A
Novel By
Copyright
2003
The
Ship’s Roster
Captain
Thor Gunter Narwhal, USN (ret.)
Wendy
Narwhal, ship’s cook, nurse, and chaplain
Rance
Brewster “Rumbob” Besterman, First Mate
Benjamin
“Benjy or Tar” Small, ship’s carpenter, sail mker, and engineer
Whipple
Stealth, Second Mate
Johnny
“Cracker” Wimberly, radioman, seaman
Coby
“
Charles
“Checkers” Stapleton, seaman
Cedric
“Whiskers” West, seaman, musician, and tutor
Fletcher
“Bo” Greene, seaman
Mokotai
“Smokey”, seaman
Jack
Robinson “Cheerly” Able, cabin boy, apprentice seaman
A
dog—Salty
A
parrot—
A
cat—Blind Pew
The
Ship Wanderlust
Length
at waterline 102 Feet.
Beam
26 Feet.
Gross
Tonnage 179 Tons.
Draft
unloaded 12 ½ Feet.
Sail
Rig Two-masted Topsail Schooner with
10,000
square feet of sail area.
Built
in 1960 in the
Accommodations
4 double occupancy guest staterooms usable also for freight storage.
Freight
capacity 2 tons, if using staterooms.
Crew
of 12 including the Captain/owner.
FIRST
VOYAGE—THE
The
Stowaway
Hired
Hand
Attitude
Adjustment
Learning
the Ropes
A
Scout Is…
Crew,
Male and Female
Lay
Aloft
The
The
Skipper’s Daughter, a Sailor’s Delight
Cabin
Boy Caper
View
from the Top
Test
of Manhood
Blueprint
for
The
Tattoo,
the Seaman’s Mark of Manhood
There
Is an
The
Assassins
Captain
Butcher
Nightmare
at Noon
Rumbob’s
Revenge
Spinning
Yarn
JACK’S JOURNAL—THE
The
Stowaway
My name’s Jack! Jack Robinson Able. This open water ahead is “my bay”! Yes, sir!
Technically, it’s a sound, and, of course, I don’t really own it.
I like to sit back with my bare feet
up, one foot hooked over a spoke of the wheel, just like this. I smoke my pipe; I enjoy the sun on my back,
the wind in my hair; and, I make this great ship go where I want her to go. This is the life of a sailor like I used to
dream about and thought I’d never have.
To be headin’ off on a long cruise, not knowin’ just what might come my
way—I love it. This is adventure!
This here boat’s become my true home, I guess. I’m lucky, in a way, to be in her crew. I can’t say that I felt that way at first,
but I’ve adapted, fit in you might say, and now I’ve found a kind of home. For me.
At least for awhile.
You
know, you’ve got to put your self—your blood, as well as your sweat and your
tears, into making a thing what it ought to be. The Skipper says it, and I’ve
come to think it. If you don’t, it won’t
be really great. Once you’ve put your
blood into a ship, she becomes like a relative.
There’s a kind of bond between man and boat once you’ve done some
bleeding a time or two while working her.
And I guess I’ve given her my share of blood, and sweat, and work—and
even tears.
That’s true, I guess, of anything
else a man might build that would be worth loving—a country, a home, a wife, or
kids, a job. I suspect it’s even true of
God. God wants us to love Him. That was my Mom’s understanding; and, He
gives us plenty of reason to. Jesus put
His blood into the deal, and we really have to do the same for Him if we’re
truly going to love Him. We have to
sweat, and suffer, and bleed. It’s only
then that we really understand what love is all about. I guess you can tell I take my religion, what
I know of it, pretty serious. The
Skipper asked me if I’m a Christian. I
don’t know if I am, but I’ve read the Bible my Mom gave me, and I pray, sometimes. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I was tellin’ about me. Well, here I am. I’m
seventeen,
going on eighteen. I stand 5’8” tall; I
weigh 147 pounds, and that’s 147 pounds of muscle too! I was a pretty skinny kid when I left
Captain Narwhal and me, we get along
now. I’ve come to understand him some; I
don’t fear him so much as I did at first.
I still don’t like some of the things he demands, but that’s him. I’m o.k.
It’s a life, and it could be a whole lot worse. In two years I’ve been promoted from cabin
boy (and mostly slave labor) to cabin boy and ship’s husband. He’s taught me a lot, and he trusts me now
most of the time. But he scared me the
first time I ever laid eyes on him. I
mean, he’s a tough looking, no nonsense, great big man! With that heavy, black beard, those piercing
eyes, and that leather brown tan, he looks pretty scary. I know I wouldn’t want to take him on in a
fight. He’s strong as an ox! I have a feeling he could squash me, or any
other man, like he’d squash a bug if he’d a mind to. I’ve gone up against him in arm wrestling,
and he’s beaten me every time. He can
take hold of those ratlines yonder and swing his body up to stand out parallel
to the deck like a flag. I’ve seen him
do it! That’s strong! He’s pretty secretive too, about some things. I guess that’s understandable. One thing’s for sure. You never, but never question his judgment;
at least, I don’t. He was Skipper of
Fernandina’s Sea Explorer unit, so he insisted that I get into scouting as
another way of him teaching me seamanship and “molding my character,” he
said. I respect him. I absolutely obey him. I don’t want one of his “attitude
adjustments.” But I don’t know that I
could ever love him like I loved my true father before Sam came along. I guess I was lucky to have my father, and my Mom, for as long as I did—when I
was a boy.
Now, Narwhal’s daughter, Wendy, is
altogether different. She’s on board as
cook again on this voyage. Wendy has to
be the most gorgeous, blond female I’ve ever laid eyes on! She’s got the body of a Nordic goddess and
the white gold, blond hair to match. She
was out on the forward deck sun bathing yesterday, and I couldn’t keep my eyes
off her. She knows she’s beautiful too,
and enjoys me, or any of the rest of the crew, watchin’ her; as long as we keep
our distance. And I’m polite. She’s older than I am by two years, been away
at FSU studying for a nursing degree, and still thinks of me as just a boy;
but, man, she is pretty! But Wendy is Rance’s girl, and I wouldn’t
touch her really. Wendy’s a good cook, too; better than Tar. She’s the only one besides the Skipper that
has her own stateroom.
That really black man that’s
whipping line yonder is Tar. He’s so
black we call him Tar, but his name is Benjamin Small—Benjy or Tar for
short. He says he’s a Bahamian Seminole,
whatever that is. He comes from
“Hey, Benjy! Stand
by. I’m gonna bring her on to the
starboard tack after that next marker!”
The rest of the crew is made up of
Rance, Coby, Bo, Cracker, Stealth, Stapleton, the others; there are ten of us
in all. Mr. Whipple Stealth is the only
one I don’t really like; but hey, he maybe doesn’t like me either. So we give each other plenty of space. He saved all our lives in the
There are three animals on board, assuming we don’t have
stowaway rats or fleas. Salty’s the
dog. Salty’s my true buddy! Blind Pew is the ship’s cat. Pew really isn’t blind, but she’s got a patch
of black fur around and over her eyes that makes her look like a pirate
cat. And then there’s
Everybody’s sailed on some tall
ships other than this one except Coby and me, I think. Last summer, we took Wanderlust down in the
The wind was steady out of the
northeast at about 10-15 knots. I headed
Wanderlust out of the St. Mary’s
river channel; we passed old
We had just cleared the light tower
marker. That’s when Tar sticks his head
out of the foc’sle hatch and starts yelling something back to the Skipper. He’s gesturing wildly, but we can’t make out
what he’s talking about. Finally, he
heaves a sigh, looks resignedly back down inside the hatch, and comes aft to
explain.
“Cap’n, Suh!
Dey been sto’way, down ‘t hol’ an’ Salty, he be goin’ wil’ wid barkin’!”
“What? A stowaway?” the Skipper says. He’s instantly angry. “There better not be somebody trying to stow
away on my boat. Keep this course,
boy! Tar, you come with me. Bring a belaying pin.”
About the time they reach the
forward hatch, all hell breaks loose.
There’s a streak of orange fire comes springin’ out of the hatch right
at the Skipper’s head. He lets out a
yell, clawin’ wildly at the thing that’s attacked him and hurling it at
Tar. But Tar spins out of the way just
in time to be knocked off his feet by Salty who’s in hot pursuit of what turns
out to be a cat, a very big cat. The
cat hits the rigging and goes up it faster than I’d have thought possible.
There it is, clinging frantically to the ratlines, yowling and hissing down at
Salty, who’s all but taking flight trying to get at the cat and raisin’ a
ruckus almighty! The cat makes a flyin’
leap at the mainsail, penetrates it with the claws of all four paws, and begins
tearing its way skyward toward the gaff.
The Skipper is roaring! “Get that
accursed beast off of my main sail! By
the Jove, I’ll drown it. So help me I
will!” It was pretty funny actually.
Wendy has come out of the after
cabin. “You’ll do no such thing! That’s my cat, Dad, and all of you should be
ashamed of yourselves to have frightened it so.
Shut up, Salty!”
The Skipper comes back aft and all
but shoves me away from the wheel. I can
see he’s in a cold black rage. There’s
blood streaming from a cut above his eye and several other scratches on his
face. Apparently, Wendy hadn’t told him
she was bringing along a cat.
“Jack!” he bellows.
“Sir?” I responded, already at the
ratlines.
“Get up that mast, get that hateful
beast down, and give it to the cook!” He
only calls his daughter ‘the cook’ when he’s really mad. For an instant I thought he was suggesting
that she stew the cat for dinner. “And
watch out! The thing’s got the devil for
claws in her! She’s bewitched!” he
yelled to no one in particular. I
started up the ratlines as fast as I could go.
Benjy went up the other side in case the cat tried to cross over. It took some doin’ to inch my way out on the
gaff, take off my sweatshirt, and capture the cat in the shirt while keeping
from falling to the deck below. I
brought the cat down as best I could, bagged up in my shirt, and held it out
for Wendy to take. She took my shirt and
carried the writhing bundle below.
“Skipper, you’d better let me take
the wheel and get some bandages on those cuts,” I said. Later that morning, I went below to get some
coffee and another shirt. I found the Skipper
sitting at the mess table, his arms folded across his chest, his face a crazy
collection of bandages, and Wendy sitting across from him cuddling the
cat. It was an orange cat with black
markings, very much like a small tiger.
“There, there, Daddy’s not going to
throw you overboard,” Wendy was cooing.
“Are you, Daddy?
Jack,
what do you think we should name her?”
I looked at the cat carefully for
the first time. She was almost dozing
now, although keeping that one eye, the one with the patch of black fur all
around it, nervously eyeing me and then the Skipper just in case either of us
should move suddenly.
“Name her ‘Blind Pew’,” I
suggested.
“Blind Pew?” the Skipper
growled. “There’s nothing blind about
that cat. Its aim is altogether too
good.”
“Yes, Sir, but look at the black
patch over its eye, just like a pirate patch.
It makes her look like Blind Pew, the messenger in
“I never should have made you go back
to school, Jack. Never!” the Skipper
fumed. “All that reading’s gone to your
head. There’s no good going to come from
having a cat, as well as a dog, and a parrot, on board; you mark my words! I still say, it goes overboard the first
opportunity I get my hands on it; if I don’t strangle it first! And, that’s a standing order for you too,
Jack! You get ahold of that cat, you
heave it over the side!”
“That’s blarney. That’s blarney.” The parrot spoke up from its cage hanging in
the galley.
I looked at the cat, Wendy, the
Skipper, and decided the stowaway would probably become a permanent member of
the crew. Blind Pew would have to make
her own peace with Salty, but in time that would happen too. There’s some give and take required in the
close confines of a schooner, even one as big as Wanderlust.
Hired Hand
I had carried the big
plastic tub of shrimp into Mr. Flowers’ Seafood Market and set it down behind
the freezer display case. That was the last
bucket, and I was glad, because they were becoming heavy, very heavy.
“What’s a boy your age doing out of school?” a voice growled
right behind me. I turned to face a huge
bear of a man who was sizing me up with his eyes.
“He’s a good worker, Thor,” Mr. Flowers said from the cash
register. “All of my shrimp boat
captains say so, but I don’t really have any place for him to stay. He’s been sleeping on one of my boats or here
in the back of the store. Jack, this is
Captain Thor Gunter Narwhal. He’s not a
shrimper. He owns a big sailing ship,
the Wanderlust."
“You might be just what I’m looking for, boy,” Captain
Narwhal growled squinting at me. “How
old are you?”
“Sixteen, Sir,” I said.
I squared my shoulders. He
reached over and picked up a strand of my blond hair that hung nearly to my
shoulders, fingered it, and let it go.
“’Sir.’ I like
that. I’m looking for the right lad who
knows how to show respect and obey orders, one who really wants to know sailing
and ships, inside and out. One who’s
honest, hard working, smart. I’ll pay
you twice what Mr. Flowers is paying you, plus room and board on my ship if you
go to work for me. You’d start as ship’s
cabin boy and work your way up. Can you
swim?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You’d have to be willing to go back to school here in
Fernandina, and finish getting your high school diploma. I’ll have no stupid, uneducated kids on my
crew. And you’d have to get a haircut. Are you the right boy for the job?”
“I…I’m not sure, Sir,” I hesitated.
That was my introduction to the Skipper. The next day Mr. Flowers had me convinced I
should give Narwhal a try, and he drove me out to the yacht marina by the
bridge. I found myself asking Captain Narwhal
for permission to come on board his ship.
And it was big!
“No! Not ‘til you
take off your shoes!” he yelled. “Put
‘em in that box there on the dock.”
“Can I come on board now?” I asked, showing him my bare
feet.
“May I!” he yelled back.
“It’s may I, not can I.”
“Well then, Sir, may
I come on board your ship? I’ve taken off
my shoes.”
“I like that!” Narwhal boomed. “Come aboard.”
“Liked what, Sir?” I asked, having made a quick response to
his order.
“That you asked permission,” Narwhal replied. “Not all boys would do that, but it’s
proper! Always ask, ‘permission to come
aboard, Sir’ before you climb on anybody else’s boat. And when you’re on my deck I want you
barefooted. Understand? Well, how do you like her? This ship is my pride and joy. She’s cost me a lot of money, and I don’t
want my deck scuffed up or dirtied.
In
fact, I want this ship made and kept spotless!
Come
below,
and we’ll find you a berth, and then we’re going to have to get you a
bath. You stink, boy. Don’t tell me that’s all the gear you have?”
he asked, indicating my backpack.
“Yes, Sir. It is,” I
said. I noticed he himself was wearing
boat sneakers.
“Well, then, we may just have to fit you out with all new
duds too,” he grinned a tentative smile with his face screwed up like I smelled
pretty bad. But I truly believed he was
glad I had decided to take him up on his offer as we shook hands. He put his arm around my shoulder as we
headed for the hatch and gripped it hard.
It was the first time anyone had shown me any friendly affection in a
long time, and I found myself warming to him a little, if you can warm to a
grizzly bear. I still didn’t like the
idea of having to go back to school, and something about him still made me
edgy.
When we got below to the mess table
he told me, “Spill all the contents of that backpack out here on the table,
boy, and everything you’ve got in your pockets.
I want to see what you’re bringing aboard.” I was surprised by the
order, but I did as he had told me. I
had nothing to hide. “Is that small
Bible, the pipe, tobacco, and matches the only personal property you own
besides your clothes?” he asked.
“Yes, Sir. My Mom
gave the Bible to me.”
“Well, you can keep that.
And you can keep your pipe, but you may not smoke it below decks! If
I catch you smoking below decks you won’t have it anymore. But you can smoke anytime you’re
topside. You shouldn’t smoke at all, but
since you’re already probably addicted you may when you’re not on duty—on your
own time, not on my time. I see we are,
indeed, going to have to get you new clothes.
Do you have any money?”
“Just what Mr. Flowers paid me,” I said.
He took it from me, counted it, and stuck it in his shirt
pocket, looking at me all the while to see if I’d object.
The berth he showed
me to was forward in the crew’s quarters.
“You can stow your stuff in that locker,” he said. “You’ll sleep up here. The black man you saw cleaning up back in the
galley goes by the name of Tar. He
sleeps in the berth beneath you. As you
can see, there’s room for eight more crew that I’ll hire before we take Wanderlust on a long cruise, but for now
you two are messmates and you’ll share this cabin. Lord, you do stink! The head’s over here. You get a bath right now. Wash with soap! And I mean get clean! I’ll get you something that doesn’t stink to
put on. We’re gonna burn all your old
clothes.”
“Yes, Sir,” I grinned. I guess he wasn’t all that fond of shrimp and
sweat and grime.
He showed me how to operate the head
and gave me a towel and a clean, old pair of dungarees to put on.
Later, we sat down over a cup of coffee at the mess
table. I was wearing just the pair of
clean jeans. He said I now owned them
but that I’d have to earn them, and that he’d get some other things for me to
wear later in the day.
“There are a few things I want clearly understood,” the
Skipper began, getting serious and lighting up a pipe of his own, below decks I
noticed. “When I shake a man’s hand,
it’s a contract. I expect you to obey
orders, and I expect you to give me honest, hard work for your keep. There will be no shirking your duty on this
ship. If you’re going to work for me,
then work for me! I’ll expect everything you’ve got, and then
some! I’m a hard master, but I’ll treat
you fair. I can’t stand a liar, a cheat,
or a thief! You want to find yourself
off this boat, just let me catch you being dishonest. And I want things clean and neat at all
times—shipshape. ‘A place for everything
and everything in its place’ is my motto.
