2
In which an alarm clock and some dried apricots are exchanged with natives for a nurse for me. The ship becomes my cradle
My life at sea started when I was eleven months old. Father had brought me down to the schooner, a tiny bundle wrapped in a blanket. I was so small I would have been lost in his bunk, so Father had Stitches—the sailmaker—make a diminutive hammock of canvas. This hammock was swung from bolts, one sunk in the wall above the middle of Father’s bunk and the other into the stanchion at the foot of the bunk on the outside. The rolling of the ship rocked the hammock more steadily than the most indulgent mother.
From the time he made my baby hammock, Stitches devoted his life to me. For fourteen years he thought of me first, then of the ship, last of himself, and in the final tragedy of our ship, he died to save me. I loved him and pestered him and abused his love as only a child can, but I’ll never forget him.
I first recall Stitches as being the only man in the world older than Father. In reality he must have been close to sixty when I was brought on board. His life was one of the romantic tragedies of the sea, for when he came to sign on the Ship’s Articles he said “I’m a kind of Johnny-All-Sorts, Skipper. I’ve been all the way up and down the ladder from cabin-boy to Captain and back to sailmaker. My name’s my own business, and I’ll sign on in my own way, if you want me.”
“Sign any way you damn please,” answered Father, who knew a sailor when he saw one.
So the old sailor signed the Articles just “Stitches” and that’s the way he was known for more than fifteen years on our ship. In appearance there was no sailor like Stitches. Years of bending over his work as sailmaker had brought his head forward and his stomach protruding full speed ahead. He waddled a little when he walked, and always sat tailor fashion with his legs crossed so that he gave the impression of a mild, wise old turtle upright on his tail. Every man on the ship came to Stitches with his troubles because they all knew that he had forgotten more about the sea than most men ever learn, and he had had so many troubles of his own that he understood.
Stitches must have been born lacking the iron in his soul to make him set his course and hold it. Rather he had chosen to ride before the storms of life, but as a compensation for his successive failures, he had developed his own peculiar philosophy of content that made the crew love him.
Why didn’t Stitches give up the sea? He couldn’t. The sea was in his blood and he would rather stay on a ship in any capacity than live ashore in comfort.
“I’ll drop my final anchor with the wind howling in my ears above and the swish of bilge water below me,” he declared, “and that way I’ll go content.” And when the time came, I’m sure he went content.
I had inherited my father’s lusty lungs, and my crying did not help my popularity with the men trying to sleep on their watch below. The cabin-boy had to heat sea water in a saucepan over an oil lamp for my daily bath which Father gave me. My bathtub was an empty codfish keg, and how I yelled whenever I faced it. The mate usually turned in at nine in the morning and at that time I was always squalling my loudest. He made a remark which cost him his berth when it was repeated to my father.
“Damned if I ever thought I’d live to see the day when a deep water schooner would be made into a howling nursery.”
Friends of my father along the waterfront in Frisco thought he was crazy to take a baby to sea. We were bound for Chile and thence to Australia. Father’s friends reminded him that the trip was a hard one on account of sudden storms and freak weather off the west coast of South America.
“If I can handle a bunch of squareheads and a scow of a ship in a typhoon, a baby will be easy,” was Father’s answer to their warnings. With characteristic, clear vision he knew his course, and he determined to keep a strong hand on the helm of my life.
That trip, which was my first one, brought all the predicted complications. The patent foods which Father had provided to feed me did not agree with me. I lost weight and became so puny that Father had about given up hope that I would survive until we reached Sydney. There was only one thing for him to do and that was get some kind of food that would nourish me. We would not be in Australia for fifty or sixty days, so he turned in at Norfolk Island to see if he could buy something there to feed me.
“I tried to get a native woman with a small child to come on board and feed you from her breasts,” Father told me years afterwards, “but she was afraid to venture beyond the horizon on a white-winged ship.”
Not to be defeated in his mission, Father sent Stitches in one direction on the island and he went another, seeking some way of solving the feeding problem. Many search islands for treasure, but Father’s exploring was for something more rare on a South Sea island—food for a sick baby. Native children are fed on yarrow roots and raw fish washed down their little throats with coconut milk, but white children can digest no such diet.
After combing the island all day Father returned to the ship, discouraged. He had begun to think finer things of the land than he had when he had taken me from my home to raise on the sea.
At about midnight Stitches came on board. With triumph in his face he rolled aft and asked permission to speak to Father.
