20 A Love Story — Which Is an End and Not a Beginning
“Them’s Portuguese Men-o-war, Skipper,” explained Stitches when I asked him what the floating, transparent little blue things were that I saw glistening in the sunlight on the surface of the sea.
“Yep, them little tri-cornered sails on them looks like old Portuguese ships of war, that’s where they gets their name.”
“Are they fish?” I asked.
“Kind of. They is barnacles in the making. When they catch fast to the bottom of a ship with their little blue threads of trailing anchor lines they petrify into shell and that is how barnacles grow.”
I marveled that the little inch high jelly ships could ever turn into the curse of seamen—barnacles! There was a fleet of thousands of them before my eyes.
“As long as they keep moving they is all right, but they are like some cussed folks ashore who, when they stick on to someone else, turn into a damned nuisance,” Stitches concluded. It was another lesson I learned from the sea. Only a few days before we had passed through a floating mass of porous-looking petrified lava—the spewed up evidence of an undersea volcano in eruption. There was so much of it that it gave the appearance of floating land.
“Shore folks call that pumice stone and they grind it up to make tooth paste,” Stitches had said. Why did shore people make everything so difficult for themselves? I used salt to brush my teeth with, not lava from deep sea volcanoes.
“It appears like you was usin’ up a lot of wind askin’ questions with your mouth—and your mind is a-headin’ off to leeward on another tack. Ever since you seen that love dance on Atafu you been moonin’ around.”
Stitches’ words struck home. The beauty of the dance, the thrill of seeing the native girls choose their mates, and the expression of longing on the native men’s faces to possess the girls haunted me. No matter how I tried I couldn’t drive the memory from my mind. I pretended to be interested in ship work, but really just one problem absorbed my mind. I wanted to mean everything to some one person—I wanted to be wanted. My loneliness on shipboard was accentuated after I saw the marriage dance on Atafu. Where would I find a mate? I didn’t have any lotus to wear to make any man choose me. In fact none of the men on board seemed to have the slightest idea of the thoughts constantly in my mind—I was just a nuisance, and no one of them ever showed an inclination to offer himself. I probably never would be taken to a dance where I could pick out my man. Then the thought came: the girls on the island could choose only from the men they knew and the dance was merely a method of selection. After all, getting the man was the important thing and if the native girls had an island full of men to pick from—I had a shipload, so I became encouraged.
I would find my man on board the ship and so I began to look over the crew. First, of course, there was Stitches. I loved him but not as a prospective mate. He looked so much like a wise old turtle, and if I spoke to Stitches about my plan he’d go to Father and I’d get a mug full of salts or a rope’s end on the back of my lap to clear away “crazy fancies.” The rope’s end never really hurt—my body was too tough. But of late my ideas with regard to lickings had changed. They made me furious. I was getting too old to be treated as a child. That’s what I thought. But what I thought made no difference to Father. It was the rope’s end or the salts, clear to the last day we were on the ship.
So it was plain Stitches would not do.
There were the two mates. Strange, but all the time I was on the ship we never had a mate I really liked. I passed them over. There were just four of our old men on board now, Stitches, Swede, Bulgar and Nelson; the rest of the crew to me were just sailors, new men who meant nothing.
I considered Swede again. He was big and strong but he could never stand the test of beautiful girls caressing him without being tempted. Bulgar, well, he was too much of a bully.
I was sitting on the main hatch helping the watch splice ropes into a bumper when the first really concrete idea came to startle me. Nelson was splicing a rope opposite me. Why hadn’t I thought about him? Somehow he was the last one I ever wanted to think about, yet he measured up finer than any of the crew. He could spit a curve, he had hair on his chest. Just looking at him at that moment made me feel funny. I got hot and cold all at once, and my fingers tangled the rope splice.
