Joan Lowell

“ My hair was streaked in wet strings over my face as I stood on deck dripping in front of Father. Before he could say a word I put my hand in my pocket to bring out my beautiful anemone when to my dismay the thing I brought forth in my fist was no dainty colored flower but a dirty piece of seaweed that looked like a hunk of rotten sponge. In the water in its bed of blue sea it had the beauty of a lace-like piece of coral, but in my hand it was a brutal disillusion—just ugly seaweed. My heart sank in disappointment—the thing I had wanted to possess for its loveliness didn’t exist. ”

“ Breadfruit trees, coconuts, yarrow root, banana and plantain palms, blossoming hibiscus flowers, poisonous wild peas, giant morning-glory vines and little native berry plants grow there in such profusion that as you approach the southeast side of the island it looks like a solidly woven mat of green and white. The beauty of Atafu is distinct from other South Sea islands. The sand on its horse-shoe beach is an orange gold, the coral jutting out under the white spray of the surf a delicate pink against the transparent green sea. ”

“ The swirling wind starts a swirl of water and just as the land tornado picks up a house and drops it a quarter of a mile away, so the water tornado picks up its swirling column of water and carries it along. Surface fish, driftwood, anything in its path goes up to tear, like a huge hourglass, across the sea. But so temperamental is the sea tornado that anything which changes the current of air, will break its hold and the swirling upraised column collapses, dropping its tons on tons of water back into the sea to crush anything beneath. ”

“ It is funny in a crisis how little things catch your attention. With that waterspout racing toward us on the wind, the men had to cling on with their knees and stomachs to keep from being whisked off into the sea. I had never seen any of our crew show such real fear in my life. They were as pale as the white canvas they were trying to reef in, for a waterspout was no ordinary hazard. ”

“ The mate threw over a chip of wood to see which way we were drifting, but the chip just whirled around and went down. A typhoon would have been a welcome visitor then, for at least its wind would have carried us away—but just being becalmed, waiting for the jaws of the iceberg to finish us, was like a terrible nightmare.
The cabin-boy and the Jap cook crouched behind the galley, pale and shaking with fright. Father’s face was set grimly. A frozen death awaited us. Things at sea seem to take on human qualities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is something I wish you would write of—the story of the wreck of my old full-rigged ship Star.
If it hadn’t been for that wreck I would never have steered my course South to the Southern Cross and the Atoll Islands of the Pacific. I loved the North, the Aurora Borealis and the magnificent splendor of the icebound Arctic. I knew it as you know your navigation. If I hadn’t left it you would never have lived in the tropics and thrived on coconut milk and yarrow root. Instead you might have chawed blubber with the Eskimos. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mountainous promontories rise on the coast of South Australia and the jutting saw-toothed coast of Tasmania guards the southern end of the straits. Baffling winds and treacherous cross currents stirred by the vortex of waters from three oceans, the Pacific, Indian and Antarctic meeting, make sailing dangerous. Sometimes the wind dies suddenly shut off by a mountain range only to kick up again in a fury from an opposite direction. It is no feat at all for steam vessels to go through the Straits but a sailing ship is at the mercy of the winds and tides. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With his tortoise-shell emblem of state he touched the girl and the man on the head, the native sign of wedlock. To the woman he said:
“By choosing this man you now become nothing. He is the stronger. If any man touch you after this wedlock the man shall be punished, for you have no right or privilege to say what shall be done with your body. If your husband gives privilege of your body to man he must be paid for it. If man take you without your husband’s willingness, that man shall be sent to the coral reef to scrape the salt that dries there from the surf. ”

“ Because of its size and the pictures they have seen of small boats being smashed by one sweep of its tail, most people naturally think of the whale as king of the ocean, but that impression is wrong. The swordfish is the boss. Both the whale and the shark are too slow and too clumsy to whip the real ruler of the sea. The swordfish doesn’t grow beyond fifteen feet, but it fights because it likes to fight, and on occasion has driven its weapon ten inches through the copper and oak side of a ship. ”

“ I yelled.
“We’ll all be sucked to hell if we cross its course. This damned wind is shooting us right into the belly of the spout.”
I grabbed half of the spanker boom tackle and tried to sheet in its slack. As the sail luffed I got in a few feet, only to lose them when the ship rolled back to leeward and snatched the ropes from my hands.
“Pull in the tackle,” ordered Father as if he were commanding a regular sailor. I gritted my teeth and hauled again, but in vain. The wind was too strong for my single strength. ”

