I didn’t take my eyes off the distant harbor. I stared through the cold wind until my eyes burned with pain. I must have been up there for about three hours. I was hoping against hope that Father would hear me calling to him to come back and get me, when through my daze I heard my mother’s voice far below me at the root of the tree calling to me to come down. But I wouldn’t come down. Maybe our ship would sail if I took my eyes off the bay. Maybe I wouldn’t see her go. After a while Mother quit calling and went away.
A loud clanging of bells broke into my spell. Glancing below I saw a big red firewagon in front of the house. Firemen were rigging up two ladders against the tree and three of the men climbed up after me. Mother had called out the fire department, to get me down.
“I won’t come down,” I warned. “Go away and leave me alone.”
Instead of coming down I climbed one branch higher. I would stay there until I dropped. The wind was like a soothing hand to my bewildered mind. Up there it was friendly. Silly little fool that I was, I thought the land was all off its keel and it was really only me. I couldn’t adjust myself to foreign surroundings.
But soon, how soon I don’t remember, I heard my father’s voice bellowing up at me:
“On deck, you!” That was all he called, but I came down the tree like a sailor shaken off the foot ropes in a storm.
“Yes, sir?” I said when I faced him on the ground, surrounded by a frantic group of neighbors who had been attracted by the firewagon. There was great confusion and explanations. I stuck to my story that I thought he was sailing without me. My mother didn’t say anything. She looked as if she was crying inside.
“Take Joan back to the sea. She’ll fret herself away here,” she told Father when we went in the house.
“What makes you think I want her?” Father came back.
“You’ve been delaying sailing for a week. Your cargo is on board; you’ve had fair winds off shore; now you come and tell me your sailors have refused to ship out with you because Joan’s leaving is a bad omen—and yet you didn’t fight about it. If you told the truth to yourself it would be that you don’t want to go without Joan. Take her back with you.”