“Aw, he ain’t the one,” I declared to myself, and I got up and left the hatch. I climbed up to the crosstrees. The more I thought up there at the masthead the more tangled my mind came. Nelson kept coming in my thoughts, but I’d shove him out. That night I stayed on deck very late. The moon was out, and the soft air from the trade winds barely kept the sails full. At four bells, Nelson came to take his trick at the wheel. He didn’t seem to notice me lying in the belly of the spanker sail. He just kept his eyes on the topsails and on the compass. I didn’t dare speak to him as long as Father stayed on deck, but about eleven o’clock Father went below to turn in. The mate was pacing his beat down on the main deck so my way was clear. There is a maritime law that prohibits anyone talking with the man at the helm so I had to do it very quietly.
“Nelson!” I whispered. He looked up to where I was lying.
“Huh?”
“Are you like all sailors? Are you in love with the curves of the sails too?” He was startled by my sudden question, but after a moment he said:
“Hell no! I ain’t in love with no skirt, imaginary or real.”
I couldn’t think of any answer to that so I kept quiet. He looked at me so steadily I thought he’d let the ship get off her course. After several minutes of silence he said in a voice that sounded as if he was talking about a cargo of copra:
“Skipper, you know you’re a pretty kid.”
I thought he was being sarcastic. I jumped off the sail and ran below where I threw myself on my bunk and cried. I hated him for making fun of me. Hadn’t my father told me I was ugly? Why was Nelson just rubbing it in? I hated him, and for hours I lay awake wishing the ship would sink and he would be the first one to drown. But in spite of everything, the next day I found myself forgiving him. It was Sunday and we had the inevitable duff cake for dessert. Instead of eating my piece I stowed it away in my overall’s pocket to give to him, for the fo’c’s’le didn’t rate desserts. He stood his trick at the wheel that afternoon from two to four. He didn’t even look at me when I came on deck, but I walked past the wheel and stuffed my hunk of precious cake in his hand. He took it and began to eat it. I sat on the skylight and watched each swallow go down while my mouth watered for just a taste of the dessert I took joy in sacrificing for him.
“This is good grub,” he said between mouthfuls. The last bite went into his mouth but a corner of it fell to the deck. Oh, if he wouldn’t see it I’d wait until he left the wheel and pick it up and eat it myself! I stood guard from my perch on the skylight over that piece on the deck. When Oleson came to relieve him, Nelson’s big bare foot stepped on the piece of cake by accident and ground it into some tobacco juice on the deck!
Fred Nelson was a Dane. He had yellow hair and light blue eyes. He was about thirty years old, and as strong as three average men. He was the only man I had ever seen that had gold hairs on his chest—and those curly ones. He was different from the rest of the crew. He wouldn’t let me play strip poker. When he looked at me he made me wish I didn’t wear overalls. I imagined there was an expression in his eyes of hunger when he looked at me, yet he avoided speaking to me whenever he could. He had been on the ship for six years and never in all that time did he show fear in a storm or shirk the hardest job.
I did everything that I could to worship at his feet, without letting him know of it. One hot night, about a week after the duff cake disappointment, I was sleeping in the lifeboat which was hung over the stern. I awoke and through half-closed eyes I saw Nelson hacking a curl of hair off my head with his pocket knife. He was breathing fast as if he had been running hard. I began to tremble from head to foot and a pounding in my head and throbbing in my chest nearly made me burst, but something inside told me to pretend I was still asleep. After he took my curl he walked softly away and disappeared forward. I never let Nelson learn that I knew what he had done. Somehow I felt it was a secret he wanted to keep. I began to keep away from Stitches and Father. I just wanted to hide where no one could see how I felt.
Nelson never acted as though he had cut off my hair that quiet night. A few days later I heard him telling Swede and Bulgar his ambition as the three of them sat whittling sticks in the scupper near the mizzen mast.
“I stuck by this barge ’cause I’m workin’ for a job of second mate. Ever since I left the old country I been plannin’ to get officer’s papers,” he said.
