Stitches and Father again went into conference.
“In one week she’s slipped her hawser twice and tripped up the steersman. We gotter try somethin’ else, Cap’n,” urged Stitches. Father thought it over.
“Sooner or later she’s pretty sure to go overboard anyhow, so you’d better teach her to swim.”
“That’s a fine idea, Cap’n,” replied Stitches, “only I don’t know how to swim myself.” Which is one of the queer things about the sea: more than half of the sailors can’t swim.
“You fix a tank. I’ll teach her,” decided Father.
Just aft the mizzen mast, Stitches rigged up a canvas tank about four feet square and equally deep. This was collapsible, so that when it was empty it could be folded up and put in the cabin out of the way of the storms. It was a sailor’s job to fill it with sea water every morning. This he did by throwing overboard a canvas bucket in which he baled up a hundred gallons of water to fill it. When it was full he reported the fact to my father. Then Father would go to my hammock, get me and carry me down to the tank. I was a wiggling, squirming, protesting bundle of muscular little girl, as husky as a seal, and full of objections to the idea of being pulled out of a comfortable warm hammock and plunged naked into a cold sea dip.
The routine was always the same. Before he plunged me into the tank he would roll me on the deck. Then he made me turn somersaults, and box with him. My share of the boxing might be described as down again, up again. As soon as I could get to my feet he would tumble me over with his pawlike hand, and keep that up for about ten minutes. If I cried or protested at all against that rough treatment I got a sound slap on my bottom to “knock that nonsense out of you.” Then came the great moment when, warm and glowing, I was plopped into cold sea water to strike out blindly, and in vain. Holding his hand under my back, Father told me to throw out my stomach and bend my head back to balance. I couldn’t understand how that would help me float because when I put my head back I got my mouth and ears and eyes full of salt water. Then he explained it in words to penetrate my infant comprehension.
“Throw your head back and puff your stomach up until YOU CAN SEE YOUR BELLY-BUTTON.”
Then it became a game, and in my eagerness to see if I could puff my stomach up high enough for me to see that portion of my anatomy, I achieved the art of floating. While I was thus absorbed in watching myself perform, Father took his bracing hand from under my back and left me to my own resources. Once I had learned to float, swimming came easy and I soon outgrew the limitations of the four foot tank. I didn’t think I had, but Father did. The next port we arrived in was Newcastle, Australia, and he chose that harbor to polish off my swimming ability.
When he looked for me to begin another lesson he found me playing with a tame gooney on the deck, perfectly contented. A gooney is a species of gull, dull grey in coloring, and a bit larger than the common seagull. Father had snagged him on a big hook baited with a piece of salt pork, pulled him aboard and clipped his wings so he could not fly away. When we first got him the gooney tried to bite, but by feeding him a few days he became tame, and quite a fascinating toy for me. We had named him “Salt Pork.”