“You turn in, Joan. If any trouble comes, keep out of the way, do you hear?”
“Yes, sir!” I replied, for when he used that tone to me “Yes, sir” was the only thing to say. I stuck my head out of my porthole watching the phosphorus in the water make the sea look as if it were on fire until I became too sleepy to sit up. I got my family of cats from the chartroom and put them under the blankets at my feet. Under the covers their eyes looked just as the phosphorus in the water did. I mention those kittens because they played a big part in the “trouble” Father had predicted. He had always forbidden me to take the cats into my bunk.
“Bedbugs and cockroaches can’t be avoided in bunks but cats can be, so don’t you let me catch you taking them to bed with you.”
I put my own interpretation on that advice. I couldn’t catch the bedbugs and roaches but I could catch the cats. I kept them under the covers so their protesting meowing wouldn’t reach Father’s ears. Then I fell sound asleep. I was wakened by a heavy rain squall and stiff wind which shook the ship. I lay in my bunk listening to the seas slap the porthole above me. I heard Father shouting above the wind to the crew, and faintly the answering calls of men came back. Shallow water when it becomes rough rocks a ship unlike a deep sea storm. The difference in the rolling made me peer out the porthole. A sudden jolt of the ship threw me flat on the bunk. If only that wind would blow steadily and not in jerks—but I was asleep before I could form any more opinions.
I don’t know how long I was asleep before I awoke in a fit of coughing. My eyes burned. I rubbed them with my fist but they watered and stung more. I quit rubbing them but they hurt even more and then I could hardly breathe. It was pitch dark in my cabin and I thought I was having a nightmare. My senses began to dim and I felt as if I were going a long way off from my body. The scuffling of feet on the poop deck—hoarse shouts—confusion, then a cry that pierced my dulled brain sent a chill of fear through me.
“Fire!”
“Fire! Fire!” The words were repeated and echoed hollowly in the wind. “Fire!” That was what I was thinking the phosphorus in the sea looked like. I tried to wake up. Surely I was dreaming.
“It’s in the after-hold.”
“The paint locker is burning!”
I couldn’t move from my bunk for I was paralyzed with fear. Over and over in my fast dimming consciousness I could hear “Paint Locker.” “Fire!” The curses of the men above grew faint. I could feel the kittens scratching under the covers at my feet to get out but I could make no effort to help them. Had there been a light in my cabin I would have seen the dense smoke choking the air—slowly suffocating me. Why couldn’t I move? Why didn’t some one help me? But too well I knew the code of the sea that reckons one life as little where the safety of the ship is concerned.