natives back to the islands they stole them from. Instead of takin’ them back to their own islands, the captains dump their loads of blacks on the first handy island that lies in their course. That’s why now you hardly ever see a pure breed of native in any tribe—the blackbirders have mixed them up.”
“Astonishing!” was the comment of the learned questioners. “Astonishing!” Mother didn’t tell Father to sssh! They didn’t dare openly dispute Father so they turned back on me. First they asked about storms at sea, adventures on our voyages—then they disbelieved them. The professor of economics was the worst.
“You are a very interesting study, little girl.” He rose from the table leaving me feeling like a germ under a microscope. I could see that navigating wasn’t going to be so easy with those landlubbers.
That night I slept for the first time in my life in a regular bed. The sheets felt so tickly and cool and the mattress was soft, but I couldn’t sleep. The house was so still and it didn’t rock! The stillness made me feel seasick. I couldn’t hear the noise of feet on deck above me. My bird and cats were in the hold, or rather what is called on shore, the cellar of the house. And so I lay awake most of the night pitching and tossing and wishing the house would just rock a little bit so I could go to sleep.
The following morning I was up at daybreak. I dressed quickly and ran through the house calling:
“All hands on deck. It’s four bells!”
Father came out of his room and caught me by the back of the neck.
“Pipe down, you. There’s folks asleep,” he said. It was time to eat breakfast according to ship schedule. The boarders were awakened by my cries. Mother served them their breakfast as soon as she could prepare it. When she called breakfast I dashed to the table and grabbed the biggest portion of scrambled eggs and a stack of pancakes and began scoffing them.
“Where are your manners?” It was Mother speaking as she took my self-helping away from me.
“I got here first,” I protested, “and it’s first come first get!” But Mother just couldn’t understand.
There followed a series of days full of bewildering problems for me. The other children on our block, instead of playing with me as I used to dream children would, drew away from me.
“She swears bad words,” I heard one girl tell another.
“That girl off the ship is too rough, my mother says,” confided her little friend. And so it went. Why didn’t they like me? Here were children my own age and I didn’t know how to play with them. Everything I said or did sent them away from me. My own sister and my brothers found excuses to take them away to their friends, leaving me behind. Running her boarding house kept Mother constantly busy and Father was at the ship all day long. When he came home in the evenings it was Mother he naturally turned to. I seemed forgotten. Oh, how I longed for a storm to arise to blow away the fear and loneliness of the land. I couldn’t stay in the house because it crushed me down and the professors didn’t approve of me. I kept out in the backyard as much as I could. Everything was so different on land. My seagull died the second day I was home. I tried to replace it with love for the chickens Mother kept. But chickens couldn’t fly. They seemed as bound down to the earth as I was, away from the ship. Even the roses in the garden had thorns on them. The lilies in the islands were soft-stemmed and lovely. I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn’t obey my mother because I knew she wasn’t strong enough to lick me. Every night Father came home from the ship and she would tell him how difficult I was to handle.
“She is your child. You’ll have to handle her,” I heard her tell Father.
“Joan will get used to land ways soon, Mother, don’t you worry about her.”
I heard Father and Mother discussing me.
“You raised her—so perhaps you can discipline her,” Mother said.
“Joan is your daughter. If you try to understand her she’ll steer as easy as a full-rigger in a fair wind,” came back Father.
“She’ll drive all my boarders away. Last night I heard her ask one of the professors if he had ever gone through a shark’s guts with his hands.” Mother was horrified as she related the facts to Father. Instead of finding sympathetic ears for the story of my disgraceful conduct, Mother saw Father laughing.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough Joan said this was a hell of a house because there wasn’t a bedbug or a cockroach in it. I tell you, you’ll have to speak to her.”
I couldn’t understand why Mother thought that I was terrible because I acted as I did. She went on:
“The child insists on practising spitting through a crack in the back fence at the woman next door.”
Poor Mother! At that time I wondered why she was so distressed. Now that the first glamour was gone, I looked upon my sister and brothers as jelly fish because they couldn’t lick me or climb or spit or swear for beans. I had been home, “on land” as I termed it, for three weeks when Father announced that he was going to sail. Mother packed his sea bag. Father never had a suitcase. He always used his own sea “ditty bags.”
A shot of agony went through me when I realized he was leaving, and without me. I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn’t stay on the land. Unable to contain myself I ran to my father and kicked him in the pants to make him notice me more than he noticed Mother.
“Say, ain’t I going with you?” I pleaded.
Father looked at me in a puzzled way, as if he didn’t know how to answer me, then he said:
“I’m just getting ready to sail, Joan. Thought I’d get my things on board all ready in case we get a fair wind that’ll take us out without any towboat.”
That settled it for me. I’d run away. If he thought he could leave me on land while he sailed off to the South Seas again he’d be mistaken. My sense of navigation came in handy. I remembered how we came from San Francisco to Berkeley. I’d go back to San Francisco the same way, but I didn’t have any money. That night when the house was asleep I sneaked into my father’s room and got his pants. I stole a big silver dollar from them and kept it in my fist all night. It was my price to freedom. The following morning while Mother was busy, and after my brothers and sister had started for work or school, I left home. Without hat or coat I took shore leave from the house with only my four kittens for company and went to San Francisco. I found my way to the dock opposite our schooner which lay at anchorage and I told a fisherman that I belonged on theMinnie A. Caine.
