2
In which an alarm clock and some dried apricots are exchanged with natives for a nurse for me. The ship becomes my cradle
My life at sea started when I was eleven months old. Father had brought me down to the schooner, a tiny bundle wrapped in a blanket. I was so small I would have been lost in his bunk, so Father had Stitches—the sailmaker—make a diminutive hammock of canvas. This hammock was swung from bolts, one sunk in the wall above the middle of Father’s bunk and the other into the stanchion at the foot of the bunk on the outside. The rolling of the ship rocked the hammock more steadily than the most indulgent mother.
From the time he made my baby hammock, Stitches devoted his life to me. For fourteen years he thought of me first, then of the ship, last of himself, and in the final tragedy of our ship, he died to save me. I loved him and pestered him and abused his love as only a child can, but I’ll never forget him.
I first recall Stitches as being the only man in the world older than Father. In reality he must have been close to sixty when I was brought on board. His life was one of the romantic tragedies of the sea, for when he came to sign on the Ship’s Articles he said “I’m a kind of Johnny-All-Sorts, Skipper. I’ve been all the way up and down the ladder from cabin-boy to Captain and back to sailmaker. My name’s my own business, and I’ll sign on in my own way, if you want me.”
“Sign any way you damn please,” answered Father, who knew a sailor when he saw one.
So the old sailor signed the Articles just “Stitches” and that’s the way he was known for more than fifteen years on our ship. In appearance there was no sailor like Stitches. Years of bending over his work as sailmaker had brought his head forward and his stomach protruding full speed ahead. He waddled a little when he walked, and always sat tailor fashion with his legs crossed so that he gave the impression of a mild, wise old turtle upright on his tail. Every man on the ship came to Stitches with his troubles because they all knew that he had forgotten more about the sea than most men ever learn, and he had had so many troubles of his own that he understood.
Stitches must have been born lacking the iron in his soul to make him set his course and hold it. Rather he had chosen to ride before the storms of life, but as a compensation for his successive failures, he had developed his own peculiar philosophy of content that made the crew love him.
Why didn’t Stitches give up the sea? He couldn’t. The sea was in his blood and he would rather stay on a ship in any capacity than live ashore in comfort.
“I’ll drop my final anchor with the wind howling in my ears above and the swish of bilge water below me,” he declared, “and that way I’ll go content.” And when the time came, I’m sure he went content.
I had inherited my father’s lusty lungs, and my crying did not help my popularity with the men trying to sleep on their watch below. The cabin-boy had to heat sea water in a saucepan over an oil lamp for my daily bath which Father gave me. My bathtub was an empty codfish keg, and how I yelled whenever I faced it. The mate usually turned in at nine in the morning and at that time I was always squalling my loudest. He made a remark which cost him his berth when it was repeated to my father.