The next morning he went over the gangplank with his sea bag without looking back even to wave good-bye to me as I stood in the rigging watching him go. That was the last time I ever set eyes on Nelson. I have learned since that he was killed in a race riot on the docks in Galveston.
Of course I know that land folks would think Nelson a fool—a dear, chivalrous fool. Maybe—but I’ll never forget him.
21
“You pull for the shore, boys,
Praying to Heaven above,
But I’ll go down in the angry deep
With the ship I love.”
With the red of the ship’s waterline weighted deep in the water we sailed from Newcastle with a cargo of coal. Father shipped a new man in place of Nelson, a John Johnson. Father could have shipped a thousand sailors but none of them would fill the place in my life that Nelson did. John Johnson was a bully second mate and he handled his watch with an iron hand, but when off duty he was as gentle as the down on an albatross’s wing. Johnson had great difficulty with his pronunciation of “J.” His Norwegian origin was very obvious.