“There ain’t nothin’ in being a second mate. Responsibility at sea and standin’ watch in port. Not for me!” volunteered Swede with all the contempt in his voice he could master.
“Some day I’ll have a ship of my own,” went on Nelson, “and she’ll be the fastest full-rigger afloat.”
“You mean you’re going to be a Captain Nelson?” I asked. He looked straight at me. Again I felt my face flush hotly. “Yes, and there ain’t going to be no women-kind on my ship when I’m Skipper. Women belongs on land,” he answered.
I couldn’t stand it, I fled aft and hid again—away from myself.
“What are you moping around about, Joan?” Father asked me that night. “Lately you been pale as a white squall, and so quiet you must be sick. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing—except that I wish I was a million miles away from here. I wish I was never on a ship. I wish I was on land!” I cried at him.
“I set you ashore once and you ran away, so now I ain’t going to let you go navigatin’ on the land until you can steer a clear course. I seen too much of what livin’ ashore does to women,—it fills their heads so full of ballast that real cargoes such as common sense haven’t got any place. I’ll not cast off your hawsers from the ship until you can sail in fair or foul weather by yourself without runnin’ aground.” Those were the only words of warning my father gave me, and I don’t know to this day if he knew the turmoil I was in. If he suspected I was in love he didn’t let me know it! We arrived in Newcastle, Australia, a few weeks later. As usual, the crew went ashore after the long sea trip, to frequent the pubs along the waterfront. The second mate got in a drunken brawl and was put in jail. Swede, Bulgar and Oleson just kept away without reporting for duty for a week. One day Father left the ship early in the morning to attend to chartering a cargo of coal and left me on board. We were anchored out in the channel. The only others on the ship were the Jap cook, Stitches, and Fred Nelson.
“You’re the most sober man I got, Nelson,” Father said. “You take the day shift of watchman while I’m ashore.”
“Yes, sir,” came back Nelson, pleased that Father had noticed his sobriety. It would stand him in good stead when he came up for a second mate’s license.
Along about noon I got so lonesome for someone to talk to that I sought out Nelson. I found him down in the hold of the ship coiling up ropes and otherwise cleaning the hold ready for its next cargo. I slid down a rope to the keel. Nelson didn’t even speak to me, so I asked:
“Can I watch you work, Nelson?”
“You’re the Skipper’s daughter, so I suppose you can do anything you damn please,” was his unpromising answer.
I sat down on a big coil of rope and let my feet hang over but they didn’t quite reach the floor of the hold. For perhaps half an hour I sat there. I was thinking. Nelson was working. Neither of us said a word. All of a sudden Nelson turned quickly towards me and before I could realize what was happening he grabbed me and kissed me! My head swam. I felt dizzy. I was thrilled and frightened. All in a confused instant the thought that I was bad because I liked that kiss stabbed my consciousness. I wanted to run from the hold up to the sunlight, but I couldn’t move. My first grown-up kiss from a man! If only the bottom of the ship would open and swallow me.
From what seemed miles away I heard Nelson’s voice speaking to me. He had walked back to his chore of cleaning and from there he said:
“How did you like that one, huh? That was just what you was aching for, wasn’t it?”
So he blasted my illusion. For that kiss was just what I had been aching for but I could have killed him for putting my thought into words.
Through a daze I heard him continue:
“You better not tell the Old Man I kissed you. He’d raise hell with me.”
I had no intention of telling Father about that kiss. I climbed out of the hold to the deck. I felt that every one would see when they looked at me that I had been kissed for I thought that kiss stuck out like a flaming mushroom on my face.
When Father returned to the ship that night he looked at me and didn’t see anything wrong.
Long days of loading on coal passed, but I avoided going on deck when I knew Nelson would be on duty. How I treasured that kiss! Each morning when I washed my face I was careful to leave untouched the portion the kiss was on, with the result that my countenance gave the effect of a clean swept beach with a dark circle left by a receding tide in the region of my mouth. I was preserving as precious that kissed spot because how did I know I would ever get another one.