Clear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You look like you’re a strong,
healthy enough kid, though a little on the undernourished side. In a few days we’ll add some pounds of muscle
to your frame. I’ll take you tomorrow to
get you registered back in high school after we get you some clothing and other
stuff. You’ll work for me after school
and on weekends. I expect you to make
decent grades; not necessarily A’s, but I expect you to do your best. You’ll live aboard here and be a regular part
of my crew, helping to get this ship ready to go to sea for a long time. Come summer, if you prove out, you’ll be able
to go on my first long cruise down into the
“Yes, Sir!” I said, excited.
“I’ll keep a careful account of
whatever you earn. If you really need
money for school or anything, you can come to me and draw what you need. The rest of it will stay saved up for
you. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes, Sir,” I nodded my agreement.
“We’ve got a contract, then,” the
Skipper said and shook hands with me again.
His grip was like steel.
“But, Sir, do I have to go back to
school?”
“It’s the law,” he said, pointing
his pipe at me. “You’re a runaway. Technically you should have been turned in to
the juvenile authorities, but Mr. Flowers thought I might as well adopt
you. We’ll try it for a year or so, and
if it works out I might even make it a legal adoption. Now let’s put you to work. I want all the bright work on this ship
polished until it blinds me to look at it.
Tar here will give you some polish and some rags and you can get at it.”
“Sir, there’s one thing you should
understand,” I said. “I’ve never sailed
on a sailboat before and I was never very good in school, whenever I was in
one. I don’t know the first thing about
sailing. The only time I’ve been out in
the ocean has been on one of Mr. Flowers’ shrimp boats.”
Captain Narwhal smiled a knowing,
almost sly smile. “This is not a sailboat, boy. It’s a ship; a tops’l schooner. I’m going to
teach you everything, boy,” he said.
“I’ll make a first class sailor out of you if you put your heart into it
and do as you’re told. And I’ll make a
man out of you in the deal. One other
thing: I captain the Sea Explorer unit here on this island, and I expect you to
join and be a part of what we do. You’ll
meet some decent boys as friends, and it’ll be one more way you’ll be learning
the ropes. We meet here in the marina
boathouse on Wednesday nights. But I
better not catch you smoking that pipe of yours at scout meetings.”
Thus began my association with the
Skipper that has lasted now for more than two and a half years. I spent the rest of the day polishing brass
and getting sunburned. And I was
surprised to learn how much brass there is on a ship the size of Wanderlust. The ship’s bell, trim on the ship’s wheel,
compass binnacle, chimney on the small stove in the main salon, even name
plates on stateroom doors, fog horn, the Skipper’s sextant, and even his
bosun’s pipe; all and more needed a good shining. From time to time the Skipper would come by
and inspect my work, saying nothing, but letting me know with a tap of his pipe
if there were some spot he could see that needed more attention. He left about noon, and Tar brought me some
lunch out on the after deck. I tried to
talk to Tar to learn more about the Skipper, but his Pidgin English was so
broken that I didn’t learn much. It was
a real struggle to understand what he was saying, but he made up for it with a
big, white toothed smile in that all black face of his. He seemed to be enjoying some private joke
all the time.
The Skipper returned later in the afternoon, and when I went
below there were several packages waiting for me on my berth; clothes, school
supplies, even a pouch of tobacco like I’d been smoking. I could hardly believe my good fortune. I put everything away carefully in my locker
and cleaned up for supper. I had gotten
pretty sunburned during the day, and a soft, clean white T-shirt felt good on
my shoulders after another shower.
The Skipper was just lighting his
pipe when I came into the mess room.
“Did everything fit you o.k.?” he asked.
“Yes, Sir. I think so; and thanks. Thank you very much. I didn’t try everything on, but thanks
again.”
“You did a pretty good job today,”
the Skipper said. “I figure in about two
to three weeks you’ll have earned back the additional I spent on you
today.” He winked at Tar, who was
ladling out big steaming bowls of fish chowder.
“You got some sun, too, I can see.
I want you to wear those shorts I got you while you’re working here on
the boat after school. We’ll get a
really good tan on that miserable body of yours. You’ll need it later. Do you arm wrestle? I’ll arm wrestle you for that bowl of chowder
there. Winner takes all.”
“No, Sir!” I said, putting a
protective arm around the bowl Tar had set before me and grabbing up my
spoon. We all chuckled and went to
eating.
“It’s o.k. to use all the fresh water
you want in washing up, Jack,” the Skipper said, “while we’re tied up here at
the marina. But when we’re out at sea
it’s a different matter. Then fresh
water’s strictly rationed, understood?
Water is the most important thing for your survival, did you know that?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,
Sir.”
“Well, it is. More important than food. You can go a long time without food, but
about three days is max without water.
What do you think are the absolute essentials for survival?” He waited for an answer.
“Well, water, I guess…sure. But food’s pretty important too!”
“What else would you have to have to
survive indefinitely in a hostile or wild environment?” he asked.
“Clothing,” I said. “Without clothes you could get pretty
sunburned in a hurry. And knowledge and
skills; you need those.”
“Without clothes you could get
blistered in all the wrong places and eaten alive by insects,” the Skipper
added. “Your worst enemy in a hostile
land environment, besides man, is insects, not snakes or wild animals. What else?”
“Shelter?” I suggested.
“That’s right. Shelter, and some way of keeping warm. Learning to make fire was pretty important to
primitive men. What else?”
“Well,..I don’t know, Sir. You could need a doctor if you got sick.”
“Right again. Some kind of medical care or first aid is
essential. Your health and fitness is
essential. It’s important to know what’s
essential. You get what I mean?”
In this way the Skipper began to instruct
me, and I learned he was a pretty savvy teacher.
“Now, I want to know everything
about you,” he said. “So tell me all
about yourself, where you were born, about your parents. Start at the beginning and tell me everything
about yourself.”
We
talked late into the night before the Skipper let me get some rest. I guess I answered all his questions
o.k. Some of ‘em seemed pretty strange
to me at the time, but I guess there wasn’t much he didn’t know about me after
that, or so I thought then.
Attitude Adjustment
I don’t want to give you the
impression the Skipper and I got on famously from the beginning. There were some rough spots. The Skipper is a hard man, strong on
discipline and obedience (I believe the word might even be martinet), and I’ve already said how scary he looks, how physically
awesome he is. He has his flaws, too,
and one of them is occasionally getting drunk.
When he got drunk, which wasn’t very often (and has been less so
recently) he got mean. I ran away from
Sam after he kept getting drunk and beating up on me, and I nearly left the
Skipper for the same reason.
He had been working Tar and me both pretty hard for several
days. I was back in school and trying to
get back into the habit of study. Math
was giving me a lot of trouble because I had a lot of catching up to do. Every afternoon I’d come directly to the ship
as soon as school was out, put on my khaki shorts, and lay to on my
chores. He always had a list of things
he wanted done waiting for me on the ship’s bulletin board. He was working on the boat himself everyday;
Tar, who had been working during the day, would be fixing supper, our main
meal; and I worked at whatever the Skipper wanted done until it was after dark. Then we’d eat. I’d get to smoke my pipe on
deck for a few short minutes, and then go below to hit the books. The only time we “took off” was on Wednesday
evenings for Sea Explorer Ship meetings.
That’s where I first met Rance, our First Mate. Sometimes the Skipper would be reading in the
main salon. Sometimes I would bother him
with a question about my math because the Skipper is good at math. But he took to drinking a rum and lime juice
mixture after supper, and I don’t think he realized how much it was affecting
him. He called it grog. He seemed to be bothered about something a
lot of the time, about being pressed for time to get everything done before his
daughter was due to come home from college maybe. He didn’t like anything that cost him time or
held him back. And he didn’t like anything
that wasn’t neat, clean, tidy, and in place.
One evening I went into the main salon with a question, and
he exploded! He threw the magazine he
had been reading into a corner and jumped to his feet.
“Boy! Don’t bother me with that stuff now! Read the
instructions in the textbook.
That’s what you should’ve done last night!” I had never seen the Skipper that angry
before and never at me for what seemed to be no reason. He’s pretty awesome when he’s angry.
“Yes, Sir! Sorry, Sir!” and I ducked out to the mess
table. In a few minutes, I heard him
roaring from topside.
“Jack, get your butt up here NOW!”
I went up the ladder, my stomach
already in knots, as fast as I could.
The Skipper was cussing just like Sam used to do when he got drunk and
beat me. I was worried and scared.
“You think you can do what you
please! Don’t you? You think you can do anything and I’ll just
overlook it!” I was amazed at his sudden
anger.
“No, Sir!” I said, trying to remain
calm. “What’s wrong, Sir? What’ve I done?”
“Into my cabin, NOW!” the Skipper
commanded. I had seldom set foot in the
Captain’s quarters, and only when ordered in, and I glanced back over my
shoulder with great fear at the black expression on his face. When we got inside, he slammed the door shut,
grabbed me by my shoulder, and spun me back against the bulkhead. One hand was pressing my throat back so that
I was pinned and nearly choking. He put
his face right up into mine, and I could smell the rum on his breath.
“What you need is an attitude
adjustment, boy! And I’m just the man to
give it to you! Take from me, will you,
you ungrateful little scamp!”
He let go of my throat and shoved me
hard into the room.
“Get ‘em off! Get ‘em off!
Get those shorts off now! Butt
naked, that’s the way you’re gonna get it!”
I spun around now, realizing the
need to defend myself. “Please,
Skipper! If you’ll just tell me what
I’ve…”
“By Jove, when I give you an order I
mean to be obeyed! I said ‘strip’ and I
mean for you to strip! I’m gonna blister
your butt, boy!” He was beginning to
take off the wide belt he always wore.
“Skipper, I’ll take a beating if
I’ve done something wrong!” I yelled.
“But I didn’t take
anything. Just please tell me what I’ve
done!”
“Get ‘em off, NOW!” he roared again,
swinging the belt around over his head.
I shoved my shorts down around my
ankles and nearly tripped getting out of them.
“Some boys learn their lessons, and
some boys have to be taught their lessons!
I’m gonna teach you a lesson you won’t forget! Turn around!”
I didn’t yet know what I’d done
wrong, but I wasn’t about to disobey, even if it did cost me a whipping. Looking back, I saw the belt upraised in his
hand as I turned away, and at that moment the cabin door banged open and Tar
rushed in.
“No, Suh! No!” he cried out. “Dat boy…dat Jack…him…no…no takin’…” he
gulped. “Him no takin! See?
See?” He held up a bottle of
rum. The Skipper’s eyes were wide and he
swayed a little, but he lowered his belt.
“Ole Tar put’em way!” Benjy said quietly. He looked from the Skipper to me, and then
back again.
The Skipper grabbed the bottle out
of Tar’s hand and growled, “Get out, both of you! Take your shorts and get out!” That night I lay in my bunk and wept. When Tar came in I thanked him for saving my
butt, but I went to sleep arguing with myself about whether I’d be staying on
with the Skipper. I’d taken enough
beatings from Sam and I sure didn’t want one from the Skipper.
It was two days before the Skipper
spoke a word to me again. First he stayed
in his cabin. Late the following day he
went out and hired Rance. Rance lived in
Fernandina, but had been out of school a year and was glad to get a job working
on Wanderlust. The neat thing about Rance is that he has no
fear of heights. He was absolutely happy
climbing the masts to do the rigging work the Skipper wanted done, and I was
glad he was doing that because I was not really sure of myself aloft back then.
Finally, the next evening, the
Skipper came in and sat down at the mess table.
Rance had gone home for the day, and Tar was serving up supper. The Skipper looked over at me and said, “I’ll
throw all my rum over the side if you can beat me arm wrestling.” I glanced over at Tar and then grinned
tentatively.
I tried. I really tried. But the Skipper has an arm like an oak
tree. He’d let me almost push him over
and then he’d turn it on and push me slowly back. I grimaced and gritted my teeth and groaned,
but I couldn’t budge him. I quickly
realized he was playing with me when he got that slow, sly grin on his
face. Then he slammed my knuckles into
the tabletop. I gave a yelp of
submission.
“You’re getting stronger,” he
said. “One of these days I may share
some grog with you.”
“Thanks, but no thanks, Skipper,” I
said. “That stuff makes you mean.” After supper he offered to help me with my
geometry.
Learning the Ropes
“Get up!” It was the Skipper’s voice and it was the
Skipper’s rough, big hand shaking me awake.
I looked out the porthole and could
see it was still dark outside. “Sir,
please, I need some sleep!” I complained.
“Get up now!” he ordered. “And be quick about it. Put your new shorts on, and then come
topside.”
I stumbled sleepily into my shorts
and staggered toward the galley. The
ship’s clock was chiming out the time, but ship’s bell time was meaningless to
me. I glared at it. It said five o’clock. Tar was making breakfast in the galley. He already had coffee going.
“Cap’n want coffee, boy want sleep,”
he chuckled.
I yawned. “Is it really five A.M.?” I asked.
About that time the Skipper’s voice
boomed from above, “Jack, get up here now!”
I scrambled up the ladder at the end
of the companionway. When I got out on
deck it was still dark. The lights of
Fernandina and the stars were all I could see at first. The Skipper was waiting for me dressed in
sweat shirt and pants.
“It’s time to start turning you from
a boy into a man,” he said. “Do you know
how to do jumping jacks, ..Jack?” he asked.
“Yes, Sir, I think so,” I said. It was five o’clock in the morning. The sun hadn’t even come up yet. We had talked until nearly midnight that
first night I came aboard, and he wanted me out on deck in the cold air doing
jumping jacks!
“Good!” he said. “Do ten of ‘em!”
Reluctantly I did ten jumping jacks.
“Do ten more,” he said.
“Aw, Skipper!” I cried. “Gimme a break!”
“Don’t you ever, ever, do that again!” he said. “Don’t you complain about an order from
me. Just do it! Whether it makes sense or not, whether you
like it or not, just do it! Now stop
your whimpering. A scout is physically
fit, mentally awake, and morally straight, and you are going to be physically
fit! So get your butt in motion.”
I sighed and started in doing
another ten jumping jacks. For the next
half-hour the Skipper put me through a rigorous exercise program right there on
deck before the sun came up. Of course,
he was doing exercises too since he did everything he made me do. I began to see how he stayed so strong. He could out work me any time at any
thing. It wasn’t long before I quit
chilling and started sweating instead.
Finally he stopped, and not even breathing hard while I caught my breath
he asked, “Can you climb a rope?”
“I don’t know,” I panted. “I think so.”
The sweat was streaming down my body.
“Do you know how many ropes there
are on a ship like this?”
“A lot of ‘em,” I said, looking
around. It occurred to me that I was
going to have to learn every one of the seeming hundreds that ran from the deck
toward the tops of the masts so far above.
“There are seven,” he said with a
sly grin.
“Seven!” I protested.
“That’s right; only seven. The rest are called lines, sheets, or hauls
and yes, you’re gonna be learning every one of ‘em. It’s a trick question, but one every sailor
should know. The seven ropes on a
sailing ship are the foot rope, bolt rope, man rope, mast rope, wheel rope,
buoy rope, and yard rope. All of the
lines, as opposed to ropes, are divided into running rigging and standing
rigging. Running rigging moves. It raises and lowers sails, for
instance. Standing rigging is fixed in
place to hold the masts in place and keep them secure. Come over here. This one’s called the fore stay. Climb this one,” he said.
I did my best to pull myself up the
cable that he insisted should be called a line or a stay. But I only got a few feet up off the deck
before I came sliding back down, my hands slippery with sweat but taking a
blistering from the rope burn.
“If you’re going to be any good to
me, you’re gonna have to get over any fear of heights,” he said, “and you’re
gonna have to develop the strength to climb like this.”
To my amazement he went up that fore
stay, hand over hand, not even using his feet or legs, until he reached the
first platform on the mast and then came sliding down even faster in an easy
glide to the deck. He grinned like a big
gorilla that had come down out of the trees for a banana.
“In a few weeks, you’ll be doing
that,” he said. “Right now it’s time for
you to get a shower, put on some clean clothes, eat a quick breakfast, and go
be registered in school. After school,
you will get a haircut.”
Thus started my second day on the
job, and a routine began that continues to this day. Every morning at five it’s rise and shine to
do physical training. I’m still working
on being as good in the rigging aloft as he is.
For awhile fear of heights was a problem for me, but Rance got me over
that when he hired on to be First Mate.
“It’s time you started talking like
a sailor,” the Skipper said over his second coffee that morning. “Do you know what a bathroom on board a ship
is called?”
“I think you called it a ‘head’ Sir,” I replied.
“That’s right. It’s called a head because there were no
facilities on old squared riggers. The
wind blew from the rear, so sailors went to the head or front of the ship to
take care of their business. If you’re
gonna go over the rail, always do it down wind.”
“Well, how did they…” I began.
“In chamber pots or from the netting
out on the bowsprit,” the Skipper replied.
That’s really letting it all hang out, but you get to look at the
figurehead while you do it. I don’t want
to catch you spending a lot of time out on the bowsprit ogling the figurehead,
Jack.”
Of course the Wanderlust did have a rather half-clad mermaid for a figurehead, so
I didn’t know just how serious the Skipper was being, but Tar was enjoying the
conversation.
“What’s this?” the Skipper asked
while banging on the wall.” I didn’t
speak right up, so he answered his own question. “It’s called a bulkhead. Doors are called hatches. All right, you young ‘son of a gun’, it’s
time to go get you some academic schooling.”
A Scout is…
“Say ‘em again,” the Skipper
ordered.
“A scout is trustworthy, loyal,
helpful…” I began. “Sir, I’m really
tired. I could memorize these a lot
better tomorrow. Besides, you’re hurting
me.”
