We were twenty-three days on the voyage. Before we had been aboard long I became friendly with everybody on the ship, and they with me. I was very active, and had the run of the boat. I was like a parrot, a goat, or a monkey—or all three. There was no stewardess on the boat, and as I had no one to look after me, I led a wild sort of life. I lived in the fo'cas'le, or with the sailors on deck or in the riggings. I liked the fo'cas'le best. I soon got to feel at home there. Sometimes I was in the cabin with my molasses-hating friend, but the fo'cas'le was my delight, and there I was to be found at all hours. During the twenty-three days of the voyage I was not washed once! I wore the same clothes days and nights, and became a little dirty savage!
It may be easily imagined that communication with these rough, coarse, honest, but vulgar sailors had a terrible effect on me. Everything bad that is known to sailors these sailors knew, and very soon I knew. I observed everything, learned everything. I soon cursed and swore as roundly as any of them, using the words as innocently as if they were quotations from the Bible.
One of the games the sailors used to play with me was to go up into the rigging and call down to me that there was a great plantation up there that I could not see. Then they would throw lumps of sugar to me and tell me they came from the plantation in the rigging, and monkeys were throwing them to me. Of course I believed it all. How was I to know they were lying to me? I was only four years old. They stamped upon my mind the whole fo'cas'le—its rough life, its jollity, its oaths, and its lies.
As soon as our ship came to anchor out came a boat with my uncle. I remember that there was a little dog in the boat also. My uncle took me to the wharf, and then to his tobacco store in Dock Square. There I found awaiting us an old-fashioned chaise, and my uncle said he would take me right out to my grandmother's, at Waltham. The drive took us through two or three villages, and through several strips of forest. Finally we drove up to a little gate that stood about half a mile from the old farmhouse, and divided the next place from the farm of my grandmother. There were my aunts, all waiting for me.
Imagine the astonishment of my grandmother and of my aunts on seeing the dirty little street Arab that came to see them! I was as intolerably filthy as any brat that ever came out of a sewer. I fairly reeked with the smells and the dirt of the fo'cas'le! To the dust and grime of New Orleans I had added the dust and grime of the ship, for I had not been near soap and water since I left New Orleans. Fancy going to these clean and prim old ladies in such a plight! But I was at least in good health, and magnificently alive.
The first thing they did was to summon a sort of town-meeting, to have me narrate the events of my voyage. But before I was to go before my audience I must be washed and have a change of clothes. This part of the program was postponed by an accident. The ladies heard me swear! It shocked their gentle minds immeasurably. But I didn't know what swearing meant.
What can not a boy learn in three weeks that is bad? I suppose I must have picked up all the wickedness of the fo'cas'le without knowing what it was. It seemed all right to me; but not to my good grandmother and to my aunts.
They wanted to cleanse me outwardly and inwardly, and prepared to start outwardly. They insisted that I must change my clothes and have a good scrubbing. But before they began I told them some of my experiences aboard ship. I told them about the sailors getting sugar from the plantation up in the riggings and the monkeys throwing it down to me. They told me there were no fields up there, no monkeys and no sugar, except what the sailors had carried up with them.
I was indignant. "If you don't believe my story," said I, "about the plantation in the rigging and about the monkeys and the sugar, you can not wash me or change my clothes."
The line of battle was now drawn. If they did not want to believe my story, I was not going to let them do anything for me. That monkey-and-sugar story was my ultimatum. They refused to accept it. For three days they laid siege to me, but I refused to be washed or clothed in a fresh clean suit until they believed my story. I felt I was telling the truth, and could not bear to have my word doubted. Finally they said that they believed my story.