Tramping on Life Part 19

I took a chance and told the captain all about my romantic notions of sea-life, travel, and adventure.

"You talk just like one of our German poets."

"I _am_ a poet," I ventured further.

The captain gave an amused whistle. But I could see that he liked me.

"To-morrow morning at four o'clock ... come back, then, and Karl, the cabin boy, will start you in at his job. I'll promote him to boy before the mast."

I spent the night at Uncle Jim's house ... he was the uncle that had come east, years before. He was married ... a head-bookkeeper ... lived in a flat in the Bronx.

He thought it was queer that I was over in New York, alone ... when he came home from work, that evening....

I could keep my adventure to myself no longer. I told him all about my going to sea. But did Duncan (my father) approve of it? Yes, I replied.

But when I refused to locate the s.h.i.+p I was sailing on, at first Jim tried to bully me into telling. I didn't want my father to learn where I was, in case he came over to find me ... and went up to Uncle Jim's....

Then he began laughing at me.

"You've always been known for your big imagination and the things you make up ... I suppose this is one of them."

"Let the boy alone," my aunt put in, a little dark woman of French and English ancestry, "you ought to thank G.o.d that he has enough imagination to make up stories ... he might be a great writer some day."

"Imagination's all right. I'm not quarrelling with Johnnie for that. But you can't be all balloon and no ballast."

They made me up a bed on a sofa in the parlour ... among all the bizarre chairs and tables that Uncle Jim had made from spools ... Aunt Lottie still made dresses now and again ... before she married Jim she had run a dressmaking establishment.

Uncle Jim set a Big Ben alarm clock down on one of the spool tables for me.

"I've set the clock for half-past three. That will give you half an hour to make your hypothetical s.h.i.+p in ... you'll have to jump up and stop the clock, anyhow. It'll keep on ringing till you do."

My first morning on s.h.i.+pboard was spent scrubbing cabin floors, was.h.i.+ng down the walls, was.h.i.+ng dishes, waiting on the captain and mates' mess ... the afternoon, polis.h.i.+ng bra.s.s on the p.o.o.p and officers' bridge, under the supervision of Karl, the former cabin boy.

"Well, how do you like it?" asked the cook, as he stirred something in a pot, with a big wooden ladle.

"Fine! but when are we sailing?"

"In about three days we drop down to Bayonne for a cargo of White Rose oil and then we make a clean jump for Sydney, Australia."

"Around Cape Horn?" I asked, stirred romantically at the thought.

"No. Around the Cape of Good Hope."

Early in the afternoon of the day before we left the dock, as I was polis.h.i.+ng bra.s.s on deck, my father appeared before me, as abruptly as a spirit.

"Well, here he is, as big as life!"

"h.e.l.lo, Pop!"

I straightened up to ease a kink in my back.

"You had no need to hide this from me, son; I envy you, that's all, I wish I wasn't too old to do it, myself ... this beats travelling about the country, selling goods as a salesman. It knocks my dream of having a chicken farm all hollow, too...."

He drew in a deep breath of the good, sunny harbour air. Sailors were up aloft, they were singing. The cook was in his galley, singing too. There were gulls glinting about in the sun.

"Of course you know I almost made West Point once ... had the appointment ... if it hadn't been for a slight touch of rheumatism in the joints ..." he trailed off wistfully.

"We've never really got to know each other, Johnnie."

I looked at him. "No, we haven't."

"I'm going to start you out right. Will the captain let you off for a while?"

"The cook's my boss ... as far as my time is concerned. I'm cabin boy."

My father gave the cook a couple of big, black cigars. I was allowed sh.o.r.e leave till four o'clock that afternoon....

"--you need a little outfitting," explained my father, as we walked along the dock to the street....

"I've saved up a couple of hundred dollars, which I drew out before I came over."

"But, Father...."

"You need a lot of things. I'm going to start you off right. While you were up in the cabin getting ready to go ash.o.r.e I had a talk with the cook.... I sort o' left you in his charge--"

"But I don't want to be left in anyone's charge."

"--found out from him just what you'd need and now we're going to do a little shopping."

I accompanied my father to a seamen's outfitting place, and he spent a good part of his two hundred buying needful things for me ... s.h.i.+rts of strong material ... heavy underwear ... oilskins ... boots ... strong thread and needles ... and a dunnage bag to pack it all away in....

We stood together on the after-deck again, my father and I.

"Now I must be going," he remarked, trying to be casual. He put a ten dollar bill in my hand.

"--to give the boys a treat with," he explained ... "there's nothing like standing in good with an outfit you're to travel with ... and here," he was rummaging in his inside pocket ... "put these in your pocket and keep them there ... a bunch of Masonic cards of the lodge your daddy belongs to ... if you ever get into straits, you'll stand a better chance of being helped, as son of a Mason."

"No, Father," I replied, seriously and unhumorously, "I can't keep them."