9 In Which I Learn to Take a Joke. Hoping You May Do the Same
We were nearing the Equator bound south from Puget Sound. Father, the mate, and I were eating our noon meal, “onion bouillon” (one bucket of water with one onion in it), rice with curry sauce and boiled tapioca with pale lavender cornstarch sauce. The Jap cook delighted in coloring the food to make it appear more appetizing than it was.
Father and the mate were discussing our position on the chart.
“We ought to make the crossing along about four bells this afternoon, Mr. Swanson. Better get the big hawser out and stretch it on deck in case we need it.”
The mate caught the twinkle in Father’s eye and raised his voice for the benefit of the greenhorn cabin-boy who was listening to the conversation, big-eyed, in the pantry.
“All right, Captain, and when Neptune comes aboard shall I tell him about Slops trespassing on his domain?”
“Yes. He’ll probably raise hell because he doesn’t like the uninitiated to cross the Equator.”
The cabin-boy came out of the pantry and made a pretense of passing the bread to me.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said to Father, “but what does the Equator look like?”
“It’s a white line about three feet under the water. I just told Mr. Swanson here to get out the hawser and have it ready. When we cross the Equator we begin goin’ down hill and slip south so fast we got to tie a line on to the Equator,” Father lied without blinking an eye.
Slops sniffed, pretending contempt.
“You can’t fool me, Captain,” he protested.
Father looked very stern.
“When you have washed up here I want you to lean overboard and look for the line and when you see it, call me,” he ordered the cabin-boy.
Slops’ eyes nearly popped out of his sallow face, but he claimed that he didn’t believe it.
When Father and the mate left the table and went on deck, Slops came to me.
“Does the Old Man mean that stuff about us going too fast when we cross the Equator?” he asked.
“Sure he does, and what’s more, Neptune knows you’ve never crossed the line before, and you’re going to be tarred and feathered,” I promised him. “Besides that, you’ll probably have to clean up all the mess they make tarring and feathering you.”
Slops didn’t think so much of me at that moment, and he turned back to his pantry with a sniff. An hour later Father asked me where Slops had disappeared to. I didn’t know, but I set about to find him. I looked in the pantry, in his cabin, up in the galley, under the fo’c’s’lehead, aloft in the rigging, down in the lazarette, everywhere, so I thought, and I couldn’t track him. We were just about to cross the Equator, and Slops’ presence was desired on deck for the initiation. Mr. Swanson stepped up to my father!
“Come with me, Captain, and I’ll show you where that cat-livered cabin-boy is.” I went with them, forward, and there we found Slops. He was leaning far out the hawse hole staring at the water below looking for the Equator! The mate planted his foot in the hind part of the cabin-boy and nearly sent him hurling into space through the hawse hole.
“Get amidships, you so and so ignoramus.” Poor Slops, quaking with fear, ambled aft. There on the mizzen hatch he saw a platform built of timber on which was a big wooden tub of “shaving lather.” The sailors were sitting around the tub on their haunches with treacherous innocence on their faces.
“Tie up the beggar,” ordered Swede, who had assumed charge of the activities. Slops was grabbed by Bulgar and McLean and bound hand and foot with rope. For a moment there was an ominous pause, and then slowly coming down off the fo’c’s’le head was old Neptune himself. One of the sailors had rigged himself up in a torn gunny sack, with long, straggly beard made of rope yarn and he carried a trident. It is the custom for the Captain of the ship to turn over all authority to Neptune when crossing the Line. Neptune took his stand on the wooden platform. He called for silence, and then his voice boomed out,
“Where is the son of a bitch that dares trespass my Equator without his passport?”
McLean and Swede shoved Slops in front of Neptune.
“This is the offender, sir,” said Swede.
Neptune looked at him condemningly. He took the old stubble paintbrush in his hand and dipped it into the lather. We all knew just what was in that lather!
“What is your name?” roared Neptune.
Slops opened his mouth to tell his name and Neptune put some of the lather off the brush into it. The sailors laughed heartily at Slops’ discomfiture. The tar in the lather stuck to his face, and when it was at the proper gluey stickiness to hold the “feather,” Neptune threw dried copra on him. It stuck fast and gave Slops the appearance of a wild ape. He tried to resist Neptune and that made his lot worse, for the sailors, as a punishment for his insubordination, fastened a long rope to his body and threw him overboard. They dragged him along until he was almost unconscious and then hauled him on deck.
“Let’s splice the mainbrace, Neptune,” said Father, and he opened a bottle of rum. Each man got a big swig out of it, but Slops got only a smell of the cork.
I was laughing so hard at the whole performance that I was oblivious of the preparations of Neptune to lather some one else. I was not to be kept in ignorance for long.
“Captain,” bawled Neptune, “has your daughter got her passport for crossing the Line?”