“Will you row me out for this much money?” I asked, and I showed him a half dollar in change. The old fisherman grinned and told me to get in his row boat, and he pulled me out to the ship, but he wouldn’t take my money. I climbed on deck and bumped smack into Stitches. The old man’s eyes nearly popped out in joy at seeing me again.
“I knowed the Old Man wouldn’t let you stay ashore. I know he’d bring you back,” he repeated over and over like a chant.
“He didn’t bring me back. I ran away.” I didn’t even ask Stitches not to tell. He hid me in the lazarette in a bed of old canvas. The Jap cook brought me some bread and a big can of soup. Fred Nelson was the only one of the crew who didn’t volunteer to help deceive my father about me. He came down to speak to me, but I guess he forgot what he wanted to say because his only words were:
“It ain’t much company for you, kid, these rats what live down here,” and so saying he turned on his heel and went back on deck. I stayed down in the dark hold all day, but I would have stayed there forever rather than go back to the land where everything I did was wrong. Along about six o’clock I heard Father’s voice on the poop deck above me.
“I’ll break every goddamned one of your necks if you don’t tell me where she is,” he said.
I heard Swede and Stitches and the Jap cook stalling.
“I know she came back here. She wouldn’t go no place else, so out with it. Where is she hiding?” he demanded. I heard each of the crew deny over and over that they knew anything about me, then I heard a scuffle. Father was beating some one of them up. I might just as well give up, I concluded, so I climbed out of the lazarette on deck. I faced an angry father.
“What the hell’s the idea?” he shouted at me, but somehow I didn’t feel he was as mad as he looked.
“If I let you give me a good licking, can I stay?” I asked. I would rather have died on that ship than give up. The crew gave me a look with one accord that seemed to say: “You’ve made liars of us.” But strangely enough, Father didn’t try to punish them.
“Get forrard about your duties. What are you loafin’ around here for?” he roared at them. Father gave me a licking with a rope’s end and I swear it felt good. It was like old times again, but when he had finished he took me ashore. My mother was very silent that night. I ate my supper in the kitchen and went to bed without speaking to her.
I was up at daylight the next morning, but I wasn’t soon enough for Father. He had left for the ship an hour before. I went outside and a strong wind was blowing. The sky was clear and I could see the blue water of the bay from our front porch. In the backyard was a giant eucalyptus tree. I climbed it with as much ease as I could scale the rigging on the ship. The higher I climbed the farther I could see out the Golden Gate. From my perch on the peak of the tree, I saw the ships at anchor in the bay. One of them was my ship. That wind meant Father would set sail. He was going without me! I found myself crying inside-like and I kept saying:
“Don’t leave me on land, Father! Come back and get me! Please, oh, please don’t let me die of loneliness here on land.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the distant harbor. I stared through the cold wind until my eyes burned with pain. I must have been up there for about three hours. I was hoping against hope that Father would hear me calling to him to come back and get me, when through my daze I heard my mother’s voice far below me at the root of the tree calling to me to come down. But I wouldn’t come down. Maybe our ship would sail if I took my eyes off the bay. Maybe I wouldn’t see her go. After a while Mother quit calling and went away.
A loud clanging of bells broke into my spell. Glancing below I saw a big red firewagon in front of the house. Firemen were rigging up two ladders against the tree and three of the men climbed up after me. Mother had called out the fire department, to get me down.
“I won’t come down,” I warned. “Go away and leave me alone.”
Instead of coming down I climbed one branch higher. I would stay there until I dropped. The wind was like a soothing hand to my bewildered mind. Up there it was friendly. Silly little fool that I was, I thought the land was all off its keel and it was really only me. I couldn’t adjust myself to foreign surroundings.
But soon, how soon I don’t remember, I heard my father’s voice bellowing up at me:
“On deck, you!” That was all he called, but I came down the tree like a sailor shaken off the foot ropes in a storm.
“Yes, sir?” I said when I faced him on the ground, surrounded by a frantic group of neighbors who had been attracted by the firewagon. There was great confusion and explanations. I stuck to my story that I thought he was sailing without me. My mother didn’t say anything. She looked as if she was crying inside.
“Take Joan back to the sea. She’ll fret herself away here,” she told Father when we went in the house.
“What makes you think I want her?” Father came back.
“You’ve been delaying sailing for a week. Your cargo is on board; you’ve had fair winds off shore; now you come and tell me your sailors have refused to ship out with you because Joan’s leaving is a bad omen—and yet you didn’t fight about it. If you told the truth to yourself it would be that you don’t want to go without Joan. Take her back with you.”
I could have kissed my mother, and I would have if I hadn’t thought it was too sissy to do it.
Father hotly denied that he had held up sailing on account of me, but he didn’t look mother in the eye when he blustered:
“I’m sailin’ on the flood tide tonight, Mother, and Joan goes with me.”
True to his word Father sailed that night and I was on board. After helping set sail, I climbed to the crosstrees where I watched the receding lights of the harbor disappear into a foggy bank of night. A snorting breeze carried us out the Golden Gate past the Farallone Islands, and beyond the moan of the bell buoy on the shoals. Our bow was pointed due west. The jibboom plunged under rising swells and shook itself free. The ship rolled and groaned as if she were relieved in her freedom from anchorage. I heard six bells ring below, and the watch was set. Nelson was at the wheel, Stitches was singing on the fo’c’s’le head, and the dim glow of Father’s pipe traced his paces from the binnacle to the rail and back, and I, up in the spanker crosstrees thumbed my nose at the land we left far astern.