About four thirty that afternoon a launch sputtered alongside, and the mate and two sailors lowered a Jacob’s ladder over the side. The man on the launch yelled up at them:
“Put over a cargo boom. These beggars won’t come to until you hit the Equator.”
I looked over the side and saw eight lumps of flesh, eight dead men, so it seemed, sprawled over the bottom of the launch like so many sacks of wet wheat. With every roll of the launch the bodies pitched from side to side in grotesque rhythm. Our men rigged up a cargo boom and tackle and the man on the launch slipped a running bowline around one of the limp hunks of flesh.
“Take it away!” he grunted, and the sailors, with my help, pulled up the load.
It was a blond, husky Scandinavian. His body landed on the deck with a dull thud.
“Is he dead?”
The mate only looked at me contemptuously—as if anything could kill a Swede—and threw back the tackle for the next load of flesh. Over and over again they repeated that process until a row of eight bodies was on deck. The mate told me to call my father. I went below, almost sick, for I thought the men were dead. However, I was better trained in the code of the sea than to let anyone see I was affected by the sight of eight men laid out like corpses on the deck of the schooner.
I brought Father back with me. He reached down and picked up the foot of the first man and let it drop back with a lifeless thud on the deck.
“He’ll be a good man on a halyard,” he said, and passed on to the next one. He was a dirty, uncouth-looking person so black with coal dust that he looked negroid.
“What a hell of a mess this is to soak me five pounds for,” and he passed on to the next and the next until he had felt the muscles of each one. Satisfied that he had a good load of “beef” to pull on ropes in a storm or pump ship if a leak should spring, Father signalled the launch to cast off.