A murderous look came on his face. I turned around and saw McLean hotfooting it down the dock back to the ship! I followed him in haste, for Father grabbed me by the seat of my pants and the nape of my neck and propelled me along the dock at double speed.
“I can’t leave you for five minutes but that you get into some kind of deviltry, so now I’ll teach you how to behave.”
He took me up on the poop deck and tied me to the wheel in full sight of the sailors. My heart was broken with disappointment, but no tears for mine. I stood there and swore all the words that I knew, and at that age my vocabulary included enough adjectives to keep me swearing two minutes without repeating a word.
As if it wasn’t humiliation enough to be tied up like a bad puppy, the mate came aft and heard me swearing. I started all over again when he came near and looked at me. I could have murdered him for laughing at me. He listened to me going it and then scratched his head and said:
“I’ll forfeit my grub if you can’t cuss as good as if you had hair on your chest.”
Oh, the music of his words! I pulled my jumper closer together so that he couldn’t see if I had hairs or not, but having him think I did have hair on my chest was almost as good as really having it, so the day wasn’t lost after all.
