Seems I'm a point off my course? I'm only saying things the captain said, times on a serious night when we'd be up some creek for fish, or layin' low for ducks. If ever he went ashore without me, I'd be like a lost dog, and he drunk before the sun was over the yard-arm. But away together it wasn't master and boy, but just father and son. He'd even named me after himself, and that's why my name's Smith.
I disremember which port—somewheres up the St. Lawrence where we loaded lumber for the Gulf o' Mexico, but the captain and me was away fishing. Mother had come from the Labrador to find me, old gray mother. They dumped her seal-hide trunk on our wharf, so one of the china dogs inside got split from nose to tail; but mother just sat on a bollard, and didn't give a damn. She put on her round horn spectacles to smile at the mate aft, and the second mate forward, the or'nary seaman painting in the name board, and Bill in his bos'n's chair a-tarring down the rigging, and the bumboat laundress who'd been tearing the old man's shirt-fronts. Yes, she'd a smile for every man jack that seemed to warm their hearts, but nary a word to interfere with work, for she just sat happy at the sight of the Pawnticket, and she surely admired everything, from Old Glory to Blue Peter—until our nigger cook came and spilled slops overside. Seems he'd had news of the lady, and came to grin, but he was back in his galley, like a rabbit to his burrow, while she marched up the gangway. "Can't abide dirt," says mother, and even the new boy heard not a word else 'cept the splash. For mother just escorted that nigger right through the galley, out at the other end, over the port rail, and boosted him into the blue harbor, for the first and only bath he'd ever had. Then she took off her horn spectacles, her old buckskin gloves, and her bonnet, and sot to cleaning a galley which hadn't been washed since the days of President Lincoln. Floor, range, walls, beams, pots, kettles, plates and dishes, she washed and scrubbed and polished. She hadn't time to listen to the wet nigger or the mate, and narry a man on board could get more than yea or nay out of mother. She cooked them a supper too good to be eaten and spoilt, then set the dishes to rights, got the lamp a-shining, and axed to be shown round the ship. You should have seen the idlers aft and the boys forrard, redding up as if all their mothers was expected. As to the nigger, the fellers made a habit of pitching him overboard until he got tired of coming.
The cap'n and me comes back along with the dinghy, makes fast, and climbs aboard. There's old gray mother, with the horn specs, calm in her own kitchen, just tellin' us to set right down to supper. Cap'n lives aft, and I belongs up forrard, being ordinary seaman, and less important aboard than the old man's pig. Yet somehow mother knew, feeding us both in the galley, and standing by while we fed. Never a word, but mother had a light for Captain Smith's cigar, and her eyes looking hungry at me for fear she'd be sent ashore.
"Well, ma'am," says the captain, "sent your baggage aft? Oh, we'll soon get your baggage aboard."
Then I heard him on deck seeing mother's dunnage into the spare berth aft, and the nigger's turkey thrown out on the wharf.
Sort of strange to me remembering mother, gaunt, bitter-hard, always in the right, with lots to say. And here was little mother sobbing her heart out on the breast of my jersey. Just the same mother changed. Said she was fed up with the Labrador, coming away to see the world, meet folks, and have a good time; but would I be ashamed of having her with me at sea? Surely that had been old mother back there in the long ago time, and now it was young mother laughing just because she'd cried.
Shamed? All the ways down from Joe Beef's clear to Rimouski you'll hear that yarn to-day, of how the old sea custom of winning a berth in fair fight was practised by a lady, aboard of the Pawnticket.
You've heard of ship's husbands, but we'd the first ship's mother. And the way she crep' in was surely insidious. Good word that. Let her draw stores, you find she's steward and purser, just surely poison to the chandlers. Oh, she'll see to the washing, and before you can turn around, she's nurse and doctor. She's got to be queen, and the schooner's a sea palace, when we suddenly discovered she only signed as cook.
Now we're asleep at eleven knots on a beam wind, and Key West wide on the starboard bow, the same being in the second dog-watch when I'm invited aft. There's the old man setting in the captain's place, there's mother at the head of the table sewing, and she asks me to sit in the mate's seat as if I was chief officer instead of master's dog.
"Son," says she—queer, little, soft chuckle, "son. You'll never guess."