The Skipper was massaging oil into
my sunburned shoulders and back. Every
time I named off one of the scout laws, he’d put a grip on one of my
muscles. It was almost all I could do to
keep from crying out. I would arch my
back to get away from him, but his iron grip on my shoulder wouldn’t let me go.
“Tonight,” he said quietly. “You will learn them tonight. And no more messing around. We have a ship meeting again tomorrow
evening, and I expect you to be ready!”
“Trustworthy, loyal, helpful,
friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, obedient, brave…”
“Obedient, then cheerful, thrifty,” he corrected. “Then brave, clean, and reverent. What does it mean to be obedient?”
“It means doing whatever I’m ordered
or expected to do,” I looked up at him somewhat puzzled by his question.
“Discipline, Jack. Self discipline. It’s making yourself do things you may not
want to do—chores, homework, your job, manners and respect, physical fitness
training, saving money, brushing your teeth, cleaning up after yourself…forcing
yourself aloft in a storm. You develop
self-discipline so you can do a man’s job when a man is needed. Tough
discipline is extremely important on board ship. I’m the master of this ship. I have the responsibility for the lives of
anyone and everyone aboard and the safety of the ship. There can only be one master. I’m your master and my word is law, you
understand? To disobey me is mutiny.”
“The one scout law I’m not sure
about is reverent,” I said. “What does
that mean, a scout is reverent?”
“How should I know? To some folks it means going to church, I
guess. I’m not much on religion. It’s not my bag,” the Skipper responded. He gave me a slap in the middle of my back.
“Ow!” I cried and sprang off the
capstan I’d been sitting on. “Skipper!
That really hurt!” I tried to laugh it
off, but I was twisting in a kind of painful dance on deck. He grinned.
“You’ll be fine in the morning,” he
said. “Pain will make you think, thought
will make you wise, and wisdom, my boy, will make your life endurable!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I
asked.
“It means tomorrow remember to put
on a shirt after you get enough sun.
Your skin may peal off some, but in time you’ll get a really deep tan,
and you’ll be a whole lot more useful to me with a good tan when we get close
to the equator. One more time now. A scout is…”
“A scout is trustworthy, loyal,
helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, no… obedient, cheerful, thrifty,
brave, clean, and reverent. I think
reverent might mean
forgiving. Jesus forgave people, and I’m going to try to
forgive your giving me that slap,” I said.
“Hit the rack, Jack, and keep on
reading your Bible. You’re a good kid,
but that’s enough reverence for this ship.
And one more thing. My daughter,
Wendy, will be coming home from college in a few days. You remember to be courteous to her. I expect you to be polite toward her at all
times. You understand?”
“Yes, Sir. Good night, Skipper.”
Crew, Male and Female
“That’s Rance Besterman,” Captain
Narwhal said. “Get to know him
well. He can teach you everything you
need to know to be a Sea Explorer and a whole lot more. The other boy in uniform is Dave Woodard.”
The two young men the Skipper was
pointing out to me were standing beside an overturned rowboat that had been
stripped of most of its old paint and barnacles. It was set up on four by fours in the parking
lot behind the boathouse. One of the two
was dressed in a complete white
Sea
Explorer uniform, even down to his spit shined shoes;
the
other was wearing nothing but a deep red bikini that left nothing to the
imagination as to what was underneath.
He had short black hair, a deep tan, and the most physically fit body I
had ever seen. It was the body of a
swimmer, long in the back, narrow hipped, broad shouldered, with an abdomen of
bunched muscles. He was scraping at the
rowboat with a sharp paint tool when I walked up and introduced myself.
“Do you like to scrape paint, Jack?”
Rance asked. “I could get this job done
a whole lot faster if I could get some help around here.” He looked pointedly at Dave.
“I can’t get that mess on my
uniform,” Dave protested.
He
dodged the scrapings Rance flicked at him.
“You’ve been scraping on that thing for three
weeks off and on. When are you gonna get
it finished? Besides, you just use it as
an excuse to show off your perfect physique.”
Rance handed me the paint scraper
and did a quick flip on to a handstand.
Then he walked off across the parking area on his hands, his feet
dangling unsteadily in the air. “If
you’ve got it you should flaunt it!” he called back happily. He dropped back down to his bare feet and
stood up. Turning around, he smiled a
big grin. Dave snorted.
“You know what I dreamed about last night?” Rance asked,
walking up and giving me a backhanded slap in my chest. He smiled broadly at Dave and me, his head at
a jaunty angle. “I dreamed about girls! What else?
Then I woke up.” He laughed
heartily. He turned to me. “Girls really love my body,” he added. “When we’ve finished scraping down this boat,
we’re gonna paint her. Then we’ll use her as one of our Sea Explorer boats to
go sailing over to
“You! The one out of uniform, the new kid, what’s
your name? Jack! It’s your left foot, Jack. Start with your left foot. And when you’re doing an about face, do it
cleanly like this.” Rance was drilling
us, and I was doing the best I could to learn to drill and march correctly with
the rest of the Sea Explorers that made up the Skipper’s unit.
“I can’t help it! I’ve never had to march before,” I was
complaining.
“Quiet in ranks!” Rance
ordered. “The next time you mess up I’m
sending you to find Charley Noble. He’ll
teach you to march.” There was a general
ripple of laughter that went through the entire group of scouts. It wasn’t long before I messed up again.
“You, Jack! Fall out and go find Charley Noble,” Rance
commanded.
“Where will he be?” I asked.
“Inside. They’ll tell you inside.”
I trotted off toward the boathouse
and began to inquire for Charley Noble.
Everyone I asked told me to go ask someone else. All the adult leaders of the unit who were
working or talking with one another seemed to be too busy to be bothered by my
question. Finally, I asked Mr. Flowers.
“I believe I saw him headed toward
Captain Narwhal’s ship,” Mr. Flowers said.
“Go see if you can find him there.”
I was a bit frustrated by being
passed from person to person, but I dutifully headed off toward the Wanderlust. Tar was out on the forward deck enjoying the
evening cool when I approached.
“Tar, has Charley Noble come on
board?”
“You done cleaned it!” Tar said.
“Ain’t nobody here but me.”
I turned back toward the boathouse
with the suspicion that I was the target of a practical joke. When I entered the boathouse, all of the Sea
Explorers had already taken their places for the meeting to begin, and everyone
broke into a gale of laughter.
“Charley Noble is the stove pipe in
the galley,” the Skipper explained.
“Welcome aboard!”
All the scouts gathered happily
about me, laughing and clapping me on my back.
“Next time I’ll put you on watch for
the mail buoy,” Rance laughed.
With that initiation I discovered
that being a Sea Explorer was going to be fun, especially when later in the
meeting Rance and another boy gave an awesome demonstration of some karate
skills they’d learned.
“I’m not gonna get you a Sea Scout
uniform,” the Skipper said, “because there’s no point in it. In a few short months we’ll be taking off for
the
We were returning to Wanderlust from that first meeting I’d been
to, when there was a shriek of feminine joy from the forward deck. “Daddy!”
That was the first moment I laid eyes on Wendy Narwhal. It was in the moonlight, and she was
beautiful. The Skipper was delighted to
find that his daughter had returned from college.
“Daddy, I’ve brought a guest to be a
permanent crew
member
on the ship,” Wendy said after giving her father a big hug. “I bought it with the last money you sent
me. Who’s this?” she asked looking at
me.
“This is Jack, Jack Able,” the
Skipper said. “He’s going to be our
cabin boy. What do you mean ‘I bought
it’?”
“It’s a parrot, Daddy!” Wendy
laughed. “Actually a macaw, I think, and
it’s gorgeous! Come see. It’s down in the galley. Hello Jack Able.” She extended her hand and I shook it. I felt like I was shaking the hand of a movie
star. Wendy obviously felt quite at home
on Wanderlust already. She had arrived during the Sea Explorer
meeting. Tar had shown her the ship, and
she had already made herself comfortable in the stateroom next to her
father’s. After all, the Skipper was her
dad, and she would be going along as a member of the crew whenever we finished
getting Wanderlust ready for the
voyage. When we came into the mess room,
there was a large parrot tethered to its cage but walking around on the mess
table. I tried to go over and pet it,
but it snapped at me with its beak and gave my finger a nasty cut. “You’re a pretty boy!” it screamed. “You’re a pretty boy!”
“Now that’s blarney,” I said, half
angry at the vicious bird and half amused.
I was nursing my cut finger by sucking on it and glaring at Wendy’s
bird.
“Jack, that’s it!
Since then I’ve learned that if
you’re a stranger, you don’t try to pet a strange bird. Over time we’ve introduced the parrot to
people so many times as ‘that’s
“I’m not replacing you,” the Skipper
was saying to Tar the next morning. “I
need you for so much else. But I do
enjoy my daughter’s cooking. I need all
your talents as carpenter, sail-maker, and mechanic and engineer.
Jack
will be mess in addition to cabin boy.
Maybe you can help Jack here keep Charley Noble nice and shiny for her.”
“I’m not sure I wanna be ‘mess’,” I
said, grinning tentatively.
“It means you’ll be helping Wendy by
serving the meals,” the Skipper said.
That prospect sounded much more enjoyable than finding Charlie Noble or
giving it a polishing, so I guess I got a promotion at the same time Tar did.
Rance Besterman wasn’t the only one
who dreamed about girls. I began to
dream about Wendy myself. That could be
embarassing in the close confines of the crew’s quarters in the focs’le. One evening I had turned in early after a
really tiring day.
“Wake up, Jack! You’re keeping the rest of us from getting
any sleep!” Rance grinned into my staring eyes.
Quickly I rolled over, hoping the sheet rolled with me, while a burst of
laughter filled the foc’sle. I was glad
I was wearing my underwear. Some of the
other crew the Skipper had just hired were playing cards, but the rest had
turned in too after working on final preparations for the voyage.
Lay Aloft!
“Come on, little brother, you can do
this!” Rance said reassuringly. “I’m
right behind you. Just don’t look
down. In time you’ll get used to it.”
Nothing bothered Rance, probably
because he’d been a high diver as well as a swimmer in school. Like the Skipper he could scramble almost
effortlessly around in the rigging, like a spider monkey swinging from line to
line and doing daredevil tricks no person in their right mind would do. He loved it—being aloft—and he was determined
to get me to that same level of confidence.
I, on the other hand, was still shaky in the knees whenever I climbed
aloft. My hands had begun to develop
thick callouses. And I knew that one day
soon I’d be able to slide down a line like Rance and the Skipper did, but I
still did not have the strength to confidently give one hand to the ship while
I kept one for myself. The idea of
having to go aloft in a strong storm to take in sail or loosen a fouled line
still terrified me.
The Skipper had enough crew put
together to take the Wanderlust up
off the coast of Cumberland Island for a little celebrating of Wendy’s
homecoming. Rance Brewster Besterman had
been officially signed on to be First Mate.
Rance was 19, young for the job, but the Skipper trusted his seamanship
absolutely. So Rance had moved on board
and occupied another berth in the foc’sle.
He
had taken me on as his personal project because the Skipper asked him to, I
found out later.
I inched my way slowly out along the
foot rope of the tops’l yardarm, clinging to the spar and sail with both arms
while Rance playfully made the foot rope go back and forth.
He
was coming out behind me with the dexterity of a tight-rope walker, hardly
needing to hold on with either hand.
“I’m not going to let you go back down
until you’ve done this,” he said happily.
He was between the mast and me, so I didn’t see any way of getting out
of what he had just proposed. I looked
down at the clear blue water alongside Wanderlust
between where she was anchored and the
“I really don’t want to do this,” I
said fearfully.
“There’s nothing to it, little
brother,” he said. “Once you’ve done it,
it’ll be ‘easy as pie’. Everything will
be easier.” He swung one leg over the
yardarm, mounted the spar, and sat there astride it like he was riding a
horse. Wanderlust rose and fell quite gently as each swell passed under
her on its way to the shore. He grinned
a big happy grin. “I’m not going to let
you get past me. You’re gonna have to
jump.”
I looked down again at what seemed a
tremendous way to fall. I knew that,
yes, I probably could spring far enough out that there would be no danger of
crashing on to the deck. Rance had done
it many times. But I also knew that even
if I did hurl myself into space, it would still be a long way to the water
below—moments in which I could kiss my life goodbye if I belly flopped. Rance always made it look so easy, diving off
from up here. I took a deep breath and
tried to relax.
“You don’t want Wendy to think
you’re a coward, do you?” Rance asked. “I’ll
go first,” he said, “just to prove there’s nothing to it.”
Putting one foot up on to the
yardarm he stood up, balancing on that narrow spar and stepped easily over my
hands to the end of the yard. Without
hesitation he bent his knees slightly and then swan dived right out into space
and down into the water below. It was a
beautiful dive causing hardly a splash as he entered the water. In a moment his head cleared the surface and
he cheered for himself. Wendy, too, gave
a cheer of admiration from where she was sunbathing on the after deck. “You’re next, Jack!” she called up to me
pleasantly.
“Come on, little brother!” Rance
yelled. “No backing out now! I’ll race you to the beach!”
Certain absolutely that I was about
to do the most foolhardy thing I had ever done in my life, I moved as close to
the end of the spar as the foot rope would let me. I had seen Rance jump from here many
times.
“Oh, Lord, help me and forgive poor
Jack for anything I’ve done wrong,” I prayed out loud but to myself. I crouched down into a tight ball and sprang
outward with all my strength, twisting in mid air and then curling into a ball
as the water engulfed me. Down, down,
down I went in a mighty plume of bubbles and then fought to get to the surface
before my breath ran out.
“Great!” Rance cried, not six feet
away from me. “The take off was
terrible, but the half twist was fine followed by a magnificent canon
ball!” He was treading water, and we were
both well out from the ship. “I
challenge you to do it the way I did next time,” Rance said. “Standing up on the spar, right at the end, a
straight swan dive, only naked.” He laughed at my protest and spit water at
me.
“You think I wouldn’t do that in
front of Wendy?” he asked.
“I know you would,” I laughed. “But I won’t!”
“Let’s head for the beach!” he challenged. I was grinning now from relief and joy while
we both treaded water beside the ship.
He plunged past me and made a playful grab for my shorts as he went
by. I tried hard to beat him, but it was
a long swim, and he was standing in the surf waiting to grab my arm and help me
stand up when I finally body surfed on to the shore.
“I saw all the Coast Guard cadets do
a neat thing last year coming into
“I don’t know,” I protested. “It’s a crazy thing to do. If you fell from there you’d smash into the
deck and that would make an awful mess.”
“Do you think Wendy likes me?” Rance
asked. “We’re the same age you
know.” He threw himself down into the
surf as it swooshed on to the shore. I
sat down beside him, considering his sudden serious question.
“She probably likes you,” I
said. “But remember, she’s been at
college and has her pick of boy friends.
Besides, she’s the Skipper’s daughter, and I don’t think he expects any
of us in the crew to be messing around with her. He sure better not catch you diving naked in
front of her.”
He drew his knees up under his chin
and hugged himself. “I know!” he said,
“but every time I look at her I just wanna …umph!”
“So Rance has the hots for the
Skipper’s daughter,” I chided. “Poor
Rance! Admit it. She makes you feel sexy.”
“Yes, and you better not say one
word about it, little brother.” He stood
up, splashed water at me, and then plunged back into the surf for the long swim
back out to Wanderlust.
The
I suppose
you could include Bermuda in the West Indies—Bermuda, the Bahamas, the British
Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. John, the greater and
lesser Antilles, the Windward Islands all the way down to Trinidad and
Tobago. The only island groups we didn’t
visit on that first voyage into the Caribbean were
It was in
Mr. West
was a true Scot who had lived many years in the West Indies before settling for
a time in
He was a
fine sailor, too, and taught me a lot about sailing. When I told him about my love of Treasure Island, he assured me that the
story was partly true and that there was still treasure to be had on
The first
day out from Fernandina we were crossing the
In the
first place, I was jealous of Rance. I
didn’t realize I was jealous. It was
just some deep kind of gnawing down inside me.
Rance and I had been the best of friends ever since he had come aboard
as First Mate, ever since I had met him in Sea Scouts, as a matter of fact. Once aboard, he took to calling me “Li’l
Brother”, and he undertook to teach me everything he knew about ships and
sailing. He was the one who coached me
through those first hesitant days of climbing aloft before we ever left
Fernandina. Of course, he really was
doing what the Skipper had told him to do, but Rance is such a naturally
likable guy that it wasn’t hard for me to accept being his “little brother” at
all. On the contrary, I had never had a
brother or sisters, so I thought of Rance as the person to really look up to. Of course I understood that Rance outranked
me, by a lot, and that I was absolutely required to obey any order he gave me
just like I would the Skipper’s. My
problem, to begin with, was physical. I
was madly, crazily, head-over-heels in love with Wendy myself, as was every
member of the crew except perhaps Tar, and I didn’t know how to handle that.
Whenever
any of us had a few minutes of “free” time, we’d get a mug of coffee from the
galley. Wendy always kept the coffeepot going, and we’d play cards or checkers
on top of the capstan on the forward deck.
We were out of hearing if the Skipper was on the bridge, so conversation
could be freer even than down in the focs’le where we had to be quiet much of
the time so some of the crew could sleep.
Sometimes the Skipper would join us, and it wasn’t that we minded his
fraternizing with the crew, but most of the time he maintained a kind of
friendly distance between himself and us.
Whenever Rance was present, and the Skipper wasn’t, the talk always
turned to Wendy. Let’s face it; she was
the only female on board except the cat, she was every guy’s dream of a
beautiful woman, she was friendly equally to everyone and turned out great
meals, she nursed our minor injuries.
All the crew were young, and healthy guys except Tar. But whenever Rance brought up Wendy he would
launch into a poetic rhapsody extolling her beauty and femininity that would
have rivaled Shakespeare. It could be
said that Rance was profoundly in love with Wendy, and he couldn’t say one word
about it, or so he seemed to think, to her. And he particularly expected the rest of us to
keep his feelings for her to ourselves.
The Skipper
had direct control over the work I did during the daytime. I only saw Rance when he wasn’t on duty or
happened not to be sleeping. And I
seldom saw Mr. Stealth at all because he had duty at night and usually was
asleep at other times. But from time to
time it would happen that we all would find ourselves in the company of the
others around the capstan. Mr. Stealth
began to call me “Bantam”. He would come
on deck, coffee cup in hand, usually in a sultry mood, and say, “Move over
Bantam. Let a man show you how to win at
cards.” I didn’t like being referred to
as a small rooster, and Mr. Stealth fancied himself to be an expert at
Blackjack. We never called him anything
but Mr. Stealth to his face.
I had told
Mr. Stealth that I didn’t appreciate being called “Bantam”, that the rest of
the crew called me Jack or “Cheerly”.
That was a nickname the Skipper had given me. When a sailor does something cheerly, it
means he does it happily and with a ready willingness. But my telling Mr. Stealth that seemed only
to aggravate the situation more, and he seemed to go out of his way to call me
“Bantam” accompanied by a little sneering grin, as if to ask what I intended to
do about it. There was, of course,
nothing that I could do about it.
It was
after one of these times that I took my coffee mug grumpily down to the mess
table below and sat there staring at the bulkhead with my face in my
fists. Wendy saw me from the galley and
came out to talk.
“What’s the
matter, Jack Robinson Able? You don’t
look like your usual “Cheerly” self.
You’re not sea sick, are you?”
“No,” I
muttered.
“Then, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Mr. Stealth, Mr. Whipple Stealth!” I fumed. “Somebody ought to call him ‘Sneak’! He calls me ‘Bantam’ all the time, and I
don’t like it one bit!”
Wendy laughed. “You
don’t see yourself as a ‘Bantam’,” she said.
“No,” I said, feeling my face flush with embarrassment.
“Jack, Mr. Stealth is a very capable, responsible
sailor. I’m sure if he weren’t, my
father would never have made him Second Mate.
He’s in charge of this ship and the safety of everybody on board at
night when you’re down below sleeping soundly in your bunk. Remember too, he is the Second Mate.”
“I know that,” I grumbled.
“It’s not that I don’t trust his abilities or have a problem with his
authority. I just don’t like being
called ‘Bantam’.”
“Jack, …no, I’ll use ‘Cheerly’…it’s likely that every member
of this crew will acquire a nickname or two during this voyage. It’s meant in good fun, usually, and there
has to be some give and take when we're all living in such close quarters. Mr. Stealth,…’Sneak’, I like that…,probably
doesn’t mean anything more by calling you ‘Bantam’ than that you’re the
youngest on board. What you need to do
is to figure out a nickname for every member of the crew, and then start calling them by the nicknames
you’ve chosen. But don’t call Mr.
Stealth ‘Sneak’, and whatever you do, don’t call the captain ‘the old
man’. I don’t think my father would be
happy about that at all. I wonder what
name you might call me by? I’d prefer
something other than ‘the cook’.”
I looked at her and grinned.
“I’ll bet Rance has a special name for you,” I said.
“Oh?” she said, looking surprised, but pleased. “Now what might that be?”
“Never mind. I’ve
said too much,” I said, and I left to go back topside.
The Skipper’s Daughter, a Sailor’s Delight
“Jack!…Bantam!”
“Sir?” I
responded tardily. I hated having to address Whipple Stealth as ‘Sir’,
and I was more than irked that he
was interrupting my nice, warm, fresh-water shower after a
day’s swimming and snorkeling in salt water.
I had just gotten soaped up good and was beginning to rinse off. I was supposedly off duty after our evening
supper and looking forward to letting my sunburned body cool with a nice read
in my bunk before getting some shut-eye.
I was reading
I turned
the water off and said, “What?!” a little louder than I should have.
“Get out
here…now!” he commanded.
“I’m taking
a shower!” I retorted. “I’ll be out in a
minute.”
“Immediately!”
was his reply. “The Skipper wants to see
you on the double.”
I didn’t
wait to dry off. I grabbed one towel to
wrap around myself. I put a second one
around my neck and stepped out into the passageway drying my hair. I was still dripping.
“What does
the Skipper want?” I wondered out loud.
“He wants
to see you in his quarters now!” Stealth emphasized. “When the Skipper gives an order, you jump,
bantam boy!”
I hadn’t
really been asking him, so I pushed past him while giving him my evil eye, and
hastened aft toward the Skipper’s master stateroom. I was still trying to dry off as I knocked on
the Skipper’s hatch.
“Sit down,
Jack,” the Skipper said, indicating a chair close to him next to his desk. I was glad the Skipper was back aboard. Things just weren’t the same without him in
command, and I was concerned about his health after the cuts and scratches on
his face got so bad looking. But his
arrival back on board was not expected until we returned to the yacht club
tomorrow. The suddenness of his summons,
and the serious look on his face now all alarmed me a little.
“Skipper,
I’m sorry. I’m still wet, so I’d better
stand. You caught me in the shower.”
“I said,
‘Sit down.’”
“Yes,
Sir.” I quickly put the extra towel on
the chair and sat on it. I waited for
him to begin what he had to say.
“It’s
progress report time, Jack. You and I
haven’t had a chance to talk quietly and long about how things are going for
you. We need to have an honest
conversation.”
“Oh, I’m
doing just great!” I said. “It’s you
I’ve been worried about, Skipper.”
“I’ll be
fine, now that I’ve got some antibiotics in me, and I’ve learned how to trim
the claws on that she devil Pew.” He
glanced sideways at me as he lit up his pipe, waved out the match, and then
blew a smoke ring into the air. “Yes, I
let Wendy bring the wicked beast back aboard.”
I
grinned. “I’m glad, Skipper.”
“Your
grades weren’t as good as I would have liked at the end of the school year,” he
said.
“Skipper,
you told me to do the best I can, and I have, that you didn’t expect A’s but
decent grades,” I said, sitting up anxiously.
“Yes, you
have done your best. I know that. You’ve worked hard, not only for me but also
at getting back into the study habits of school, but I’m going to expect a lot
more when you’re back in school at the end of the summer. I’ve hired another man on to our crew, an
older man. His name is Cedric West. He’s stowing his gear below even as we
speak. Mr. West is a gentleman and a
scholar. Part of his duties will be to
tutor you whenever you’re not performing your duties. You’re to learn everything you can from him,
understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Looks like
you got plenty of sun today,” he commented.
“Yes, Sir,
maybe a little too much,” I said, “and in some places not used to it.” I grinned.
“How’s
that?”
“We all
went skinny dipping on the beach, Sir; all except Mr. Stealth, that is. There was no one else around that we could
see. We didn’t think you and your
daughter would be rejoining us until we brought Wanderlust back to the yacht club tomorrow. Then I spent a couple of hours snorkeling out
over the reef. Gee, it’s beautiful out
there, Skipper!”
“Stand up
and turn around,” he said. I did as I
was told. He gently pulled the towel
from around my waist. “Geez, boy! You’ve nearly blistered your butt! When will you ever learn?"
“I guess I
lost track of the time, Sir,” I said lamely, trying to look around at my
backside.
“How old
are you, boy?”
“Sixteen,
Sir, but I’ll be seventeen in just a week or so.”
“That’s
right. That’s right. I remember now. July 4th. You told me you were born on July 4th,
Independence Day.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well, I
guess we’ll be celebrating your birthday somewhere in the
“No,
Sir!”
He just
chuckled. “Sit down, Jack. How will you feel about celebrating your
birthday in a foreign country? There
won’t be any fireworks.”
“That’s
fine with me, Sir,” I said sitting down again and facing him. I was feeling a little awkward. I had an impulse to reach for the towel the
Skipper had taken from me, to at least put it over my lap. But he had placed it well back of him on his
desk, and I was sitting on the other one.
“I never celebrated my birthday very much, and I’m having such a good
time on this cruise already. That’s
celebration enough for me.”
“You’ve worked hard. You’ve obeyed orders. You’ve learned a lot they don’t teach you in
school. And you’ve gotten a lot
stronger. I’d say you’ve put on quite a
lot of muscle in the last several months.”
“Yes,
Sir. I’ve got some pretty tough calluses
on my hands and feet, too. I still can’t
climb a rope like you can, but I’m pretty comfortable climbing aloft now.”
“All the
work, and exercise, and fresh air have done you good, Jack, and I think you
have it in you to be a fine sailor. You
weren’t a bit seasick on the
“No, Sir!”
I agreed proudly.
“There is a
problem, however. You and Mr. Stealth
aren’t getting along so famously. This
is also confession time, Jack, and I expect you to tell me the truth.”
“Yes, Sir,
we aren’t,” I started slowly. “He’s
taken to calling me ‘Bantam’, and I don’t like him calling me ‘Bantam’.” I wondered to myself whether Wendy had said
something to her father about it, or whether Mr. Stealth, or someone else in
the crew had said something.
“You’re no
bantam, Jack. Go over and open that
closet door. Take a long, hard look at
yourself in that mirror there.” I did as
I was told. The Skipper had a
full-length mirror attached to the inside of his closet door. It was the first time I had looked at myself
in a mirror since Sam, the old man, would put bronzer all over me and deck me
out in a breech clout and feathers. The
Skipper
came up behind me as I looked at myself. “What do you think?”
“No, Sir.”
I concluded. “I’m not a bantam.”
“Then I will speak to Mr. Stealth, and you should not let it
bother you further. But there’s
something I do have to know,” the Skipper continued. “Do you like females, Jack? Girls…Women?
Are you attracted to women?”
“Yes, Sir!”
I expostulated. “I’m not…you know, if
that’s what you’re askin’! Does Mr.
Stealth say I am?”
I started to turn around.
Pow! He popped me suddenly on my
bare butt. It stung like fire.
“Ow!” I
yelped. “That wasn’t nice, Skipper!”
“Wendy, my daughter, how do you feel about
her?”
“She’s…she’s
beautiful, Sir! I mean, all the crew are
in love with her. She’s a gorgeous
woman. But I wouldn’t…I obey the rules,
Skipper. I wouldn’t touch your
daughter! All the crew know she’s off
limits.”
“But you
think she’s beautiful?”
“Yes,
Sir.” I was facing him now, my face
blushing as red as I figured my butt was feeling. I was hoping he wasn’t going to try to pop me
again for anything.
“Brace,
Mister!”
I knew what
that command meant and responded instantly, at rigid attention, heels together,
toes at a 45 degree angle, chest thrown out, chin in, thumbs where my trouser
seams would have been.
“Hard,
Mister! More chest, stomach tight!”
I threw out
my chest and made my stomach muscles as tight as I could. Then he held Wendy’s picture up in front of
my face. “Take another look!” he
ordered. I really didn’t have any
choice. I knew I was blushing three
shades of red.
“Close your
eyes!” he said. My situation would have
been ridiculously funny if he hadn’t seemed so serious about it all.
“You can
see her with your eyes closed, can’t you?
Of course you can! That
beautiful, bronzed body—that long, blond hair?
You’d like to make love to her right now, wouldn’t you, Jack? Confess it!
Wouldn’t you?”
“Sir,..I…I”
“You think
about females a lot, don’t you, Jack?
The truth!”
“Yes, Sir!”
I confessed. I couldn’t lie to him. “I think about them almost all the time, but
I…”
“Keep your
eyes shut! You dream about them at night
too, don’t you, Jack?”
I had to
admit to myself that there had been the night I dreamed about Wendy.
“I can’t
help it, Sir,” I pleaded.
“You’re an
animal, Jack,” the Skipper said. “At
least, partly animal. A young, healthy,
teenaged animal is exactly what I expect you to be. You’re growing up, Jack. You are turning into a man. And on board
ship, there’s no place for privacy or relief.”
I began to grin.
“Wipe that
silly grin off your face!” he said. “And
open your eyes!” He was peering at me
intently. “We’ve been turning you into a
strong, young sailor, but you’ve still got to learn how to handle your
temptations. You’ve got to learn how to handle your own temptations, keep your
cool, do your job, and save yourself for the girl you’ll marry someday! Do you understand?”
“Yes,
Sir. I think so, Sir.”
“You can
think what you like about a woman’s body, but you keep your trousers buttoned
up. I can see you were telling me the
truth,” he said after a moment. With a
slow, amused grin he pointed downward with his pipe. “You can wrap up in that towel again and take
a seat.”
I ducked
around him and grabbed for the towel. It
was better than nothing. I sat down in
the chair again, hoping that position would make my situation a little less
obvious. He resumed his seat, taking the
picture and putting it into his desk drawer instead of on top where it had
been.
“You’re
quite right about my daughter,” he said, looking me square in the eyes. “She’s very beautiful, and I would expect
every man aboard this ship to protect her.
But she is off limits.”
“Sir…yes,
Sir! I would never…I mean…”
“But Mr.
Besterman might,” the Skipper said. “The
truth now—.”
“Sir,
Rance, that is Rumbob—I mean, Mr. Besterman, is in love with your daughter,
probably more than any of the rest of us.
But he’s never…I mean he wouldn’t.
He admires her and respects her, Sir.
And he respects you.”
“Mr.
Besterman is the First Mate,” the Skipper continued. “He’s young, but I trust him. He’s never shown any impropriety toward my
daughter, and I don’t expect that he will.
But I do think he’s in love with her, ‘more than the rest of the crew’,
as you say.”
“Yes, Sir,”
I said lamely.
“You will
not discuss this conversation with Mr. Besterman, or anyone else. Nor will you mention Miss Narwhal’s picture.”
“No,
Sir. As you say, Sir.”
“Meanwhile,
you will learn to live with and to control your feelings and your temptations. You
will cooperate with and obey Mr. Stealth, or anyone else on board who gives you
an order. You’re the cabin boy,
Jack. That makes you low man in this
crew. Everyone but the animals on board
outranks you. But you’re not a
‘bantam’. Understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Do you
love this ship, Jack? You’ve worked on
her, but I expect you to become a true ship’s husband. Do you love her?”
“Yes,
Sir.”
“Good! That’s all then, Jack,” the Skipper said,
lighting up his pipe again as he turned to some papers on his desk. He was chuckling quietly as I left.
Cabin
Boy Caper
I went
forward to find changes taking place.
All of my stuff had been moved to the section of the foc’sle in which
Mr. Cedric West would be berthed. Coby
was moving into my place with his uncle Tar.
Mr. Stealth was in charge of the move, and most of it had been
accomplished in my absence, so there was little point in putting up any fuss
about it. I had only to arrange my
personal things and get acquainted with my new shipmate and tutor. Quickly I pulled on a clean pair of jeans and
a sweatshirt. Mr. West was entertaining
the crew with renditions of Scottish bagpipe music on his practice
chanter. By itself, the practice chanter
sounded very like an Indian snake charmer, and Mr. West was a very accomplished
musician. Between pieces he was telling
funny stories. I liked him right away,
and I soon learned that Mr. Stealth had merely been implementing the Skipper’s
orders to make the swap.
“I hope
you’ll forgive me. I took the bottom
berth—easier for an older man to get into.
You must be Jackie m’boy,” Mr. West said.
“Just Jack,
not Jackie,” I said, shaking hands with him.
“Some call me ‘Cheerly’.”
“Right!”
Mr. West responded. “Always seize the
initiative, Jack. It’s the first rule of
chess. You do play chess, I hope! No?
Then I shall teach you. We’re
going to get on famously!”
“Checkers
is the game for me,” Charlie Stapleton spoke up from the passageway. We all called him ‘Checkers’ because he liked
the game so much.
“Checkers
is fine for fun, Mr. Stapleton,” Mr. West said.
“But I’ve been instructed to turn our young cabin boy into a gentleman
and a scholar. Chess is a game for the
intellect!”
I noted he
already had a board with magnetic pieces set up and resting on the lower berth
beside him.
“That may
be,” Checkers answered with a frown, “but I’ll bet I can beat anybody here at
checkers. Right now the Skipper wants
all hands for a meeting on the deck. So
stow this stuff and get topside. Tonight
we go in to take on fresh water, fuel and supplies, and tomorrow we’re bound
for the
All hands
were called early the next morning to set the Wanderlust out to sea and on course for the
I found out
soon enough why Mr. West had wanted the lower berth. In rough weather it was easier to chock
yourself in and run little risk of being thrown out of your bunk for a
startling tumble to the deck aisle below.
Many nights no one could sleep while the ship pitched and rolled in the
storm. Mr. West and I would spend time
braced into each end of his berth, the chess board held down by our toes
between us while Charlie Stapleton sat in the aisle and watched us play. Mr. West had offered to teach Charlie to play
chess also, but Checkers never could get the subtleties of it.
“Now, why
did you do that?” Checkers would ask.
“Just jump over him!”
“Bishops
don’t jump over other pieces,” Mr. West would remind him. “Only knights can do that.”
One night
Mr. West said, “I found a book in the ship’s library you ought to read,
Cheerly.” By then he had gone to calling
me ‘Cheerly’ and most of the crew were now calling him ‘Whiskers’. I still called him Mr. West. No one but the Skipper called him Cedric.
“Oh?” I
said, barely glancing up from the chess problem before me. “What’s its title?”
“A Sailor’s Life by Jan de Hartog,” Mr.
West said, pulling the book from beneath his pillow and handing it to me.
“What’s he
need that for?” Checkers piped up. “He’s
living a sailor’s life.”
