A Man in the Open. Roger Pocock
Mose was like on week-days, and Sunday didn't happen aboard of the Zedekiah. I remember hidin' away at the back of Ole Oleson's bunk, axing God please to turn me into an animal. Any sort would do, because I seen men kind to animals. You know an animal mostly consists of a pure heart, and four legs, which is a great advantage. Queer world though, if all our prayers was granted.
Belay thar. A man sets out to tell adventures, and if his victims don't find some excuse for getting absent, he owes them all the happiness he's got. It's mean to hand out sorrow to persons bearing their full share already. So we proceeds to the night when I ran from the Zedekiah, and joined the Happy Ship.
We lay in the big ice pack off Cape Breton, getting a load of seal pelts. All hands was out on the ice while daylight lasted, clubbing seals, gathering the carcasses into pans, sculping, then towing the hides aboard to salt 'em down.
We got our supper, then turned in, bone-weary, but the ship groaned so that I daresn't sleep. A ship ain't got no mouth to give her age away, and yet with ships and women it's pretty much the same, for the younger they are the less they need to be painted. The Zedekiah was old, just paint an' punk, and she did surely groan to the thrust of the pack. I was too scared to sleep, so I went up on deck.
I'd allus watched for a chance to run away, and thar was Jim, the anchor-watch, squatting on the bitts dead asleep. He used to be that way when nobody chased him.
I daresn't make for the coast. You see I'd heard tell of niggers ashore which eat boys who run away. But I seen the lights of the three-masted schooner a couple of miles to windward. I grabbed a sealing gaff and slid down on to the ice.
First, as the pans rocked under me, I was scary, next I warmed up, gettin' venturesome, until I came near sliding into the wet, and after that I'd look before I lep'. There'd been a tops'l breeze from the norrard, blowin' up since nightfall to a hurricane, and then it blew some more, until I couldn't pole-jump for fear of being blowed away. With any other ship, I'd have wished myself back on board.
You know how the grinding piles an edge around each pan, of broken splinters? That edge shone white agin the black of the water, all the guide I had. But times the squalls of wind was like scythes edged with sleet, so I was blinded, waiting, freezing until a lull came, and I'd get on. It was broad day, and I reckon each step weighed a ton before I made that schooner.
A gray man, fat, with a chin whisker, lifted me in overside. "Come far?" says he, and I turned round to show him the Zedekiah. She wasn't there. She was gone—foundered.
So that's how I came aboard of the Happy Ship, just like a lil' lost dog, with no room in my skin for more'n bones and famine. Captain Smith used to say he'd signed me on as family ghost; but he paid me honest wages, fed me honest grub, while as to clothes and bed, I was snug as a little rabbit. He taught me reading and writing, and punctuation with his belt, sums, hand, reef, and steer, catechism, knots and splices, sewing, squeegee, rule of the road, soojie moojie, psalms of David, constitution of the United States, and playing the trombone, with three pills and a good licking regular Saturday nights. Mother's little boy began to set up and take notice.
Then five years in the Pawtucket all along, from Montreal to Colon, from banjos plunking in them portales of Vera Cruz, to bugles crying revally in Quebec, and the oyster boats asleep by old Point Comfort, and the Gloucester fleet a-storming home past Sable, and dagos basking on Havana quays. Suck oranges in the dinghy under the moonlight, waiting to help the old man aboard when he's drunk; watch the niggers humping cotton into a tramp at Norfolk; feel the tide-rip snoring up past Tantramar; reef home trys'ls when she's coming on to blow, with the Keys to lee'ard; can't I just feel the old Pawnticket romping home to be in time for Christmas!
Did you hear tell that the sea has feelings—the cryin', the laugh, dumb sorrow, blazin' wrath, the peace, the weariness, the mother-kindness, the hush like prayers of something which ain't brute, or human, but more'n human, so grand and awful you hardly dare to breathe?