“Say, I crossed the Equator when I was a year old, and they never did anything to me because I was a baby,” I bragged, “and besides that, I’ve crossed about twenty times.” I swelled my chest out and bulged my muscles in true sailor-fashion, so cocky was I about being a regular old salt.
“You ain’t been initiated, huh? Well, Captain, it’s about time she was. What about it?” he asked. Father looked at me as if he was full of pity for my predicament, and then in a half-mocking, sad tone he said,
“Guess she’ll have to get tarred and feathered, too.”
“Hey, what the hell?” I piped up.
“This is the what,” said Neptune. “You’re next,” and he waved to the tub of lather.
“Just try and do it,” I challenged him, really getting sore. It had ceased to be funny to me, and the more excited I got the funnier it seemed to the sailors.
“You cock-eyed quart of bilgewater, you haven’t got a chance of tarring and keelhauling me,” I snorted and jumped for the rigging. I got no farther. Swede dragged me back by the foot. They bound me as they had the luckless Slops and applied the brush and lather to my face.
“What is your name, little girl?” cooed that damned Neptune. I was too wise to open my mouth, so I thought, for I had no intention of swallowing any of that concoction.
“Answer me,” he bellowed.
I closed my lips tighter. Huh, I was smarter than they were after all. I’d show them! “Smack” on my behind went a plank, heaved by the ape-like Slops. It was such a hard whack that I opened my mouth to holler, and no sooner had I done that than Neptune stuck a big gob of lather in the wide aperture of my jaws, and then I heard the whole crew and my father guffawing at me. Slops had been initiated, so he rated disciplining me. From head to foot they soaked me in that lather. The tar in it matted my long thick hair together and stuck my eyelashes so that I couldn’t open my eyes. I wouldn’t have minded it so much if I hadn’t heard them all laughing at me.
When no more lather would stick to me I heard Father say to Neptune:
“Let’s throw her over and give her a bath. She’s so dirty now that she’ll just love it.” What I thought of my father and the whole bunch at that moment cannot be written here, but it was very graphic!
Overboard I went, tied by the same rope that had been on Slops. The salt water has the interesting effect of making tar stick so that it will not come off without turpentine. When they thought I had had enough of a bath, they hauled me out and sprinkled me with some dried copra. I looked worse than Slops did. I sat in the scupper picking off the shreds of coconut husks that came in the copra, and I gave the appearance of a she-orang outang picking off fleas.
As they say in the movies, time passed, but not my temper. The copra I picked off stuck to my fingers. I picked that off with the other hand and it stuck to the other. It was a thankless job. And then there was my hair. Never in this world would the tar come out of it. I went to my ally, the cook, and asked him for some oil to rub on me. He wouldn’t give me any for he was afraid the sailors would jump on him if he helped me.
“Well, at least you might give me some turpentine,” I said to the mate.
“Sure, all you want,” and he gave me a five gallon tin of it. “Now go ahead and enjoy yourself,” he said. I rubbed turpentine on the tar and it came off, but with it large pieces of my own skin.
“How in the hell will I get this stuff out of my hair?” I wailed.
“That’s very simple, Joan; I guess I’ll have to shave your hair off,” said Father. He promptly set about to do it. With a carving knife he cut my long hair off, then he shaved my head with his razor. I was as sunburned as walnut juice, but my scalp was white, and the two-color tone of my face and head gave me the weird appearance of a native ready for a war dance.
I was not going to forget that little initiation party in a hurry. I didn’t overlook any opportunity to get even with the sailors, Slops, the mate and my father during the rest of the trip.
I lay for Slops near the poop deck ladder one day when he was to bring the dinner basket aft. As he started to mount the ladder, I tripped him and sent the basket and the dinner flying over the deck. I caught some bedbugs and put them in my father’s and the mate’s bunks, and to make sure the bugs would stay in them and bear millions of other little bedbugs, I stuck brown sugar in the ticking in their mattresses. It was not so easy for me to get even with the sailors, for I had no excuse to be in the fo’c’s’le. About a month after the Equator episode I got my chance. It was a Sunday. We were in the trade winds and there was no ship work to be done. The sailors had one of those rare days at sea, to loaf. I’d show them how long they could loaf. Taking my penknife, I sneaked to the mizzen boom and pretended I was just swinging on it. I was really ripping the stitching in the middle of the sail. The wind caught in the little hole, and I ran and hid below, when I heard it start to rip. The force of the wind tore the sail right up to the gaff, and before Father saw it in time to lower it, the sail was in ribbons.
“All hands on deck!” he shouted. Away from their naps and pipes came the sailors. The ruined sail put the ship out of control, so Father had to heave to. “All hands on deck until a new sail is made,” he ordered, and amid cursing and grumbling, far into the night, they sweated and slaved, getting up the new mizzen. That is, all hands, except me. I sat on the windward rail laughing at them.
sailor looking thru a spyglass
girl on a crosstree