| PAGE | |
| CHAPTER I | |
| “I spit a curve in the wind” | [1] |
| CHAPTER II | |
| In which an alarm clock and some dried apricots are exchanged with natives for a nurse for me. The ship becomes my cradle | [15] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| “A ship is called a ‘she’ because her riggin’ costs more than her hull.”—Stitches | [23] |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| In which I learn that young ladies must not take baths in gentlemen’s drinking water | [33] |
| CHAPTER V | |
| Perfume on the cook’s feet and hair on my chest.—What of it? | [47] |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| A dead fish and a squarehead’s kiss | [55] |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| A runaway sea horse | [65] |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| We catch a female shark and I learn about women from her— | [77] |
| CHAPTER IX | |
| In which I learn to take a joke. Hoping you may do the same | [87] |
| CHAPTER X | |
| A bucko Captain and his Bible chart for me the mysteries of sex | [95] |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| “The Sea gives up its dead” | [103] |
| CHAPTER XII | |
| A cursing contest and a hangman’s noose | [119] |
| CHAPTER XIII | |
| Ideas about Women | [133] |
| CHAPTER XIV | |
| I find navigating on shore full of shoals | [147] |
| CHAPTER XV | |
| From the region of floating mountains of ice to the Island of White Natives | [161] |
| CHAPTER XVI | |
| The clouds came down and the sea reached up to meet them and out of their travail a sea monster was born! | [179] |
| CHAPTER XVII | |
| Strip poker and female struck—which of course have nothing to do with each other | [191] |
| CHAPTER XVIII | |
| A shanghaied crew and scurvy are poor bunkmates in a White Squall | [203] |
| CHAPTER XIX | |
| The Dance of the Virgins on Atafu | [215] |
| CHAPTER XX | |
| A Love Story—which is an end and not a beginning | [235] |
| CHAPTER XXI | |
| “You pull for the shore, boys, Praying to Heaven above, But I’ll go down in the angry deep, With the ship I love.” | [247] |
THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP
1
“I spit a curve in the wind”
“She ain’t any water rat, ma’am! She’s a girl flower, she is, with the tropic heavens fer a hothouse, and the scoldin’ of the storm fer her when she’s bad. An’ she knows all that we sailormen know—all the good—’cause no one of us ever let her hear nothin’ else.”
It was Old John Henry, one of our sailors, defending me to the wife of an American Consul in an Australian port. She had asked him, as he stood on watch at the gangway, what kind of a “water rat” was the Captain’s daughter, living such a rough life among rough men on a schooner. And John Henry, feeling he must uphold the dignity of the Captain’s daughter and the genteelness of sailormen, had replied with all the sea poetry he could command.
“But how awful for a girl to be raised on a ship with nothing but men,” persisted the woman unconvinced. She hadn’t seen me but she had heard the talk of the waterfront and she knew I must be rough, and coarse and low—just awful—raised without the softening feminine influence.
“Awful, hell!” snorted John Henry. “She ain’t no damn fool like most women; her Old Man uses a rope’s end on her stern often enough to keep the foolishness outen her head.”
I was taking it easy, rolled up in the canvas of the mizzen sail which was furled on the mizzen boom. If I hadn’t been afraid of women I would have come down to see how different she was from me because I couldn’t understand why any one should think it strange that I lived on a ship with no woman to care for me. Hadn’t she gone to sea when she was a little girl? I supposed every girl went to sea when she was young for I knew nothing but the sea and strange island ports.