“Hey, what the hell?” I piped up.
“This is the what,” said Neptune. “You’re next,” and he waved to the tub of lather.
“Just try and do it,” I challenged him, really getting sore. It had ceased to be funny to me, and the more excited I got the funnier it seemed to the sailors.
“You cock-eyed quart of bilgewater, you haven’t got a chance of tarring and keelhauling me,” I snorted and jumped for the rigging. I got no farther. Swede dragged me back by the foot. They bound me as they had the luckless Slops and applied the brush and lather to my face.
“What is your name, little girl?” cooed that damned Neptune. I was too wise to open my mouth, so I thought, for I had no intention of swallowing any of that concoction.
“Answer me,” he bellowed.
I closed my lips tighter. Huh, I was smarter than they were after all. I’d show them! “Smack” on my behind went a plank, heaved by the ape-like Slops. It was such a hard whack that I opened my mouth to holler, and no sooner had I done that than Neptune stuck a big gob of lather in the wide aperture of my jaws, and then I heard the whole crew and my father guffawing at me. Slops had been initiated, so he rated disciplining me. From head to foot they soaked me in that lather. The tar in it matted my long thick hair together and stuck my eyelashes so that I couldn’t open my eyes. I wouldn’t have minded it so much if I hadn’t heard them all laughing at me.
When no more lather would stick to me I heard Father say to Neptune:
“Let’s throw her over and give her a bath. She’s so dirty now that she’ll just love it.” What I thought of my father and the whole bunch at that moment cannot be written here, but it was very graphic!
Overboard I went, tied by the same rope that had been on Slops. The salt water has the interesting effect of making tar stick so that it will not come off without turpentine. When they thought I had had enough of a bath, they hauled me out and sprinkled me with some dried copra. I looked worse than Slops did. I sat in the scupper picking off the shreds of coconut husks that came in the copra, and I gave the appearance of a she-orang outang picking off fleas.