“You might
find an idea or two you could put to good use,” Mr. West said to me, ignoring
Charlie’s question.
I had
already learned that anything Mr. West recommended was likely to be profitable.
“Thanks,” I
said. Then I took his queen with
mine. “Check!”
Bang! He took my queen with his rook. “Check Mate!” he laughed. The game was won, and I never saw it coming.
But it was
several days before I had a chance to get much of the book read. It was a good read about a boy who went to
sea aboard a freighter. We were tied up
at the dock in
The night
before, a Friday, several of the crew had gone ashore to enjoy a final night of
the pleasures of
“Serves you
right!” Wendy said, pouring me yet another cup of black coffee. “The Skipper doesn’t want you to fall and
break your fool neck, and you’re obviously not ready to fly out of the nest,
Bantam!”
That did it. Throwing
caution to the wind, I staggered below and located one of the many buckets we
had on board. Then I went forward to the
crew’s quarters.
Sure
enough, Mr. Whipple Stealth was sleeping like a baby on his stomach, his left
arm hanging over the side. I would
submerge his hand, wait for the anticipated reaction, and duck back into the
head where I would be unseen. There I
could quickly empty the bucket and then emerge as innocent as a lamb. With any luck at all, Mr. Stealth would bang
his head on the overhead while scrambling out of his bunk in wet boxers. My only regret was that all the night watch
were asleep and would not get to witness the full details of my prank. My biggest challenge would be to pretend my
innocence.
I went into
the head next to the Mates’ compartment and filled the bucket with tap
water. Leaving the door to the head open
so that I could duck through it quickly, I quietly stole forth on my little
caper, intent on my mission. Slowly,
ever so slowly, I crept toward my target, Mr. Stealth’s dangling hand. His face was turned toward me, outward, on
his pillow, and while not snoring was a perfect picture of serenity. I positioned the bucket beneath his hand,
bracing myself against the movement of the ship with my bare feet in the
aisle. Holding my breath, I began to
raise the bucket.
At that
moment Whipple Stealth grabbed my sweatshirt, twisted it, and yanked me up to
within inches of his own face! My eyes
were wide with fear, and I was conscious that I had sloshed water on to my bare
feet while I stood on my toes!
Mr. Stealth stared at me impassively for what seemed like an
eternity, then he quietly said, “The head needs a good cleaning, Cheerly. Don’t you ever, ever, try that again.” Then
he let go of my shirt, rolled over, pulled his blanket up, and went back to
sleep. But he hadn’t called me ‘Bantam’.
“How did he
know?
How did he do that?” I said
latter, when I could no longer contain what I had done and confessed to the
Skipper during our next “honesty” session.
The Skipper laughed. He roared with glee!
“Mr.
Whipple Stealth is a former Recon Marine and Navy Seal,” he said. “There is nothing, nothing, that happens on this ship that he doesn’t know about. That’s why he’s the Second Mate, in charge of
the night watch.”
One thing
you can rest assured of; I never
slept with my hand dangling out of my bunk!
View
from the Top
Wanderlust didn’t have a crow’s nest
like older tall ships (for instance, Spanish galleons), but she did have a
platform, called the top, where the top foremast joined the foremast, and this
became my chosen spot to go to think things out. The view from up there was wonderful,
especially so in the
It is an indescribable beauty perfect for an artist’s
paintbrush. By this time I had gotten
over any fear of being aloft, my body was totally in harmony with the movement
of the ship, and I had toughened my hands and feet so that I could slide down
stays quickly if called. At first the
Skipper thought I was merely anxious to get to
I had long
entertained myself with reading, with chess games against Whiskers, with
practicing my marlinspike skills until I could tie knots at night, down in the
bilge, blindfolded, with my hands behind my back. Skills with rope and line are essential to a
sailor, and Rance had long ago instilled in me the need to be an expert
marlinspike sailor. I could smoke my
pipe out on deck as long as I was careful not to let the ashes blow. I had plenty of study challenges put to me by
Mr. West in his capacity as my tutor. He
insisted that I learn not only Spanish and French, because these languages
would be spoken on some of the islands we would be visiting, but also I was
required to master the basics of Latin.
Monday was Spanish day for me; Tuesday was French day; Wednesday was
Latin day; the cycle repeated itself for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. On Sundays I could talk to him in
English. These weren’t the only things
he had me studying, of course, and the Skipper made his contributions to my
learning requirements as well—navigation and signaling. What with my chores and duties, there was
plenty for me to do.
So, I was told later, when I took to
the top on the foremast and stayed there for hours, my behavior became a topic
of conversation. “He appears to be
having a blue day, moody, something’s wrong.
Oh, that’s likely. He’s having a
“blue day”—a subject for laughter. He
thinks he’s a pirate, and
Whenever
anyone asked me why I was spending all my free time aloft, I’d say, “Leave me
alone. I’m having a ‘think day’.” Well, there were things I needed to think
out, and that was the best place to do it undisturbed. A fellow gets a different perspective from up
there, the ship, his whole world, far down below. Sometimes, I’d lie awake at night in my bunk
with everybody around me snoring away and just think and think in the darkness.
The Skipper
was not like my father had been, a kind and gentle man who would let me sit in
his lap while he read to me or carry me about on his shoulders. He wasn’t like Sam, the old man, had been
either, drunk most of the time, selfish, and mean. But the Skipper wasn’t kind and gentle. As long as I obeyed instantly and precisely
everything he told me to do, and as long as I kept working hard to please him
and to become what he wanted me to be, we got along fine. But at times I felt more like I was his slave
than his ward, and I wasn’t sure how long I was going to want our “arrangement”
to go on. I was grateful to him and felt
obligated to him, but I didn’t feel like his son, and so, a long-term adoption
was something I needed to be sure about.
I’ve
already told you the Skipper was pretty physical. And he wasn’t religious. At times I’m sure he was lonely. He never spoke of his wife, but he shared his
loneliness with me. The morning after I
came on board, he rousted me out early for physical training, and he put me
through it every morning after that without fail. Tar didn’t do PT, and Wendy didn’t do PT, and
Mr. West, when he joined the crew, didn’t do PT, but every other member of the
crew was expected to join us to work out.
He had Rance coming early to work out before Rance ever moved on
board. Of course, Rance was very
physical himself. He loved exercise and
working out! When Mr. Stealth came on
board as Second Mate, he joined our sessions right away. He was already in terrific physical shape,
but it didn't occur to me that he had been a Recon Marine and Navy Seal. It was Mr. Stealth who came up with a version
of pushups he called ‘toes up’. From the
pushup position we put our toes up on the deck railing behind us and did
pushups with our body weight angling down and added to the stress on our
arms. Rance loved it. He said it would get me ready to walk around
on my hands, which, of course, he could already do.
The Skipper admired physical prowess, and from time to time
would hold contests of various kinds among the crew to keep everyone competing
to be the most physically fit. He had
Rance teach us the basics of karate. He
loved to box and wrestle, and regularly took each of us on as an adversary.
Every morning after a hard workout, we’d all go for a swim before getting on
with the day’s schedule.
Fairly quickly the Skipper had hired on the additional
members of the crew to complete readying Wanderlust
before the school year for me was over and we departed on that first
cruise. Coby, Tar’s nephew showed up,
and although he had not been to sea before, the Skipper took him on. Then came Johnny “Cracker” Wimberly, who was
a ham radio enthusiast as well as an experienced sailor, then Charlie
“Checkers” Stapleton, then Fletcher “Bo” Greene. Bo was definitely a Southerner. He was a ladies’ man and an ardent defender
of the Confederate South. I don’t mean
he was racially prejudiced. He got along
fine with everyone, but we all soon learned to avoid topics of conversation
that might lead to his expounding on the Civil War. Other than Cedric “Whiskers” West, who didn’t
join the crew until
Wendy was
only a little bit more religious than her dad.
I mean, I don’t think she particularly cared what denominational church
she went to. But she insisted on the
Skipper letting us take things easy on Sundays, and if we were in port, she’d
go with Mr. West to an Anglican Church, if there were one, or whatever was
available. Sometimes I’d go with them,
and sometimes I wouldn’t. I didn’t understand much about the differences in the
various churches.
But I did try to faithfully read my Bible, as
my Mom had taught me to do. I kept it
under my pillow, and reading it made me feel closer to her. Sometimes, sitting up on the top, I felt like
I could talk to God. Sometimes I’d try
to think things out, and sometimes I’d just sort of let my mind wander and be
pacified by the beauty of God’s world. I
didn’t always understand the things I read in the Bible. Much of it was confusing and mysterious to
me. I’d ask Mr. West religious questions
from time to time, and he’d try to give me his ideas. I tried, as much as I could, to do things the
way I thought Jesus would have wanted me to do them. But there were things that bothered me.
Jesus said
that if a man looks after a woman with lust in his heart he has as much as
committed adultery with her already.
This caused me a lot of anguish, because I was finding myself having
thoughts about women almost all the time!
Fortunately, I brought this up with Mr. West in a discussion about
religion over one of our chess games.
“So you’ve
decided you’re a hopeless sinner?” Mr.
West asked. “Do you know that the
Skipper is a hopeless sinner?”
“He is?” I
asked.
“Of
course. Do you know that I’m a hopeless
sinner, that every man on this ship is a hopeless sinner, every person? Why do you think we need a Savior, Cheerly? You’re a perfectly normal, healthy young man
whose body is…well…growing. You will
probably always think about women, especially if you’ve been on board a ship
like this one for a long time. But that
doesn’t mean you have to give in to your temptations, or go rape Wendy, or
visit a prostitute the next port we hit.
The truth is that every man is capable of committing every sin there is,
but Jesus died to make it possible for a holy God to forgive us. And we have the freedom to choose whether
we’ll act on the sinful temptations that come our way. You have the capacity to be an adulterer
without having to choose to become one.”
The idea of
the Skipper being a hopeless sinner, but nevertheless forgiven by God, was
really new to me. I had always looked
upon the Skipper as next to God, practically.
He was not only my boss and benefactor, but literally held and
controlled my life in his hands, even more so once we were out to sea. And yet there was something in our
relationship that I knew about, but had shared with no one.
I had only
been with the Skipper a few days when one evening he called me into his cabin
to clean up and then polish his shoes.
The Skipper liked spit shined shoes, but he had to teach me how to shine
them so that they would have a hard, glass-like surface. Many times he went barefooted or wore boat
sneakers on board Wanderlust, because
he was so particular about the beauty and cleanliness of his decks, but
whenever he went ashore, he always wore spit-shined black dress shoes. As cabin boy it fell to me to tidy up his
cabin whenever he ordered me to do so and to shine his shoes. I had finished the first task and was hard at
work on the second, the Skipper giving me instructions about making really
small swirls of black shoe polish with a soft rag followed by swirls with cold
water. He explained that the cold water
caused the shoe polish to harden to produce the desired results. It seemed like a long and boring task to me,
but I was down on my knees trying to follow his instructions when he asked,
“Are you ever lonely, Jack?”
I thought a
moment and then said, “Yes, sir, I sometimes get lonely. I guess that goes with being an orphan. But I’ve been so busy recently, that I
haven’t had much time to think about it.”
“I’m
lonely, Jack. I’ve found that ever since
my wife died, I get really lonely sometimes.
I guess loneliness is just part of life.” He blew a smoke ring from his pipe.
“Yes, sir,”
I agreed. “Has your wife been dead long,
Skipper?” I was using a long belt of
cotton rag to put a high shine on first one shoe and then the other while he
sat at his desk, his foot pressed into my thigh just above my knee.
“Long
enough. Five years. She died while Wendy was still in middle
school.”
“Ever
thought of marrying again, Sir?” I asked.
“No,” he
said. “No, I haven’t.” Then he was silent for awhile, smoking his
pipe and watching me work. Then he said,
“That’s good enough. You’ve done a good
job, Jack. I want you to sleep in here
with me tonight.”
I looked up
at the Skipper in dismay. He was staring
at me, and I was at a loss to know what to say.
“I…I don’t
think you’d sleep very well, Skipper. I
probably snore a lot.” Actually, I
thought it more likely that he would snore a lot, but I didn’t relish the idea
of sharing his bed with him.
“Don’t get
the wrong idea, Jack. I’m not going to
hurt you or do anything to you. I just
get to longing for a warm body to wake up next to.”
It was a
pretty awkward situation, but the end result was that I slept in the Skipper’s
bed that night, next to him, in my underwear, wondering if he was going to try
to do something strange to me. Just
before he dropped off to sleep, he turned on his side long enough to say to me,
“I always wanted a son, Jack, and my wife wasn’t able to give me one.” Then he turned his back to me and went to
sleep immediately. He did snore.
Later, in
the
“Yes,
Sir. I guess it’ll be o.k.”
On that occasion the Skipper continued to smoke his pipe in
bed while I lay there wide awake and nervous, and then he said, “I want you to
learn tolerance, Jack. Do you know what
tolerance really is? It’s the ability to
accept people, all people, as they are, black, white, yellow, red, Spanish,
French, whatever, as having worth. You
can learn something from everyone, even the bad ones, and the stupid ones. You understand?” Then he rolled over, put his pipe in an
ashtray on a shelf above the bed, and went to sleep.
The next
day was a Sunday, and the Skipper wore his spit-shined shoes when he went
ashore by himself. He never touched me,
and we never discussed it, but Mr. Stealth noticed and that Sunday morning
during breakfast casually asked, “The Skipper keeping you at cabin boy duties
pretty late, wasn’t he, Cheerly?” There
were some momentary chuckles among the rest of the crew that were finishing
their meal. I didn’t like that at all, but I chose to keep my mouth shut.
“Well,
Jack,” Wendy called from the galley, “you’ll never guess what I found in
Test
of Manhood
“Doesn’t it
hurt? It must hurt somethin’ awful!” I
said to Bo Greene, looking at the sketches.
He was trying to decide among skulls, and Confederate flags, and even
one of the word ‘Mom’ surrounded by flowers.
“I mean, all those needles!”
“Naw!” He assured me. “Oh, sure, it stings a little, but you take
it like a man, and the women love seeing a guy with a tattoo. It’s a sign of bravery, very masculine and
very nautical. Besides they don’t stick
the needles in one at a time. They have
a machine that does it over and over again, real fast, and it only goes in a
little ways, not deep into the muscle, just your skin. They paint the design on and then use the
artist needle machine to prick the colors down into your skin. You can have all kinds of different colors. See?” He
showed me some more of the selections.
But I still
had reservations. I remembered all too
well the many visits to the doctor we all had to make before departing
Fernandina. All the crew had to get
physicals and X-rays, be photographed and fingerprinted for our passports, and
every time I went to the doctor for weeks on end it had seemed there was some
inoculation or shot I had to take. One
set of typhoid shots was three in a row and made us all sick. After each one my arm would swell up like a
football, I’d run a fever, and feel lousy for about twenty-four hours. I remembered the day before we left, the
Skipper made special arrangements for the doctor to come on board, and we all
lined up to get a final shot and be checked over. The Skipper let us see our
passports before they were finished and put away in his cabin for safe keeping,
and mine looked like a scared little kid.
He had made me get another haircut, a flattop, and my hair stuck out in
spikes like a porcupine.
“I dunno,”
I said, still dubious. “You’ve gotta
live with that picture on your arm a long time.”
“Not
necessarily your arm,” Bo said. “You can
have one on your chest, or wherever you want.
Here’s a neat one that looks like barbed wire wrapped around your bicep,
or neck, or ankle. That’s tough
lookin’! Just don’t get one you know
where. That would hurt!”
“Geez! Bo, that’s awful!” I said, grinning.
“I saw this
really funny movie about a Navy guy whose buddies got him really drunk ‘til he
passed out, and then they had a snake tattooed on him. I’ll bet he hurt for a week!”
“You stick
to your guns, Cheerly,” Wendy called from the galley. “You don’t need a permanent tattoo to prove
you’re a man.” She had been listening to
our conversation at the mess table.
“That’s
right!” the Skipper said, having come up behind me. He grabbed me around my neck with his left
arm and began to knuckle punch me hard in my right arm. Laughing, he wrestled with me, giving me a
couple of jabs in my ribs as he dragged me backward off the bench. “You two quit your gab and get topside. I’ve got a better test of manhood for you
both.” He swatted me on my backside and
pushed me toward the ladder.
“I’ll see
if I can find just the perfect design for you, Cheerly,” Bo called while
hastening forward to stow his sketches.
We never
knew what the Skipper had in store for us.
This particular morning we were anchored on the leeward side of a small
island in the British Virgins. The sun
had painted the eastern sky with every hue imaginable. There was a light breeze passing over the
island from the east. The rest of the
crew had assembled on the main deck and begun doing stretches. Mr. West, who always played his bagpipes
forward at the bow, ‘to greet the dawn’ he said, was just starting into his
rendition of Scotland the Brave.
“What’s the
rope for, Skipper?” everyone wanted to know.
There was a thick rope hung from another rope secured to each mast above
in a kind of Y. It was at least thirty
feet up to the Y, and the rest of it lay coiled on the deck. The Skipper grinned, and my heart sank.
“I’ve got a
medal for each of you young men who pass the test,” the Skipper replied,
glancing around at each of us. “All you
have to do to win your medal is to climb this rope up to the Y and return to
the deck, without using your feet or
legs mind you, in one minute or less.
Tar will keep the time.” So
saying, he passed a stopwatch to Tar who had come topsides to observe the
proceedings. “This is how it’s done.”
He seated
himself on the deck, his legs spread wide on each side of the coil of rope,
gave Tar the signal, and up the rope he went, hand over hand with legs still
parallel to the deck. He tapped the
place where one rope joined the other and came down just as quickly as he had
gone up, hand over hand.
