And put it in form this way.
“Now sailors are jolly good fellows, thought she,
To take a trip she’d a notion,
For sailors oft get very blue out at sea,
And—girls are scarce on the ocean!”
“Aw, what the hell do you mean by that?” I asked. “I can do something that nobody in the fo’c’s’le can do and that is, I can navigate. Father’s taught me how to find our position by the Southern Cross at night,” I boasted.
“Yeh? Well, I still says women ain’t got no place on shipboard. Why, they can’t even talk like sailors,” and he spat a juicy stream with unerring accuracy through the hawse hole on the port side of the ship.
He had thrown down the challenge to me to make good as a sailor. I was no frail little Captain’s daughter that the sailors slew each other to get. I had to win them! From that day on I never lost an opportunity to emulate a deep sea sailor in every way.
At night in my cabin I rubbed my hands over rough rope to make callouses. I began to practise every swear word I heard the sailors use. After a month of careful observation I was able to curse four minutes in succession and never repeat a word. When I had them all down glibly I waylaid John Henry.
“Listen, you bastard,” I started, and then I traced his ancestors from several kinds of animals down to biological defects in himself and compared him with every known form of low life and waste products imaginable. When I finished my four minute tirade I stood on guard, thinking he would make a pass at me. Instead he listened intently, then his face broke into a grin: