It is only about once in a blue moon that any sailor catches a sea horse, so of course at ten it was the dream of my life to land one.
What a thrill it was that morning when leaning over the side, bucket in hand, I saw floating just beneath me a sea anemone on which was a tiny sea horse riding as if the sea flower was its throne, and the sea horse was king of the ocean. What an opportunity! The morning was calm, the flat sea like glass, and the lazy ship crawling along at scarcely three knots an hour made fishing conditions ideal. The sea horse was a transparent, gelatine-looking blue. I could see the tiny threads of blue veins in its insides. I lowered the bucket under the anemone and started to haul it up, but the water carried it floating off. I threw the bucket at it again. In the foam it had disappeared. I watched carefully and was rewarded by seeing it reappear again near the stern of the ship. I ran to the taffrail and plunged the bucket again after it, but missed it by about two feet. There was not time to pull up the bucket and make another cast. The stern of the moving ship would pass the drifting anemone. I saw my life’s ambition slipping away from me. I wouldn’t fail!
That miss gave me a wild desire to possess the sea horse or die in the attempt to get it. Without a thought as to the utter foolishness of what I was doing I jumped overboard after the sea horse! When I landed with a splash in the water I heard Stitches’ voice shout:
“The skipper’s overboard!”
Such a hullabaloo that started on deck. Father had come up, the cabin-boy, Bulgar and Axel Oleson. They were huddled at the stern rail. The mate and Swede were unfastening the leachings on the dinghy to lower it over after me.
“Keep your head up, Skipper,” called Stitches in a frantic voice. He couldn’t swim a stroke and his helplessness to aid me as he wanted to was funny. He kept calling instructions to me.
The wake of the vessel was washing the sea horse farther away from me. Instead of swimming back to the ship and grabbing hold of the life line that Father threw after me, I swam lickety-split astern after my prize—the ship going on in one direction and I in the other. I never got many opportunities to get off the ship and I was exhilarated at my freedom. I was free—my goal was the rapidly fleeing sea flower. I knew I would achieve my ambition!
“Tread water,” came the bellowing voice of my father through his cupped hands. “Don’t get scared and you’ll be all right.”
I turned my head to look at him, sent him a smile, waved my hand at him and plunged on after my flower. I would no sooner swim within easy reach of it, so I thought, than a gentle wave lapped it out of my grasp. I forgot the gang on the ship who were trying to call me back. With several swift strokes I overtook the sea horse on its flower chariot. I grabbed it in my fist. The anemone crushed in my hand. Triumphant at catching it I turned back to catch up with the ship. Father had hove to in the little wind that was wheezing out of some straggling clouds. The mate was in the lifeboat with Stitches and Bulgar. They were pulling for dear life after me. With the thrill of my success still tingling in my soul I decided to give the men in the lifeboat some work. I had jumped overboard with my overalls on, so stuffing my prize in my front pocket I turned about and began swimming away. I swam as fast as I could. The men in the lifeboat pulled with longer and swifter strokes. I plowed on a few yards and then turned and waved a hand to them to come and get me. I heard them begin to curse the air blue. I trod water until they almost got up with me, then I dived under the water, and came up a few yards behind them and started back to the ship. By the time they got the lifeboat turned around I was way ahead. It wasn’t every day in my life that I was important enough to get the whole crew off duty to chase me around the ocean and I was making the most of it!
When I got under the shadow of the stern, just far enough away to clear the suction of the rudder, I looked up to the deck and saw the crew laughing—that is, they were all laughing with the exception of my father.