“Twenty-five
seconds, Cap’n Suh!” Tar sang out.
“Piece of
cake!” Rance exclaimed with a grin.
“Now,
Mokotai, you do it,” the Skipper said.
“Let’s see who can beat my twenty-five seconds.”
My heart
sank because I doubted that I could go up that rope that way in any amount of
time. I had become much stronger in the
time I had been with the Skipper, and I had certainly overcome any fear of
heights that I might have once had. It
was easy for me to climb the shrouds and other lines, to feel comfortable
working my way along foot- ropes high up.
It was great fun for me to slide down lines the fast way to the deck
from aloft. But what I lacked yet was
the upper body strength in my shoulders and arms to lift my entire body weight
without using my legs to wrap around lines and clamp my feet to them. Mokotai, on the other hand, had long, almost
simian-like arms, with a long back and shorter legs typical of many
Orientals. He didn’t do it in less than
twenty-five seconds, but he went up and down in forty. The Skipper was pleased.
“Way to go,
Smokey!” everyone cheered.
“We’re
gonna have a Monkey Boys Club,” the Skipper said.
“Here,
guys! Let a man show you how it’s done,” Rance said, and strode forward to be
next. When Tar said ‘Go’, Rance went up
that line like a spider monkey leaving a fire; but, he didn’t stop at the
Y. He went right on up to the foremast,
slid back to the Y, and came down hand over hand in twenty-three seconds flat,
to the cheers of his shipmates.
“Outstanding!”
the Skipper shouted, clapping him on the back.
“You next, Cheerly!”
“I dunno…”
I said. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Sure, you
can,” several assured me.
“Remember,
you only have to go up to the top of the first rope,” the Skipper said. “Not like ‘show off’ here.”
When Tar
said ‘Go’, I gave it my best shot, but I knew before I was half way up that I
wasn’t going to make it without using my feet and legs to get some purchase on
the rope. There was an immediate silence
from those watching below followed by shouts of encouragement as they tried to
cheer and urge me on. But about
three-quarters of the way up, the muscles in my back and arms seemed to lock up
in a cramped freeze. I clung to the rope
while beginning to tremble, my legs still extended outward, but my thighs
clamped together in a vain attempt to check myself from the inevitable slide to
the deck that I knew was coming.
Suddenly, my body straightened and down I came in a hand-blistering
slide to the deck. I was crushed! At that moment I wanted to be any place but
standing red-faced and ashamed in front of my shipmates. I slunk away to disappointed murmurs. I found a place on the other side of one of
the lifeboat dinghies where I hoped I could scrunch down and not be seen. It was even worse when later on the Skipper
handed out a set of newly stamped dog-tags to each man with his name, Wanderlust, and the year on them.
“You’ll be
able to do it one of these days,” the Skipper said, and put mine back into his
pocket.
That was
definitely not one of my best days on
that trip. It wasn’t one of my best
weeks, in fact. I retreated to the top
whenever I could and licked my wounded pride in silence.
“So, who
are you mad at, Li’l Brother?” Rance asked me when he found me staring out
across a moonlit sea about three o’clock one morning. I just stood there by the rail for the
longest time before answering.
“Myself,” I
said.
“You think
you’re s’posed to be perfect, or somethin’?
You think any of the rest of this crew think any the less of you because
you didn’t make it up the rope?”
“Mr.
Stealth probably does,” I replied.
“Listen,
Cheerly. Everybody on board this ship
knows that the Skipper places higher expectations on you than any of the rest
of us. None of the rest of us are having
to learn as much, or do as much, as fast as you are, not even Coby. You remember the night we all got you drunk
in
“He knows
you love her,” I said.
“He
does? You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“I didn’t
have to. He just knows. Did he say anything to you about that?”
“No, he
didn’t,” Rance said. “One thing he did
say was ‘a boy becomes a man not when
he gets a job, or gets married, but it’s when he takes responsibility for
himself.’ And that’s what I’ve tried to
do—take responsibility for myself.”
“Rance,
have you ever wondered why the Skipper is making this cruise, and why he chose
each one of us to go on it?” I asked.
“I don’t
know why, L’il Brother. I guess in time
we’ll find out. And in time you’ll be
able to climb that rope.”
After that,
I took every opportunity to strengthen my shoulders and arms, and by the end of
the summer I could go up a rope as well as walk around on my hands just like
Rance. It was a great day when the
Skipper awarded me my dog tags and I became a member of the Monkey Boys Club.
Blueprint
for
“And who’s
going to fix the food?” Wendy asked.
“Jane fix
food, Tarzan pick place!” Rance said, giving her his most winning smile. Then he realized I was sitting at the mess
table studying, and added, “You can come too, Cheerly, if you want to. Tarzan need Boy to be chaperone.”
“Boy! Chaperone!” I expostulated.
“Well, be a
chimpanzee, then! You can be Cheetah,
but I need someone to assure the Skipper that his First Mate didn’t overstep
the bounds of decorum.” We all laughed.
“When?”
Wendy asked.
“Tomorrow
morning,” Rance said. “I have it on good
authority that we’ll be anchored right here in this bay all day while the
Skipper’s away, and the whole crew has the day off. Everybody’s going to be going swimming—you
have to admit it’s a beautiful beach—and we can just find some nice place to
spread a blanket and pig out.”
“I’ll see
what I can do about putting together a basket for us,” Wendy said, obviously
pleased. “But right now I have to finish
up tonight’s feast, so out, out!”
“What’re we
having?” Rance asked. “I’m hungry right
now.”
“You’re
always hungry,” Wendy said. “We’re
having conch fritters that Whiskers fixed earlier, and I’ve fixed a nice
bouillabaisse to go with them.”
“What’s
that?” Rance asked skeptically.
“Fish
stew,” I said. “It’s French for fish
stew.”
“Oh! OK! By
the way, Mr. Stealth said he would grill something for the crew on the beach
tomorrow for their lunch.”
“Good. Now scoot!” Wendy commanded.
“Did you
put any of those conch’s in the stew?” I asked.
“They looked awful when Mr. West was taking them out of their
shells. He said if you eat conch raw
it’ll improve your love life, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to eat them
raw.”
“You’ll
just have to wait, and taste my stew, and then you can decided,” Wendy said.
That
evening the entire crew enjoyed supper together on the afterdeck of Wanderlust while the sun went down in
one of those glorious displays for which the
“Now,
Cheerly, if you’ll take one of these beautiful conch shells, say this one, and
cut off the tip right here, you can turn it into a fine horn for signaling like
the island natives,” Mr. West suggested.
Tar lent me
a saw from his carpenter’s tool kit and a chisel for shaping out the small
partition and soon, with Mr. West’s help, I had a new boat horn. Mr. West showed me that I could get various
tones from the conch shell just by the way I put my hand into it and held it
while it was blown. I suppose I made
everyone aboard miserable with my blowing it so much.
On evenings
when we had an all-crew dinner like that and everyone enjoyed entertaining
everyone else, the Skipper liked to find occasion to get a good philosophical
discussion going. He’d light up his pipe
and begin to ask probing questions that might lead to some topic that would
keep us all contributing our ideas until ‘the wee hours of the mornin’,’ as Mr.
West called them. I would light up my
pipe and try to imitate the Skipper in looking sage and wise, but many times I
didn’t feel I knew enough to make a proper contribution and that it was better
for me to keep quiet and listen to what my elders had to say.
“Gentlemen!”
the Skipper began, “it is your job to obey orders, work and maintain this ship,
earn your pay, and enjoy your time off.
And all of you have done that very well, very well indeed. It is my job to decide where we’re going and
what the best future is for all of us.”
He waited to be sure he had everyone’s attention. “You have no doubt noticed that I have spent
considerable time ashore in the various ports of call,
“I don’t
know, Skipper,” I replied. “It sure
isn’t more school!” (Chuckles from the
crew)
“’Surely’,”
he corrected, and Mr. West grinned.
“Come now, Jack! You haven’t been
overly taxed by Mr. West’s tutoring, have you?”
“You know,
‘all work and no play will make Jack a dull boy’,” I defended myself.
“Well, you
read your Bible a lot, Cheerly. What do
you think of these islands we’ve been visiting?
Do any of them seem like paradise to you?”
“No, Sir,
not exactly,” I said, trying to figure out where he was going with his
enquiry. “I mean, this one seems nice
and all, although I haven’t met any of the people on it. It’s beautiful from what I can see; gorgeous
beach, pretty mountain, with a rain forest on top.”
“Well, what
would be paradise for you, Cheerly?”
“Getting
married!” I said, “and SOON!” There were
laughs at that. “I don’t know,
Skipper. If I could have an island just
like this one with no one but friendly people on it, a wife, kids, and a tree
house,” I added. “It would have to have
a tree house, like in Swiss Family
Robinson. It would be great to swim,
and spear fish for your food, and not have to scrub decks all day.” There were more chuckles.
“You
wouldn’t want to run around in your birthday suit all day like Adam and Eve in
“No,
Sir!” Then I added, “too many
mosquitoes!”
“Just
friendly people, huh?”
“Yes,
Sir. I mean, there are some bad folks in
the world too, you know Skipper.”
“Yes,
Jack. There are. Rance, what about you? What do you want your future to hold?”
Rance
glanced quickly at Wendy. It seemed
strange to hear the Skipper address the First Mate as Rance instead of as Mr. Besterman.
“I think
I’d want to go back to college and get a degree,” Rance said. The Skipper seemed pleased.
“Well,
gentlemen, tomorrow I’m flying out of
“I’m going
into
“Already
have something I have to do,” I said.
The
The Skipper
departed the ship early the next morning, and Bo and several of the others went
with him to catch a ride, if they could, with some of the island natives
driving into
I hadn’t
gone very far along the beach and shoreline of that bay, stopping from time to
time to try out new blasts and techniques on my conch shell, when I rounded a
group of rocks that seemed to have tumbled down on to the beach in ages long
past. That’s when I came upon a small
creek that flowed out of the jungle-like forest into the bay. The land there rose quickly from the shore in
a great bluff covered with thick growth.
I waded across the stream, which was surprisingly cold, stopping in the
middle to use my shell to get a drink.
On the other side there seemed to be a kind of path that led back into
the jungle away from the beach and following the creek bank. Curious, I began to pick my way back through
the mangrove and grasses, and then to follow the path in its steep ascent up
the bluff. In some places the climb was
difficult because I didn’t want to drop the shell, and yet I needed both hands
to grab vines and plants to clamber up.
I solved that problem by tucking the lip of the shell into the waist of
my jeans while I climbed. When I emerged
at the top of the bluff I could hear a steady rushing sound that I thought must
come from the rapid descent of the creek toward the sea. But a little farther on I parted the
undergrowth and stepped out into a small clearing around a rocky but clear
pool. Into the pool plunged a waterfall
from a rock ledge perhaps thirty to forty feet above. The sunlight now was streaming down into the
clearing, making a rainbow over the pool.
It was a place of pristine, quiet beauty, breathtaking in its loveliness
and privacy. The black earth among the
rocks surrounding the pool was damp and oozed between my toes. In the surrounding jungle growth I could hear
the calls of birds, and the water leaving the pool gurgled and babbled over the
rocks of the streambed. Obviously
somebody made the path from the beach, but I had seen no footprints like the
ones I myself was now leaving, and there appeared to be no one around.
I blew a
blast on my conch horn. “Hello!” I cried,
but there was only a slight echo that silenced the birds in the forest
momentarily. Then I noticed a cave-like
grotto behind the waterfall and decided it was time for a swim to investigate. Our crew had frequently gone skinny dipping
in the ocean whenever there was no one else around, and so I saw no reason not
to now. In a moment I stripped, laid out
my jeans on a rock so their bottoms could dry along with my T-shirt and
underwear, and plunged into the crystal clear pool. The water was so cold it took my breath
away! I was instantly numb all over and
rose to the surface gasping, “Oh, Lord, that’s cold!” I thought about dashing back out, but decided
instead to swim over by the falls. The
pool was quite deep toward its center. A
few minutes of exercise was enough to let my body acclimate so that in no time
at all I was standing on a rock directly under the falls, letting its icy rush
pummel down upon me. There was nothing
in the little grotto, but I thought it might have been a place where some primeval
native, one of the original Caribe Indians perhaps, could have found shelter
for the night. There were great vines
trailing down from the trees on each side of the falls above. I sought one that might allow me to swing
from the side of the pool and plunge into its center, but none were loose or
located such that I could do that. But
it occurred to me that they seemed to be quite sturdily attached to the great
trees and cliff face above and would bear my weight if I chose to climb to the
top of the falls and dive in from up there.
I started up on one, hand over hand, and it was only when I neared the
top that it occurred to me that I had not used my legs or feet to climb by at
all. Standing at the top of the rushing
cascade that I reasoned must run right down from the rain forest at the top of
the island’s mountain, I could see clear out to the bay where Wanderlust rode gently at anchor. I stood looking out for a moment, enjoying
the sun on my body, and then with a mighty “Monkey Boy!” yell, I swan dived
into the pool below. It was one of the
great moments of my life, and there was no one to see it but God.
I sat out
on a rock, letting my body dry and warm like my clothes, and thought, “This is
my kind of place, my secret place. And
if God is good to me, someday I will have a tree house, or maybe a beach house,
and a private island with a waterfall, a wife and kids, and my blueprint for
paradise will be complete.”
It was
getting close to noon, so I pulled on my clothes, now nice and warm, and
retraced my path back down to the shore.
I didn’t have to wade back across the creek because there were Wendy and
Rance, lounging on the beach in their bathing suits, their blankets spread out,
and a nice lunch ready in a basket. It
was apparent Ole Rance wasn’t wasting any time getting on with romancing
Wendy. The two of them were lying side
by side on the blanket in their bathing suits.
Rance was lying on his side, one arm under Wendy’s head, holding her
hand with his other, and he was kissing her as he talked softly into her
ear. They were surprised to see me when
I blew my conch shell, and having been swimming in the surf that morning, they
claimed they were as ready to eat as I was.
“I have
found the most beautiful, the most
wonderful, unbelievable place back in the forest just back from the top of this
bluff!” I said. “After lunch you both must see it! I’m going to call it my ‘secret place’, but
since there’s a kind of path I’m sure other people must know about it, and I
want to share it with you two.”
“What’s so
special about it?” Wendy wanted to know.
“You really
need to see it to appreciate it,” I said.
“I’m not going to tell you any more, because I want it to be a really
neat surprise for the two of you, just as it was for me.”
I think
after lunch they went, hand in hand, to see my ‘secret place’, not so much
because they thought I had really found something as that they just wanted to
be alone together. “It’s not hard to
find,” I said. “Just follow this
path. There is a little climbing you’ll
have to do to get up there, but it’s not all that bad, and trust me, it’s worth
it.”
I sat there
on the blanket alone just thinking about the tree house I would like to
build. In such a beautiful, secluded
location, with giant banyan trees both at the top and bottom of the little
clearing, it would be possible to build a tree house of several rooms, high up
against the cliff face that encircled the clearing and pool on three
sides. From there you would have a view
out to sea, and the ocean breezes, and yet it would be protected too. It would be easy to build a ladder or steps
to the top of the falls for diving. The
pool was absolutely crystal clear, although extremely cold, and deep enough to
be safe for such diving.
As I sat there,
I began to realize how far I had come in such a short time. My body was strong, my mind was being
stretched by new learning, new experiences, and new insights every day, and I
had a positive hope that life for me would somehow turn out great after all. But I also realized that no matter how great
the friendships were that I had developed with the Skipper and crew, there was
a deep loneliness and a longing down inside me that would only be satisfied
when I had a wife I could call my own.
I was still
sitting there with my knees drawn up to my chest, contemplating the meaning of
life and growing drowsy from the afternoon sun, when Mr. Stealth walked up
quietly behind me, barefooted on the sand.
He had crossed the creek, as I had done, so that the bottoms of his
trousers were also wet. He squatted down
beside me, and looking out to sea, said, "Well, Cheerly, did you get some
sun today?”
Tattoo, the Seaman’s Mark of Manhood
When Bo
returned to the Wanderlust that
night, he was sporting his long contemplated tattoo. I was amazed at how clear and sharply defined
the picture was and how brilliant the colors.
Many of the tattoos I had seen seemed diffused and pale by comparison.
“There’s
nothing to it,” Bo declared. “Didn’t
take long and didn’t really hurt at all.
And look, Cheerly, I’ve found the perfect design for you. This will look so great right here on your
arm.”
What he
showed me was, perhaps, the most unique picture of a beautiful, young mermaid I
have ever seen. She was sitting
wistfully on a rock at the bottom of the sea, her bare arms clutching her knees
(or where her knees would have been if she hadn’t had a fish tail). Her head
was turned dreamily to one side, while her hair trailed down over her back, and
her tail spread out over the rock. The
pinkish cream of her long back and upper body contrasted with the blue-green
shimmer of her lower fishy body. She
looked as if waiting, lonely and longingly, for her lover. I was mesmerized by her loveliness.
“Now, Jack,
this is special, and costs extra, but this woman can do this for you tomorrow
morning, and Cracker, and Checkers, and Coby, and I are all wanting to chip in
to pay for it for you. So what do you
say? She looks so much like the mermaid
on the front of Wanderlust, doesn’t
she? All of us are going to be getting
tattoos to remind us of the great times we’ve had this summer, and we want you
to be one of us.”
This last
convinced me to have it done, and so the following morning the five of us
hitchhiked into
Bo
lied. It hurt! But I gritted my teeth and with my shipmates
chiding me and urging me on, I managed to get through the experience without
shedding a tear.
