“There’s no more water, men, until we hit a rain squall. The glass is down and I look for a squall, so stand by with kegs and catch all the rain you can if you want fresh water.”
There was a mad hurry to get kegs to catch the rain. The men brought everything from salt pork barrels to empty tomato tins and placed them under the booms and scuppers. The cook and a sailor put a barrel under the drain on the main deck just below the poop deck to catch the water that washed down the poop.
No sailor tried to sleep any more. They sat huddled in the scuppers looking thirstily at the deceitful clouds that drifted by and disappeared to the horizon with their refreshing cargoes.
Night came, and still no sign of rain. Just at sunset, at about a quarter point off the starboard bow, appeared the end of a rainbow, dipping right into the sea and making an arch of vivid colors, which dissolved into the mist of a rain squall a mile away. It was aggravatingly near, and the men bent every inch of sail to hurry the ship into its midst to catch some of its rain, but just within a hundred yards of it, the little gust of wind died, and once more the sails hung limp and impotent.
That night for dinner we had a sticky mess of salt dried codfish. Its odour was so bad from the intense heat that the only way it could be swallowed was to smother it with mustard and hold your breath, to kill the smell.
“This damn stuff stinks,” observed the mate, whereupon he proceeded to pick out the remnants of fish from his teeth with the prongs of his fork. I was just old enough to recognize the expression on my father’s face as a sign of trouble.
“Yeh? Well any time you get disgruntled about the menu on this packet, just write me a letter and I’ll file it in my correspondence.” The mate’s remark, however, spoiled his appetite and he shoved the dish of ill smelling fish at the cabin-boy.
“Chuck that overboard.”
For my dinner I had boiled lentils, which only accentuated my thirst, as the salt fish had increased the men’s.
At sea a very little thing will start a feeling of mutiny, and thirsty, dried-up men, scorched by heat and discouraged by no winds and bad food, are like dynamite to handle. They started to quarrel among themselves, viciously. Father anticipated trouble. Right after dinner he sent me to my bunk.