“I’ve got enough!” cried Svenson, on his back, just as Father’s upraised arm was about to put him to sleep. The mate, who was standing by with a belaying pin in his hand in case of real trouble, lifted the Norwegian to his feet.
“Take him for’ard, and put him in irons,” Father ordered the mate, “and tell any of the crew in the fo’c’s’le that think they can talk back to the captain of this ship that Svenson is only a sample of what’ll happen to them.”
The mate had Svenson by the neck and the seat of his pants marching him forward. Father called after them: “When that piece of ballast gets his eyes open again, I’ll have Joan here show him how to steer a ship.”
Svenson, however, was kept in irons and on rations of bread and water until we reached the Midway Islands, where Father discharged him in disgrace—I hadn’t squealed, but I don’t think Svenson, wherever he is today, feels that he got the best of it.
7
A runaway sea horse
My days at sea were divided up between work, study and play. In fair weather my schedule was crowded. At seven-thirty in the morning I got my breakfast. At eight bells, when the morning watch came on duty, I had to swab down the poop deck, polish the brass work and make up my bunk. My bunk was graced by a mattress of “donkey’s breakfast” or straw, which was the nearest thing to material luxury I ever knew. I never worked very hard at my duties; rather I made them into games whenever I could.
I had to haul up water in a canvas bucket to wash down the decks. I liked that because it gave me the chance to use the bucket to catch things that floated by. Sometimes this led to adventures I had not foreseen.
I’ll always remember the morning I tried to catch the sea horse. A sea horse sounds very formidable for a ten-year-old girl to go after with a canvas bucket because naturally when one says “sea horse” many people compare it to a huge clumsy sea animal weighing hundreds of pounds. But the sea horse is quite different. He is a funny fish from two or three inches to a foot long. I call him a funny fish because for a fish he can’t swim any more than a cockroach, but he has a tail that he wraps about a piece of seaweed or any drifting thing. So he meanders over the ocean with his head out of water at such an angle that from a short distance he looks like a horse’s head—hence his name.