“Cap’n, I found somethin’ for the kid.”
Father looked at Stitches’ empty hands.
“Where in the hell is it?” he asked.
Stitches grinned.
“She’s up in the fo’c’s’le now. Come on and sign her on!” and he waddled out of the cabin followed by Father. Father thought “her” was some native woman that Stitches had coerced into coming on board. Stitches led the way under the fo’c’s’le head and pointed to his prize.
“Cap’n, I had a helluva time gettin’ that one, but I woulda got her if I had to kill all that tribe with me own fists.”
Father looked through the shadows under the fore-peak and saw a terrified milch goat. The beast was balancing dizzily on her legs among the anchor chains.
“How’d you get it?” Father asked.
“Well, as I said, Cap’n, them natives wasn’t gonna let me have her, and I figured I’d forfeit my sea boots if I’d let ’em out-talk me with that baby aft wastin’ away, so I trades ’em an old alarm clock and a handful of dried apricots for this here dairy.”
It was the best trade Stitches ever made. Father was so grateful for the goat that he appointed Stitches my nurse and guardian under him with the special privilege of talking back to Father on any matter concerning me without getting his block knocked off. His lesser reward was free tobacco so long as he stayed on the ship. For fourteen years to the day he died for me Stitches exercised all his special rights and privileges to the full. I grew to love him as a second father and I knew I was the mainspring of his life; knowing that, of course I took advantage of him every time I could.
The sailors named the goat “Wet Nurse” and to Wet Nurse and her generous supply of milk I owe my life today. In exchange for her milk Wet Nurse was fed oatmeal and coconuts.
After we put out to sea from Norfolk Island, Wet Nurse got seasick. Father knew that seasickness, like fright, will wear off if you don’t pay any attention to it, so he bided his time. He was rewarded when Wet Nurse got her sea legs and gave milk freely. Stitches always said I had an appetite like a goat’s because I could digest anything—so perhaps I inherited my iron stomach from Wet Nurse. For weeks I thrived on her milk, but it wasn’t to be for long. Wet Nurse was not exactly ship broke in her personal habits. She needed a valet with a broom and pan if ship’s orderliness was to be preserved. The crew took shifts of cleaning the decks where Wet Nurse took her exercise, with the result that she was not popular with the men forward! Wet Nurse got lonesome for her island home, and perhaps for her goat husband. She seemed to choose the hours when the sailors were sleeping to maaa her call. The sound of a she-goat calling her mate is not very beautiful, and it took all of Stitches’ strength to fight off the sailors when they wanted to make Wet Nurse walk the plank! Father treated her as if she were a cabin passenger, and it would have been tough on any sailor who harmed her.
One day, when I was about two years old, our ship was caught in a white squall off Lord Howe Island. A white squall is a sudden wind storm that rises without warning on the barometer and its velocity is so great that it will sweep the sea with huge waves ten minutes after it starts. Wet Nurse was standing by the galley door looking wistfully at the cook in the hope of getting an occasional scrap or two from his pans, when the squall hit the ship.
Whipped by the wind the vessel listed far over to leeward and great seas washed over the decks. I was tied in my hammock below, for Father had called all hands on deck. The crew was reefing down the topsails and battening down the hatches. Father stood at the helm steering the ship out of the belly of the swells to keep the seas from swamping us. Everyone forgot Wet Nurse. A giant green wave came over the fo’c’s’le head, washed over the galley, put out the cook’s stove and drove Wet Nurse against the bulwarks. With a shudder the vessel hove to the windward side and another sea smacked her deck with such force that it lifted the fore hatch from its cleats and sent it swirling to the lee bulwarks pinning Wet Nurse beneath its wreckage.
She lay crippled and terrified and nearly drowned under the debris until the storm subsided. The mate and Stitches found her, and lifting her gently, as if she were a person, from beneath the hatch, they carried her up to the poop deck to my father. She had broken both her legs and several ribs were smashed in. Father, who has always had a gentle hand with animals, carefully set her legs in splints and bound her ribs with bandages made from small pieces of canvas. Then he lay Wet Nurse in his bunk beneath my hammock. In spite of everything he could do for her, Wet Nurse died that night. She was given a regular ship’s funeral. The ship hove to for five minutes, as her body, sewn in sailcloth and weighted with a piece of chain, was committed to the deep.
And the next day I went on regular sailor’s diet.
man sewing