My happiness was complete until my father got a good look at my face while we sat at the dining table. The reflected light from the skylight overhead betrayed me. Father saw my dirty face.
“What do you mean by coming to the table without washing your face?” he demanded. I never thought so fast for an excuse in my life.
“I can’t wash around my mouth, Father, because it’s all chapped and it’s too sore.”
Father rose from the table, clutched me by the suspenders of my overalls and propelled me to the sink in the pantry. “Too sore to wash, huh?” he said and he took some sandsoap (the kind used to scrub down the decks) and a rag. With them he wiped the kiss, or what was left of it, from my face forever. I think in that moment I felt I suffered my greatest tragedy. I didn’t want to see Nelson again for fear he would think I wanted him to kiss me again. I did want him to, that’s why I avoided him.
When the cargo was loaded Father went ashore to bail his crew out of jail. He found all of them except the second mate willing to come back and ship out. The second mate refused to be bailed, and it put Father in a hole because officers for American ships are difficult to get in a foreign port.
“Why don’t you make Nelson second mate?” I ventured to Father when I heard him grumbling about his bad luck with crews. The idea appealed to him, for he said to the first mate:
“Send Nelson aft to me, Mr. Owens.”
I was delighted. If Nelson was made an officer I would see him every day at the table. We would eat together—oh, the thrill of that thought! To eat with him three times a day for a six months’ voyage! I could be friends with a second mate, according to Father’s code of discipline, but not with a common sailor.
Nelson came into Father’s quarters very much ill at ease.
“Yes sir, Captain. You sent for me, sir?”
“I’m going to ship you out as second mate. If you make good from here to Adelaide, I’ll indorse your license for Officer’s papers. Get your sea bag aft, at once. Your duty begins now,” and Father turned to his bills of lading as the way of dismissing the conversation.
I stood near grinning, I was so happy. I saw Nelson’s face flush bright red. He looked at Father. Then he looked at me and back at Father again. The flush had gone out of his face and his mouth made a straight line.
“I have to refuse, Captain. I don’t want to be a second mate. I’d like my discharge, sir,” Nelson said, almost defensively.
Father turned on him as if he hadn’t heard him rightly.
“Are you a damned fool or just plain crazy? What do you mean, ‘don’t want to be a mate?’”
“That’s it, sir. I’d like to be discharged,” came back Nelson. My heart sank. Why did he want to leave? It was the dream of his life to be an officer and he was throwing away his first chance.
“Then get the hell off this ship and not a damned cent of pay will you get!” bellowed Father at him. Nelson left the cabin. I followed him, and ran after him. I caught up to him and pulled his arm to hold him back.
“Why are you going to leave, Nelson?”
Nelson took me by the shoulders and shook me. I was crying and I didn’t try to hide my tears. It was the first time any sailor had seen me bawl but I wasn’t ashamed. The awful fear—the ghastly loneliness of the prospect of losing Nelson—gripped me.
“Aw, what the hell, Skipper. If I stay on this ship as second mate I’d be seeing you every day, three times a day, even at meal times.
“An’ if I was to be near to you like that every day I’d be makin’ love to you, see?”
“But isn’t that what you would want?” I asked, for it certainly was what I wanted—what I dreamed of.
“Sure, Skipper, but being so close like to you, this packet wouldn’t be big enough for us both. You never had a chance—why, you ain’t growed up yet, and any man’d be a dog to make love to a baby like you.”
With those words Nelson turned from me and walked forward in great haste.
The next morning he went over the gangplank with his sea bag without looking back even to wave good-bye to me as I stood in the rigging watching him go. That was the last time I ever set eyes on Nelson. I have learned since that he was killed in a race riot on the docks in Galveston.
Of course I know that land folks would think Nelson a fool—a dear, chivalrous fool. Maybe—but I’ll never forget him.
ship on fire at night