“ That red flag branded us as an outlaw, a crippled ship with a diseased, dying crew aboard. All around us lay the monotonous circle of horizon without a sign of life, except for an occasional whale or school of flying fish. ”

“ As our ship nosed her way across the sea towards Pitcairn, I spent many hours listening to tales about that strange island from my father and two old sailors who had been there often.
When Kipling gave to the world his much overquoted lines, “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” he probably forgot that in the most remote part of the South Seas, East and West had met and had formed a race of people, living in a high degree of civilization and in a community almost free from sin—to disprove his theory. ”

“ An Atafu girl is ready to marry when she is ten or eleven years old, and she alone has the choice of her husband. No man can woo her until she has given him the sign that she has chosen him. The marriage festival is the biggest event of the year. The little girls shine their gold brown bodies with coconut oils. Instead of preparing lavish wardrobes they make their skins shine like burnished gold. Over their left ear, snugly tucked in their thick hair to assure its not falling out during the dance, is a white lotus or hibiscus flower. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ Even the rats were boldly searching the decks for something fresh. We were in the doldrums, about eleven degrees south of the Equator. The ship just wallowed in the glassy sea, and seemed to crack and shrivel in the heat. There was no shade anywhere. The sails hung limp and useless, like unstarched linens. The bedbugs and roaches seemed to multiply by the million.
“All hands on deck,” ordered my father, and the mate repeated his order to the men sleeping below. In a few minutes the entire crew were on deck.
“There’s no more water, men, until we hit a rain squall. ”

“ We catch a female shark and I learn about women from her— One of the earliest lessons that I learned from the sea was the importance of observation. Book learning is almost useless in a storm, and science an unknown quantity when the elements lash against a man-built ship. But observing the laws of the sea, watching it destroy or create, teaches much about life. All that I learned of philosophy, biology and astronomy came to me from my father and the sailors. ”

“ I heard Swede groaning and calling a breathless chantey as he led his watch lashing down the main boom. Bulgar, Nelson and McLean were straddled on the foot ropes of the jibboom struggling to lash down the jibs which flapped and ballooned.
It was all chance and our fate rested in the lap of the gods.
Now there are all sorts of sea traditions and superstitions about waterspouts. Some grave scientists who never went to sea write learnedly that a waterspout does not and cannot sink a ship. ”

“ Under the hardships of our voyage it was no wonder that we fell victim. For days at a time, while the decks were awash with swirling seas, the cook could prepare no meals. Time and again vainly he attempted to build a fire in the galley but no sooner would it begin to draw than the ship would list heavily to port, submerging the galley, cook and his pans in green seas. As a consequence we lived on dried salt fish and lime juice. The shanghaied men couldn’t even stomach that, and they were the first to be stricken with scurvy. The coal passer had the worst dose of all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They came up into a seething maelstrom of pitching wreckage, packing-cases swirling, outstretched arms and kicking legs of drowning men, shrieks of fear and the terrible seas breaking with a roar over all. And on the shore, only two hundred yards away, four of the five men who had taken the first desperate chances, waited helpless. They scanned the incoming combers for bodies, Chinese or white, that might wash in close enough to fish out, but the shore was abrupt and it had become piled with the cargo and wreckage from the Star. ”

“ I couldn’t catch the bedbugs and roaches but I could catch the cats. I kept them under the covers so their protesting meowing wouldn’t reach Father’s ears. Then I fell sound asleep. I was wakened by a heavy rain squall and stiff wind which shook the ship. I lay in my bunk listening to the seas slap the porthole above me. I heard Father shouting above the wind to the crew, and faintly the answering calls of men came back. Shallow water when it becomes rough rocks a ship unlike a deep sea storm. ”

“ The disease acts insidiously; the victim doesn’t know he has it until terrific pains in his stomach make it impossible for him to eat anything. Then come headaches, blinding and maddening. The body appears dry and withered like the husk of a coconut. Fever and delirium follow, and in a short time, if medical relief or fresh food is not obtained—death!
Contrary to popular ideas and the maritime law of all countries, a ship’s medicine chest usually contains nothing but Friar’s Balsam, which is a sea-going iodine, salts, and blue ointment for vermin; none of which is a cure for scurvy. ”