It sounded wonderful to me. I was tired of staying on the ship, day after day in port, with no one to play with. Perhaps I would find companions ashore. I was sure no harm could come from just going with her for a little while. For a moment I hesitated, then one glance at her thin ankles and her broad hips assured me that she must be a good woman. Proudly I followed her down the gangway, and as I passed McLean I told him to tell Father I was going to take a job at the Union Hotel for a few days until the ship was ready to sail.
How set up I was to be walking along the dock with this beautiful woman who thought I was pretty!
The Union Hotel was a small, dingy-looking place about a block from the wharf. I had passed it several times on my walks ashore with Father, and I had heard the sailors speak of it as the “Seamen’s Rest.” They always grinned when they said that and I wondered why.
“Come in and meet my lady friends,” urged my new friend. I accompanied her gladly. The stuffy interior of the cheap waterfront hotel seemed the height of elegance to me. We entered the “pub” (English for saloon).
“Where’s the job?” I asked, for on shipboard the first thing a man did was to get to work. Then I discovered that my guide and her “lady friends” were barmaids.
“Here, sailor-girl, you take this end station, and you’ll get lots of tips. Sometimes the blokes gives as much as sixpence if we smile pretty.”
I was so pleased to be accepted by those women that I put my conscience out of its misery about leaving the ship and went to my station behind the bar. I was having a lot of fun until some sweating stevedores came in.
“Beer for us,” was their order.
One of the group I recognized as the cargo tally man from our dock. He seemed shocked to see me behind the bar drawing foamy mugs of beer.
“Say, does your old man know you’re here?” he asked suspiciously.