Words, only words which don't fit, the misfits which make fun of serious thoughts. We men is dumb beasts which can't say what we mean, whereas I've allus reckoned persons like cats and wolves don't feel so much emotions as they exudes in song.
Seafaring men is sea-wise, sea-kind, only land-foolish, for there's things no sailorman knows how to say, things even landsmen can't figure out in dollars and cents.
Seems I'm a point off my course? I'm only saying things the captain said, times on a serious night when we'd be up some creek for fish, or layin' low for ducks. If ever he went ashore without me, I'd be like a lost dog, and he drunk before the sun was over the yard-arm. But away together it wasn't master and boy, but just father and son. He'd even named me after himself, and that's why my name's Smith.
I disremember which port—somewheres up the St. Lawrence where we loaded lumber for the Gulf o' Mexico, but the captain and me was away fishing. Mother had come from the Labrador to find me, old gray mother. They dumped her seal-hide trunk on our wharf, so one of the china dogs inside got split from nose to tail; but mother just sat on a bollard, and didn't give a damn. She put on her round horn spectacles to smile at the mate aft, and the second mate forward, the or'nary seaman painting in the name board, and Bill in his bos'n's chair a-tarring down the rigging, and the bumboat laundress who'd been tearing the old man's shirt-fronts. Yes, she'd a smile for every man jack that seemed to warm their hearts, but nary a word to interfere with work, for she just sat happy at the sight of the Pawnticket, and she surely admired everything, from Old Glory to Blue Peter—until our nigger cook came and spilled slops overside. Seems he'd had news of the lady, and came to grin, but he was back in his galley, like a rabbit to his burrow, while she marched up the gangway. "Can't abide dirt," says mother, and even the new boy heard not a word else 'cept the splash. For mother just escorted that nigger right through the galley, out at the other end, over the port rail, and boosted him into the blue harbor, for the first and only bath he'd ever had. Then she took off her horn spectacles, her old buckskin gloves, and her bonnet, and sot to cleaning a galley which hadn't been washed since the days of President Lincoln. Floor, range, walls, beams, pots, kettles, plates and dishes, she washed and scrubbed and polished. She hadn't time to listen to the wet nigger or the mate, and narry a man on board could get more than yea or nay out of mother. She cooked them a supper too good to be eaten and spoilt, then set the dishes to rights, got the lamp a-shining, and axed to be shown round the ship. You should have seen the idlers aft and the boys forrard, redding up as if all their mothers was expected. As to the nigger, the fellers made a habit of pitching him overboard until he got tired of coming.
The cap'n and me comes back along with the dinghy, makes fast, and climbs aboard. There's old gray mother, with the horn specs, calm in her own kitchen, just tellin' us to set right down to supper. Cap'n lives aft, and I belongs up forrard, being ordinary seaman, and less important aboard than the old man's pig. Yet somehow mother knew, feeding us both in the galley, and standing by while we fed. Never a word, but mother had a light for Captain Smith's cigar, and her eyes looking hungry at me for fear she'd be sent ashore.
"Well, ma'am," says the captain, "sent your baggage aft? Oh, we'll soon get your baggage aboard."
Then I heard him on deck seeing mother's dunnage into the spare berth aft, and the nigger's turkey thrown out on the wharf.
Sort of strange to me remembering mother, gaunt, bitter-hard, always in the right, with lots to say. And here was little mother sobbing her heart out on the breast of my jersey. Just the same mother changed. Said she was fed up with the Labrador, coming away to see the world, meet folks, and have a good time; but would I be ashamed of having her with me at sea? Surely that had been old mother back there in the long ago time, and now it was young mother laughing just because she'd cried.
Shamed? All the ways down from Joe Beef's clear to Rimouski you'll hear that yarn to-day, of how the old sea custom of winning a berth in fair fight was practised by a lady, aboard of the Pawnticket.
You've heard of ship's husbands, but we'd the first ship's mother. And the way she crep' in was surely insidious. Good word that. Let her draw stores, you find she's steward and purser, just surely poison to the chandlers. Oh, she'll see to the washing,