I took great care to lie face downwards so he couldn’t see my eyes as I told him:
“I don’t feel very well. Guess I don’t want any supper.”
What relief! I could see Father hadn’t heard of my humiliating defeat at the hands of a tally man in the Union Hotel.
“If you’re sick, there’s no use bellyaching about it. I’ll fix you up a dose of salts and that’ll get the kinks out of you.”
He brought me a coffee mug half full of epsom salts. I swallowed the stuff and then I lay there thinking deep and unkind thoughts about women. The laughter of the barmaids as I was marched out of that pub by the tally man still rang in my ears. My soul was bitter within me and I swore to myself that I would never again trust a woman—not even if she smelled of perfume to high heaven and had inch-thin ankles!
But I wasn’t to get off from my latest escapade as easily as I had thought. I was still lying in my bunk, trying to figure out how I was fooled by that barmaid, when I heard a man’s voice in the companionway asking:
“Can I see the Captain? I gotta tell him something he oughta know.”
My heart sank. The voice was that of the tally man and I suspected that he had come to tell on me. I wasn’t left in doubt long, for soon I heard Father’s indignant voice asking:
“Do you mean to tell me that my kid was in a pub with a barmaid?”
“Yes, Captain, and she started a brawl there. It’s pretty dangerous business to leave a girl like her hang around the waterfront. I wouldn’t let a kid of mine do it, no sir!”