Cracker’s
tattoo was the funniest. The fat woman
decorated his behind with a monkey eating a banana.
“Now that
you guys are all authentic sailors,” Bo said, “I have to tell you that when I
woke up this morning, my arm felt like I’d been branded! But it has
eased up some.”
“Now he tells us,” Coby said, still
gritting his teeth and trying to smile.
He had been the last to get his.
As we left the tattoo shop and started down the road on our
return to Wanderlust, I kept looking
at my left arm and wondering what the Skipper would say when he saw it. I wondered what Rance and Wendy would
say. Rance didn’t have a tattoo, and
never did get one, in fact. The rest of
my band of brothers all wound up sporting something nautical or unique to their
personalities, but all different.
Mokotai already had several tattoos from some years before. I suppose he had gotten them in the South
Pacific. Mr. Stealth had a couple of
military tattoos that I hadn’t paid much attention to before, but that were probably
from his service with the Seals.
The next morning my arm felt just like someone had seared it
with a red-hot iron! I mopped around
down below decks all day, running a fever and trying to read. I was glad we were at anchor and I had no
real, heavy duties to perform.
“You think you hurt?
I can’t even sit down!” Cracker lamented.
“Stupid, foolish thing for you boys to do!” Mr. West
snorted.
When the Skipper did finally
see my tattoo, he grabbed my arm, twisting it to get a better look, and then
let me go without a word. I don’t think
he was pleased, but he never mentioned it to me.
“We’ve got trouble,” Cracker said the next evening as we sat
down to chow around the mess table. “No
doubt some of you have been noticing the strange cycle of weather we’ve been
having the last couple of days—sultry hot and still, followed by heavy rains
growing more heavy? Well, I just picked
it up late this afternoon on the radio.
There’s a hurricane coming; it’s headed directly for us; and, Mr.
Stealth and Mr. Besterman are putting their heads together right now trying to
decide what we’re gonna do.”
“When’s the Skipper due back?” I asked.
“He didn’t say just how long he thought he would be,” Wendy
said, joining us with a cup of coffee.
The Skipper had made it quite clear he expected to return to
“I don’t know what we’re gonna do, Li’l Brother,” Rance
said. “It’s obvious we can’t stay here
directly in the path of a big storm and ride it out at anchor. Mr. Stealth thinks we ought to go north to
the American Virgins and see if we can’t find shelter in a port there. It could pass to the south of us, then. But I reminded him that more hurricanes turn
north than south and suggested we
go still further down into the
“Can you navigate this ship into waters you’ve never been
in?” I asked.
“We’ve got good charts and the best equipment,” Rance
replied. “I think Whipple and I together
could. We wouldn’t go any further than
we thought we absolutely had to go to get clear of the storm.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but what will the Skipper think when he
comes back and doesn’t find Wanderlust
here? He probably knows about the
hurricane and is busting his gut to get back here right now!” Rance just shook his head.
“Whatever we decide, we’re gonna have to do first thing in
the morning,” he said. “We’ll just have
to explain it to him when he does get
back.”
The following morning, long before dawn, Rance and Mr.
Stealth rousted us all awake calling “All hands on deck!” It was apparent that they and Wendy had put
their heads together during the night and come up with a plan of action. Cracker confirmed that the latest reports
indicated that there was no significant change in the direction of the
hurricane bearing down on us and that it was expected to intensify throughout
the day. With a great deal of anxiety,
we raised the anchor and set Wanderlust
on a southwesterly course that would take us into deep water, away from other
islands, and hopefully away from the storm.
The sea had already begun to rise and it continued to rise as the clouds
overhead became more and more menacing, racing along at increasing speed. Rain, which only the day before had come in
short, almost welcome showers of relief from the sultry heat, now began to beat
down on us with greater intensity and greater frequency. I began to wonder if Rance had made the wrong
decision and was sailing into the storm instead of away from it.
Cracker had been up all night getting the latest weather
advisories on the radio, but he continued at his post whenever he wasn’t needed
on deck. He was able to establish contact
with several other vessels, commercial and private, that like us were fleeing
the storm.
Wendy and Mr. West took turns trying to give Rance periods
of relief at the helm, but they were only brief respites because Rance insisted
on manning the helm himself most of the time.
He was stronger than almost any of the rest of us, able to wrestle with
the kicking wheel while Wanderlust
bucked the waves. It was reassuring to
see him standing there, hour after hour, feet planted wide apart, in his
rubberized yellow slicker and storm pants.
But I could tell by the intense expression on his face as he constantly
checked our course, the strain on shortened sails, the troughs and flow of the
waves, that he was bearing the full responsibilities of his first command at
sea. When Mr. Stealth relieved him at
eight bells to go below and get something to eat, he was gone hardly long
enough to get the sandwich Wendy had made for him before he was back out on
deck, taking the lead in whatever needed to be done.
Down in the galley
Wendy had everything on the galley stove lashed down with
bungee cords. Early that morning, after
getting underway, we had rigged everything above and below decks for rough
weather. Extra safety lines now ran the
length of the ship and were needed to move about on decks awash from waves that
regularly crashed over the bow to come racing aft as foaming green sluice. They could easily knock a fellow completely
off his feet, and it was definitely one hand for the ship and one for one’s
self.
I have no idea where Blind Pew rode out the storm. She and Salty both had disappeared, but I was
reasonably certain neither had gone overboard.
When Rance ordered me to go into the Skipper’s stateroom later and get
the better sextant, I found Salty snuggled down on the Skipper’s sofa bed. Whenever the bed was opened out Salty always
slept at the Skipper's feet. Now, the
best he could do was get as close as he could to the Skipper’s pillow. And he had already begun to pull the stuffing
from a tear in the sofa’s upholstery.
I don’t think any of us really got much sleep that
night. Every one of us felt a personal
responsibility to bring Wanderlust through
safely and deliver her unharmed to the Skipper when next we should see
him. I was glad we’d had previous
experience with rough weather sailing when the Skipper had been in command.
As it turned out, the storm did go north of
“What have you done to my ship?” the Skipper demanded the
moment he stepped aboard.
“What do you mean,…Sir?” Rance countered, a tired but
relieved smile on his face.
“I don’t
know which is worse—your act of piracy or her disheveled condition,” the
Skipper said. “There’ll be a week’s work
to put her back right!”
We all just
looked at him wordlessly and then grimly returned to our tasks.
“What? What did I say?” he asked to no one in
particular.
The next morning we left
There
Is an
No one in
the crew was under the illusion that the Skipper was simply having a happy
vacation and paying for an expensive crew to have a good time at the various
ports of call. He hadn’t just chosen our
crew to have a successful shakedown cruise for the Wanderlust. Rance and I
both, I think, were beginning to have definite thoughts about some of his
motives. I had been ordered not to
mention Wendy’s picture to Rance, or the conversations I had with the Skipper;
and, I followed orders. But it occurred
to me that, with the exception of Whiskers and Tar, every one of the crew were
single, eligible bachelors, even Mokotai.
I was younger than Wendy by three years; Rance was her age; Coby was
younger; the rest were her age or only a little older. None had said they intended to go to college
except Rance, and that only recently.
The scuttlebutt around the capstan was that the Skipper was ferreting out
and setting up business contacts at our various ports of call so that in future
years he would use the Wanderlust as
a source of income when his lotto winnings ran out. None of us knew how much he was worth. It was obvious that the Skipper loved his daughter
and felt very protective toward her. But
she maintained a kind of staunch independence from her dad and definitely gave
the impression she would make up her own mind about anything that affected her. Her years at FSU had apparently healed any
dependence she might have felt toward him after her mother died. She loved and respected her father, but she
did things her way.
It was not
surprising, therefore, to learn that the Skipper had arranged to take on some
passengers when we arrived in
One night,
when I was at the helm, the Skipper came up and joined me. He stood beside me looking out over the
beauty of a calm sea fully lit by a gorgeous moon. The full moon, particularly, looks bigger and
closer and brighter at sea, especially in those latitudes.
“I respect
you, Cheerly, for sticking by your religious beliefs,” he said. “I suppose over the years I lost mine,
especially after my wife died.”
“Thank you,
Sir,” I said. He stood there quietly for
the longest time, and I began to wonder if he wanted me to say more. “I don’t think I’m perfect, Sir, or a saint,
or even a good person, and I don’t understand a lot about religion, but I
haven’t found anyone in my life, or in my reading, that offers a better, more
positive example to follow than Jesus, Sir,” I said.
“How is
that?” he asked.
“I mean,
Jesus taught a bunch of poor fishermen to love, and he showed us how to
love. Love is a whole lot more than
marriage or sex.”
“What do
you think love is, Cheerly?”
“I think love
is valuing a person, or a thing like this ship, or a country, more than your
own life, Sir.”
“Do you
value this ship more than your own life, Jack?”
“Yes, Sir,
I think I do.”
He stood
there quietly, puffing on his pipe, and then he said, “Well, good night,
Jack.” And he went below.
In
retrospect it is easy to say that the Skipper made a series of unwise decisions
when he decided to take on some paying passengers. He was first approached with the proposition
of using his private vessel to transport a man and his furniture to a remote
island in the
We spent
several days in San Juan, taking on fresh water, fuel, supplies, and a number
of large and heavy crates that had to be stored away in the hold. All of this was preparatory to the arrival of
our ‘guests’, and during this time we had an opportunity to explore this very
ancient city of the Spanish New World Empire, now a major tourist city in an
American commonwealth. The streets of
Old San Juan are still paved with blue bricks brought to Puerto Rico in the
holds of Spanish treasure ships as ballast and then traded as weight for the
gold that was hauled back to Spain from the new world. I was really able to practice my Spanish
because so many of the people also speak English very well. They liked it when I spoke to them in
Spanish, but I could always easily get corrections in English that made my
progress in Spanish rather rapid. I hadn’t
made as much progress with my French, but something would change that soon
enough.
I visited
El Morro, the huge Spanish fortress that guards the entrance to San Juan
harbor, and one night stood on the cliff tops on the north side of the island
to watch the sea pounding in. Another
hurricane had passed north of Puerto Rico into the Bahamas and the sea would
come in great waves crashing against the cliffs with such a mighty force that
geysers of spray were sent a hundred or more feet above the cliffs and our
heads. The very ground shook beneath my
feet. It was awesome to watch the power
that God can unleash in nature.
We took on
all kinds of special supplies for our guests. There were cases of rum and
liquor, deck chairs for the after quarter deck, a huge party-striped awning to
be rigged over that deck beneath the main boom.
This was followed by cases of specialty cigars, gourmet foods, scuba
gear, an astounding collection of luggage reportedly filled with purchases
these people had made, several expensive rifles with scopes, fishing gear, the
list went on and on. Supposedly the
crates we had loaded into the hold were loaded with new furniture. We all began to wonder what kind of potentate
was coming aboard when one of the four guest staterooms was completely full of
their stored belongings.
The most
that the Skipper would say was that we would be transporting two very rich
people to their own private island. He
either didn’t know, or failed to mention, that they would also have an entourage
and a very undesirable pet.
One of the
large cruise ships that travels throughout the Caribbean also docked in San
Juan while we were there, and Mr. West left us to visit a friend aboard
who was Scottish and played the
bagpipes. One evening we were invited
over for a kind of concert and contest between the two, and I must say Whiskers
upheld the honor of Wanderlust quite
well. On the weekend Tar, Coby, Wendy,
and I rented a car, and Tar drove us up to Mt. El Yunque rain forest. The winding highways, switching back and
forth like tortured snakes and originally carved out of the sides of the
mountains by the Spaniards using slave labor, gave us some exciting
moments. One has to drive through the
mountains repeatedly honking the car horn because it is impossible to see
what’s coming at you around the next twisting curve until you’re right on
it. The views of the valleys with their
sugarcane fields all supplying their rum industry were beautiful. We had gone swimming that morning at one of
the famous beaches and at noon could look down three thousand feet through
breaks in the clouds at noon at where we had gone swimming earlier that
morning.
“It’s like
a whole little universe,” Wendy said.
“There is just about every kind of terrain in the world, including
almost desert-like conditions on the southeastern corner of the island.”
“We should
call it ‘God’s Little Universe’,” I agreed.
Tar stayed
at the restaurant near the waterfalls on the top of El Yunque while Wendy,
Coby, and I decided to hike to the summit.
At one of the picnic shelters on the trail to the top Coby challenged me
to a chin-ups contest using one of the overhead rafters. I wasn’t about to let him beat me with Wendy
looking on. I think I cranked out more
chin-ups than I had ever done in my life, certainly faster than Coby toward the
last, and I think Wendy was impressed.
“Surely you’re ready to join the Monkey Boys Club by now, Cheerly,” she
said. “I’ll have to tell Dad to give you
another shot at it.” I didn’t tell her I
had been ready on Dominica, but I was privately very proud of myself.
Two
limousines pulled up at the dock from one of the big hotels that Monday
morning, and we finally got a look at our guests. The Wanderlust,
Skipper, and crew were prepared to give them a royal welcome. Mr. West piped them aboard while we all stood
at attention in new shorts, matching T-shirts, and sneakers the Skipper had
provided.
I was dumbfounded by what came aboard, but as cabin boy it
was my duty to show them to their staterooms and see to their getting
comfortably settled in.
Three
short, lithe men hastily departed the first limousine, dressed alike in what I
can only be described as what I had imagined Oriental ninjas to look like from
things Rance had told me. They were
swathed in black from head to toe, their faces completely covered except for
their eyes. A giant of a man who wore a
black, double-breasted business suit accompanied these three. He was hatless, but his nationality I could
not determine. They formed up, two on each
side of the gangplank. Then from the
second limousine emerged a dark complexioned, suave man with a thick black
moustache dressed all in white, including his shoes, and wearing a white,
plantation style hat with a wide brim.
He made quite a show of assisting a middle-aged brunette dressed in a
multi-colored floral pants suit and golden sandals with a huge gaudy hat she
had trouble controlling in the wind. The
thing that riveted my attention, however, was the large snake she had draped
over her shoulders and around her arms.
It was quite alive and every bit of seven to eight feet in length.
They both were wearing dark glasses, and the man was smoking
a cigar. Up the gangplank they came,
smiling broadly, followed by the four men, and stepped aboard. I cringed when I saw their hard-soled shoes
hit the Skipper’s immaculate deck, but the Skipper stepped forward, smiling
graciously, and said, “Welcome aboard the Wanderlust,
Doctor! May I present my daughter, Miss
Wendy Narwhal? Wendy, this is Dr. Manuel
Sangre de Toro.”
“It is a
pleasure to at last be aboard your magnificent vessel, Sen~or Capitan!” the
doctor responded while glancing quickly around at the ship and its assembled
crew. He took off his dark glasses. “Please allow me to present my confidante,
Monique. And this is my bodyguard, Scar,
and his assistants.” It was only then
that I saw the nasty scar that ran from the corner of the giant’s left eye in a
jagged cut that ended at the corner of his mouth, giving him a decidedly cruel
appearance. The liquid, almost
taffy-like quality of the doctor’s voice, bespoke sophistication, but it had a
hard undertone of command that cut through and made him seem less than sincere.
“I know
that you want to get underway immediately and there’ll be plenty of time to get
acquainted with my crew. We’re all one,
big, happy family and pretty informal.
Right now I’ll have my cabin boy, Cheerly, show you to your staterooms
and then perhaps you’ll join me for refreshment on the afterdeck. Jack, we call him Cheerly, please show our
guests to their quarters.”
I tried to
appear nonchalant and pleased to have them as guests, but I have to confess the
idea of having that large snake aboard rattled me. Thoughts of it sucking up Salty or Blind Pew
crossed my mind.
“Oooo,
magnifique!” Monique kept saying as she followed me below. “’Cheerly’,” she said in what seemed a French
accent when we got to their stateroom door “eez cute! You hold ‘Fifi’.” Immediately she unloaded the snake on me, and
I struggled with its surprising weight while it accommodated itself to me. I’m sure my wide eyes betrayed my alarm. “Not to worry,” Monique smiled sweetly while
reaching up to pinch me on my cheek.
“Fifi will not eat you. Put her
over there.” She pointed at the
bed. I was only too glad to carry the
snake over and put it on the bed. Doctor
Sangre de Toro came in, making space a little cramped, and I eased around
Monique toward the door.
“Theese for
you,” she said, sticking a folded bill into the elastic waistband of my shorts.
“No…no…you
don’t have to tip me,” I stammered, but she kissed me suddenly on the lips
while drawing me toward her with her hand behind my back. Startled, I broke away, aware that the doctor
was eyeing me coldly.
“Sooo
cute!” she laughed, as I beat a hasty retreat out the door. The doctor’s entourage accepted the two rooms
I showed them, one next door, and one across the passageway, without a word
spoken, and did not tip me.
The
Assassins
For the
duration of the trip, those three ninja type bodyguards stayed in their cabins
below, taking their meals there, playing cards and dice, and never saying one
word in my presence. It was my job to
deliver their meals to them. They would
open their door long enough to take the trays I delivered, or return them
after, and then shove me in the chest to make me leave. At least I think they stayed in their
cabins. From what Rance told me about
ninjas, they could have been all over Wanderlust
at night, especially when I was sleeping, and I would never have known
it. I just hoped that Fifi was staying
in the cabin assigned to the doctor and Monique! I did not
want that thing sleeping with me!
Scar, on
the other hand, came up on deck frequently, saying little at all, certainly not
entering into conversation or answering questions. He spent most of his time topside leaning
attentively against the rail, eyeing me with apparent malice, occasionally
checking the compass course, but mostly being a silent listener to others’
talk. I surmised that he was probably
well armed with more than one type of weapon.
