“Yeh, I coulda had any one of those dames, they was crazy about me; that fat little nigger wench is just busted-hearted to see me leave.”
And it was me that got a licking!
I was never to forget that experience on Atafu. I thought that everybody in the world was married according to native custom. I thought that some day I, too, would be taken to a dance where I could pick out my mate.
The days that followed our departure from Atafu became dull and monotonous. The sound of the tom-toms and the vision of the native girls abandoning themselves in a dance, was constantly before me. I hadn’t even had a licking for almost a week and the calm atmosphere was too much for me. I would have to start something if nothing was going to happen of its own accord. I started a cockroach war. I caught two big cockroaches and tied their bodies together with pieces of thread. Then I went around to the sailors and took bets on them. I drew a line on the deck and put a roach on either side of it. The one that pulled the other over the line won. I bet two plugs of tobacco and one of Father’s undershirts on the fattest cockroach, but the ship took a list to leeward just as he started to pull hard, and the other cockroach won and I lost. In novels of the sea the Captain’s daughter is frequently pictured as occupying herself with lovely feminine pastimes, but cockroaches, rats, or bedbug hunts were more fascinating to me. But even in the trade winds those games tired me. I wanted action.
One afternoon, finding nothing more exciting to do, and when I was sure Father was asleep, I started on my own Dance of the Virgins. I didn’t have anything I could use for a lotus flower except a pair of dried flying fish wings. I put them behind my left ear as I had seen the native girls do. I wasn’t sure just which one of the sailors on watch I would give that flower to, but that was to come later anyway.
Swede was at the wheel. I whispered to him:
“Will you go forward and get me a can full of grease from the cook? I’ll take the wheel for you.” He was glad of any excuse to get away, so he consented. He brought back a can of salt pork dripping from the galley.
“What are you goin’ to do with that stuff?” he asked.
“Don’t talk so loud, Swede. I’m goin’ to do that Virgin Dance the way we saw them do it on Atafu.”
“Jeeze,” he said.