“What did the Chief mean about our sailors?” I asked. Father tried to explain to me that one or two of our men were sick—sick with something that was like living death and they had given that sickness to two native girls. The malady spread rapidly because the natives are so in-bred that their resistance is not strong enough to throw off disease. When the full purport of Father’s explanation came to me I experienced my first hate and intolerance of men. It wasn’t that I cared what the sailors did, but I resented their conduct keeping me from going ashore and being welcomed.
Father saw the hate in my eyes as I listened to him. Once more he fell back upon his Bible to explain to my child mind a problem too complex for his tongue. He read to me the parable of the Adulteress and then he attempted to explain it.
“The greatest Philosopher among men understood sex; it is in everyone’s life and in promiscuity alone is there evil. He was pretty wise, Joan, and He understood. Understandin’ is greater than forgiveness!” Such was the wise interpretation Father put on the parable to comfort me. I don’t think he realized that he had given me the great gift of tolerance.—Though I could understand I couldn’t get over the hate within me—Father watched me silently for a while and then spoke:—
“You shouldn’t be hatin’ anything, Joan,” he said, “hatin’s like a headwind—it won’t get you nowhere.”
“Didn’t you ever in your life hate anything?” I asked him.
My question landed home to him. Father started to answer No—then he paused and looking beyond me as if seeing his past, he said, bitterly:
“It’s the biggest mistake I ever made, Joan—carryin’ a festerin’ hate in my heart for fourteen years—hate of them that wrecked my ship and killed my men.”
Then, with a break in his voice he told me the story of the famous wreck of the Star. Father made me promise never to repeat it, for he wanted its memory lost forever. I would never have told it as long as he lived for his sake, but he is still alive, and when I wrote to him that I was going to write The Cradle of the Deep he sent me the following letter:
My Dear Joan:
I take my pen in hand to reply to your letter advising me that you are going to write a story of your early life at sea with your old Daddy. There is something I wish you would write of—the story of the wreck of my old full-rigged ship Star.