“Let them knock off now and come back at four o’clock,” instructed Father, “I was a young fellow myself once.”
No sooner had the men left their stations on the deck and were ashore than a ripping, tearing roar brought Father rushing to the poop deck. The main yard had broken from the spar and had crashed through the rigging down to the deck as if cut by an invisible hand! It broke into three pieces, but miraculously injured no one. That ill omen was to be remembered later. A mast breaking in three pieces is a sign that before the trip is completed the vessel itself will break into as many parts. Folk laugh at the superstitions of sailormen, but few who have lived at sea will dispute their justification.
Instead of sailing, the Star went back to the drydock where the new yard was rigged on. It took three days, and on April 11th, at the five o’clock flood tide, the Star was once more ready to go. The crowd jostled on the docks. Chinese women in their quaint native costumes of pants and jackets stood on the wharf near the fo’c’s’le head, their waxen faces immobile beneath their shining black hair ornamented with jades and corals. The Italian women were most demonstrative. Their shawls were torn from their heads as they jumbled against each other, pushing for the extreme edge of the dock. Tears and laughter fought for supremacy as they waved good-bye to the Italian fishermen amidships. One young wife with two babies tugging at her skirts was praying, and here and there a rosary was thrust into the hands of the departing fishermen. The American friends of the officers and traders were on the dock nearest the stern, and handkerchiefs and jokes of bravado sent the Star off to the Arctic.
My father stood at the helm and with a bellow ordered,
“Let go the hawsers!”
“Let go the hawsers,” echoed back at him from the fo’c’s’le head, and the cobra-like ropes that held the Star to her mooring splashed limp into the bay as the men hauled in their slack on the capstan to the accompaniment of a chantey. The Chinese on board set off thousands of firecrackers to foil off the devil, and threw countless red streamers into the air. The Italians sang and gesticulated with their arms as the tug Dundee pulled the Star out into the harbor. My father is a registered pilot of San Francisco harbor, so he directed the course of the Star as they set her sails just off Alcatraz Island, and sailed majestically out of the Golden Gate and nosed her way north.
A quick trip of twenty-seven days brought the Star to Wrangel. In five months her mission was completed. She was loaded with fifty-four thousand cases of fine Alaska salmon to take back to San Francisco. It was a dull, thick daybreak as the tugs steamed alongside. All hands were aboard, glad their hard work was done, and jubilant at being homeward bound. The last to come down to the ship was my father. As he walked down the dock, little Arvis Babler, the nine year old daughter of the cannery superintendent, ran along beside him holding his hand. She chattered gaily about his ship. She even suggested that some day he would bring his little girl to Alaska to play with her. None of her light spirit infected my father. He only stared gloomily and silently at the loaded vessel.
“What’s the matter, Captain?” she asked, when Father didn’t respond to her. “I should think you would be happy today when you are going home.”
“I feel as if I were going to my grave,” he answered.
The tugs Hattie H. and Kyak were to tow the Star out. Nearly all the crew of these two tugs were drunk before they left the dock. In that alone they violated the code of the sea, but in Alaska at that time there was but one tugboat company and no competition to make a high standard of seamanship necessary. To make matters worse, the rival captains of the two tugs were fighting over which was to be the leading boat. Finally they settled their dispute, apparently to the satisfaction of neither, and the tugs started to pull the Star down the Wrangel Narrows, a distance of one hundred and twenty-five miles to the sea. In that dangerous passage there was only room for one ship to pass. At the mouth of the Narrows the Star was to set her sails and steer a course off shore for home. All day long the tugs towed her slowly. Meantime those on board the leading tug had celebrated their victory over the crew of the rival tug so thoroughly that the boat was left in charge of a boy mate—while the engineer, to put it mildly, was far from at his best.