I supposed that all of them were probably just doing their jobs, in all
fairness, since the doctor was reputed to be very rich and probably had
protection wherever he went. From time
to time Scar would survey the horizon with a pair of binoculars.
The doctor
and Monique were the affable ones. The
doctor spent his time sipping daiquiris or after dinner liquors, smoking
cigars, sitting in a deck chair and conversing with the Skipper. He also had the strange habit of playing with
a scalpel, rotating it through his fingers while he talked. Monique, obviously bored and needing something
to entertain her at all times, came topside in a magenta thong bikini that made
me think of a hippopotamus in one whenever I saw her from the rear. She was middle-aged and voluptuous, spoke
almost exclusively to the doctor in French, and spent a lot of time checking
her makeup and sunbathing. Whenever she
was really bored she would try to engage one or another of the crew in some
impromptu entertainment. The first
evening she had discovered that Rance had a new set of bongo drums he had
purchased in San Juan, and she proceeded to try to teach him some Latin
American rhythms. Rance didn’t mind her
attentions, but Wendy didn’t like it one bit.
Fortunately, a lot of Wendy’s time was spent in the galley with Mr. West
and Tar turning out gourmet delicasies.
Monique also tried to teach various ones of us to dance to Calypso music
and other Spanish tunes picked up on a portable radio. Our excuse for not letting any of this go
too far was, of course, that we were on duty and had tasks to be done.
The second
evening, while we headed southeast toward Anguilla, I had just delivered
another round of drinks to those on the afterdeck, when I realized the doctor
was saying something about himself and his affairs to the Skipper, and so I
lingered at the rail to listen. He was
telling the Skipper how successful he had been as a surgeon, how inexpensively
one could live in the islands, and that he was setting up his own little
plantation on his own little island to live like a king.
I noticed
that Scar had been staring at me for some time, but since it never meant
anything, I tried to ignore him. Then he
leaned over and whispered something in Monique’s ear. She, in turn, said something to the doctor in
French.
“Sen~or
Capitan,” the doctor said, “your crew seems well trained, loyal, good
workers. Are they disciplined?”
“What do
you mean?” the Skipper asked. “Of
course, they’re disciplined.”
“I mean,
that I require a high degree of discipline in my bodyguards. They are ready to die for me. Your cabin boy, how disciplined is he? Perhaps, you could give us a little
demonstration.”
The Skipper
squinted hard at the doctor for a long moment, then grunted. “Cheerly!” he barked.
“Sir?” I
responded, moving away from the rail.
“Brace,
Mister!”
I snapped
to attention as the Skipper put down his pipe and got up from his deck
chair. He came over to me and spoke
quietly. “Do you trust me, Jack?”
“Sir, yes,
Sir!” I said, not loudly but affirmatively.
“Are you
ready to take a swim?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Then trust
me, and take off your shirt and sneakers.”
I did as I
was told. I was aware that all three of
the strangers on our deck were now watching me closely.
“Take a
dive off the yardarm.”
It was only
as I started up the foresail halyard that I remembered we were underway. Wanderlust
was making maybe four or five knots under a nearly full press of sail. We were not using the topsail, however; only
the fore and aft sails. When I reached
the topsail yardarm I could look down at those watching me intently from the afterdeck. Moving out on the foot-ropes, I remembered
the first time Rance had made me do this while we were anchored off of
Cumberland Island. I also remembered
that the Skipper had drilled our crew numbers of times in various emergency
exercises. We were now well off the
northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, making steady progress on a southeasterly
tack in water that was probably a thousand feet deep. There were no other sails on the
horizon. Taking one last look at the
afterdeck, I dove into the deep blue of the Atlantic below.
By the time my head broke water and I shook
the salt water out of my eyes, the fantail of the Wanderlust was fast leaving me while I treaded water in the ship’s
wake. But I could also now hear the
Skipper barking ‘man overboard’ orders and sounding the bosun’s pipe he always
wore on a chain around his neck. This
was followed by the alarm sounding on the ship’s horn and the sudden appearance
of crew on deck. As the sails were let go to flap in the wind, Coby, who had
been at the helm, brought Wanderlust
into the wind. She lost way and then
began drifting toward me, her twin engines now droning at near idle.
I began to swim toward the ship and in a short time was
climbing up the rope thrown over the side.
“Skipper!”
I protested, “You forgot to throw me a life buoy! And you could have, at least, put the ladder
over the side!”
“You didn’t
need it, Jack. I knew you could swim,”
he said with a grin. “And you just
earned your dog tags, wet hands and all, Monkey Boy!”
Every
member of the crew was topside to see me receive my dog tags, and even the three
ninja types, having belatedly decided something unusual must be going on, had
come up on deck to observe. Without a
word they went back below.
Captain Butcher
“These
people are strange!” I said to Mr.
West quietly while playing chess with him on his berth. “I wish now that I spoke more French, but do
you know that crazy woman, what’s her name, Monique, has tipped me over four
hundred dollars in the last forty-eight hours for ridiculously small
things? She tipped me a hundred bucks
just for showing them to their staterooms.”
“They are
very rich, and their values are different from ours,” Mr. West said. “Money doesn’t mean the same thing to
them. They gave me a hundred dollars
just for piping them aboard. What are
you doing with all your cash, by the way?”
“I’m giving
it to the Skipper to hold for me,” I said.
“He holds all my money. I think
he must have a safe of some kind in his cabin, but I’ve never seen it. He always gives me money out of my earnings
if I ask him for some.”
“Well, I,
for one, will be glad when we have delivered them, and all their belongings, and their python, to their island,
collected our fee, and departed. I hate
snakes!”
About that
time, Checkers stuck his head through the hatch. “You’re wanted in the doctor’s stateroom,
Cheerly.”
I looked at
Mr. West and shrugged. “Sorry,” I said,
“I’ll finish the game later. Duty calls
again. At least I can’t complain about
the pay.” I headed aft through the
companionway toward the guest staterooms and knocked at the
doctor’s door. “Eeenter!” Monique’s
voice called. I opened the door, stepped
in, the shadow of a hand passed over my eyes as I was siezed from behind around
my neck, and then everything went black.
I have no
idea how long I was unconscious. I
remember something like a rushing sound, like a great wind, and when I came to
groggily my wrists and ankles were bound together behind my back. I was lying on my stomach on the floor, and I
tried to raise my head to see where I was.
A foot, a ninja foot, was planted on the back of my neck, pressing my
shoulders to the floor. The lights were
out in the cabin, but I could just make out my assailant’s other foot inches
from my face. I also had been gagged
with duct tape. I tried to squirm free
but someone else drove the toe of their shoe into my ribs, which really hurt!
Then I
realized that the doctor was squatting down beside my head. “Now, dear boy, you will do exactly what I
tell you. Trust is a wonderful thing. I was always amazed at the trust my patients
displayed just before they went under the knife for surgery. But I will teach you a different kind of
trust, the assurance that comes from fear.
If you do not cooperate I will peal the skin from your body, dismember
you alive slowly, and feed you to my pythons!”
He stuck the glinting blade of his scalpel in front of my eyes.
To say that
I was afraid is an understatement. My
stomach was a cold knot of fear. Then I
realized that the doctor was talking again, but not to me.
“It is
better this way. We will take the ship
tonight. Now that we have the boy, they
will all cooperate. Later we will get
out of him where the Capitan hides his money.
And of course, there is also the woman.
For right now, it will be better if he sleeps. I will give him a little something.”
He stood
up, busied himself for a moment at the locker, and then, returning, plunged a
needle into my arm. “He will be a good
boy now,” he said. “If he awakens, call
me. Do not damage him. Scar will get from him, or the woman,
whatever we need.”
I
slept. I don’t know how long I slept,
but I have a feeling it was a pretty long time.
When I did come to my senses, it was morning, and I was being carried up
a long dock and steps toward a two-story house and a low set of buildings that
constituted the doctor’s ‘plantation’.
The two ninjas that carried me took me into a small, interior patio or
courtyard, beautifully tiled and furnished with a fountain and garden
furniture, open to the sky. A large tree
occupied one corner and spread out over the patio to give it shade. In the opposite corner was what appeared to
be a large aquarium with a plate glass front containing several big pieces of
driftwood and a sandy floor. It was dry,
and no fish were in it.
I was
dropped unceremoniously on the tile floor, and in a few minutes one of the
ninjas returned with a long rope. They
cut my ankles loose, but left my wrists bound together. My legs were so cramped that I groaned as I
straightened them, and before I could rise, one of them put his foot between my
shoulder blades and began tying the end of the rope around my upper left
arm. They passed the end of the rope
under my right arm and then suddenly yanked my elbows together, binding my
upper arms together tightly. I tried to
cry out because the pain was so fierce, not only on my arms but also in my
shoulders and across my chest as well.
In a moment they had thrown the rope up over a branch of the shade tree
and drawn me up so that my toes were inches above the pavement. I twisted and danced in agony, for it seemed
as if my shoulders would be dislocated from the weight of my body pulling
downward. My chest felt as if a branding
iron ran across it from shoulder to shoulder.
But there was nothing I could stand on to relieve the pain, and great
tears flowed down my cheeks. They left
me there, swinging back and forth over the patio pavement. I was having trouble breathing, especially
with the duct tape wrapped over my mouth, chin, jaw, and around my head. I kept throwing my head back in a vain
attempt to get a better breath and kicking my feet, but any movement only
increased the pain in my chest, arms, shoulders, and back.
I hung
there for what seemed an eternity. It
must have been close to noon, for the sun was beating down into the courtyard
and there was little or no breeze. My
T-shirt was soaked with my sweat.
Finally, the doctor and Monique arrived.
Monique was carrying the python, Fifi.
She took the creature over to the aquarium and put it in. From where I was hanging I could see it, as
though through a red mist of pain, slowly slithering up and over and around the
driftwood, its forked tongue exploring its habitat. Then Monique left to go into another part of
the house, and I was left alone with the doctor. He walked around me and surveyed my
situation, puffing away on his cigar, and then sat down in one of the
decorative iron garden chairs with his back to me, making sure that he was well
beyond my ability to kick him with my bare feet. He sat there for the longest time, watching
the python in its glass-fronted cage across the small patio from us. He was in no hurry and was enjoying his
cigar.
“Your
Capitan inspires loyalty in his crew, dear boy, but they have all been quite
cooperative now that I have you and the woman.
A python only feeds about once in two weeks, and of course it prefers to
catch its prey alive and crush it slowly, strangling its victim and then
licking it all over before swallowing it whole.
But it can be made to feed on dead, raw meat if that is all that is
available; and, if properly exposed to it, will even savor human flesh. I have several, large pythons on this small
island, all of them properly trained.
They are better than watch dogs.
Fifi is my newest acquisition. I
will give you a demonstration of her eating habits later.
I have taken your ship to use for my own
purposes. Your Capitan and crew will do
what I want as long as I want and then become food for my reptiles. But there is one small matter you can assist
me with. I know that your Capitan keeps
his money, I suspect in sizable amounts, in his cabin. I do not want to tear the ship apart looking
for it. It will be easier for you, and
for your friends, if you tell me where it is.
Of course, if you refuse or choose to be obstinate, I will get the
location from the woman. Scar!”
Suddenly I
dropped and crashed to the tile floor on my knees. The pain was excruciating, and as I fell
forward I prayed that my knees-caps were not cracked. But I didn’t have long to worry about that
because the giant, Scar, was standing over me wielding a piece of garden hose
perhaps five to six feet in length! He
swung it from behind him in a vicious blow that contained all the force he
could put into it. It caught me across
my shoulders, and I would have screamed if I had not been gagged.
Desperately
I tried to roll away from him across the patio, but I only managed to get
myself twisted up in the length of rope that had once strung me up to the
tree. He followed me, hitting me again
and again with the length of hose.
Several blows caught me across my head and face. Others landed on my legs, buttocks, arms, and
chest. No matter how I twisted or
turned, the hose would strike me with a punishing blow. I could not stand. I could not curl into a ball. I could not protect my face or head. My wrists were still bound behind my back,
and my screaming shoulder muscles were no help at all in controlling my upper
body. The beating went on and on. I was in agony and desperate for breath! It felt as if every part of me had been
beaten and bruised. Never had I experienced
such an attack from the old man, Sam!
Throughout it all I was vaguely aware that Doctor Sangre de Toro was coolly
watching my being beaten with absolute indifference. Exhausted, I finally could move no
more. I lay still and waited for the
next blow to reach me. Again and again
Scar hit me with that hose. I have no
idea how many times he hit me.
“Enough!” the doctor finally ordered. “Take him out to the cistern. We’ll let the sun do its work next, and I
will finish with him later.”
Nightmare
at Noon
Scar
stopped beating me and snapped his fingers.
He untied the long rope, but not my wrists, and yanked it from around my
body. Two ninjas dragged me out to the
back of the house where a huge cylinder of what looked like concrete sewer pipe
had been sunk into the ground like a dry well.
It was at least twelve feet deep and perhaps ten feet in diameter. They laid me down at the rim and kick pushed
me over with their feet. I fell to the
hard, sandy, concrete floor, striking my
head, and again passing into blessed unconsciousness.
In those
tropical latitudes the hours from noon until two in the afternoon are so hot
that the Spanish siesta is a universal custom.
I awakened to pain; stifling, bright hot sunlight was pouring into the
pit so that the concrete wall of it was hot to the touch. Every part of my body hurt. To move at all was agony, and I was still
gagged and my wrists bound. I drew my
body into a fetal position and lay with the sun beating down on me. It was so bright that I could hardly stand to
crack my bruised eyelids to look around.
I heard my heart beat pounding in my ears and my head throbbed
fiercely. There was no shade.
When I
finally was able to work myself up into a sitting position, my bruised
shoulders cried out in protest as soon as I leaned back against the wall. I was glad that I was still wearing my jeans
and T-shirt, because I surely would have been blistered in the hours that
followed. As it was, I felt I was being
baked alive. Thirst raged within me. My dehydrated body cried out for relief. In the dancing, stifling heat I began to
hallucinate, strange mixtures of thoughts and fantasies. No nightmare I have ever had was worse.
When I
could think clearly at all, I realized that at some point they would return for
me, and that when they did, the worst was yet to come. I could only hope that Wendy was not being
put through what I was suffering, but I also thought that the longer I could
hold out I might forestall their attacking her.
I made up my mind that no matter what they did to me, I would not reveal
that I did not know where the Skipper
kept his money. I would keep my silence
and tell them nothing for as long as I could stand it. They might make me scream; they might kill
me; I was determined not to be broken.
If they found out that I did not know, they would then set upon Wendy,
and I could not let that happen.
I lay in
one position for as long as I could stand it, and then I would try another in
the hopes of getting some relief from the sun.
Rolling and writhing on the hot, sandy floor only served to cover and
coat me in a layer of fine dirt and grit.
I probably looked more like a sand mummy than a human being. It was evident that the cistern had not held
water in quite some time.
I may have lost consciousness again; I’m not sure. But suddenly I realized there was a small
portion of shade made by the opposite wall.
The afternoon sun was receding, and painfully, very painfully, I scooted
and rolled my body over into the shaded portion of the wall.
Then I
thought, “Now they will be coming for me to make me tell them where the
Skipper’s safe is.” But, that did not
happen. I finally was able to sit with
my feet drawn up, my back against the wall.
Then I tried to stand. My legs
would not support me, and I fell again; eventually, I managed to stand and to
walk around looking up at the absolutely smooth, curved surface of the wall of
my pit.
There were no bars; nothing covering the top. It was open to a clear, blue sky. At only one place a large pipe entered just
beneath the rim. It was probably a spout
leading from the roofs of the buildings.
But even if my hands hadn’t been bound behind me, I realized I would
never be able to leap high enough to reach the rim and pull myself up to
escape.
There was
nothing to be done but to sit in the small amount of shade and wait for
whatever was to come. I had no idea
where the Skipper, or any of the other members of the crew, were. I didn’t know if they were alive, what they
might be doing, or what was happening to them.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the hours crept by. The radiant heat from the walls of the
cistern pulsed and throbbed and burned my eyes almost as painfully as I
remembered my beating.
Finally, I
realized that the afternoon sun must be going down. Day was turning into evening. In all that time I had heard nothing but my
own groans of agony. Now I could hear
the low rumblings of thunder, as if of a gathering thunderstorm. I could also now hear the crashing of surf on
the island’s shore. Alarmed, I wondered
if the cistern was still used and whether it might not fill with water if rain
began. At last the pit was growing
cooler. The deep-blue sky overhead
darkened, began to turn to night, and then I could faintly make out the stars
becoming visible. Why hadn’t they
returned to finish with me? The pit
became darker and darker until I could not see across it. Above me the black of night punctuated by the
stars was only a little lighter than the walls of my prison. Dark clouds were passing over, at times
obscuring the stars. At those times the
pit was plunged into total blackness.
That’s when
I remembered that snakes are nocturnal hunters, and that pythons liked
water. The thought panicked me. Hadn’t the doctor said he had several pythons
on the island, in his words ‘properly trained’?
I could become their next meal! I
remembered pictures of large pythons I had seen, some as big as eighteen to
twenty-four feet. I struggled to my feet
again and began to pace frantically, looking up to the rim and expecting to see
one of the huge beasts slithering in.
And then it began to rain. The
drops pelted down on me like cold ice, and a small trickle began to pour forth
from the pipe opening above.
Since I was
gagged, I still could not end my raging thirst.
I don’t know how long I went on in this state, even walking into the
opposite wall in my fear and scraping my forehead and nose. The gathering water spread across the floor
and began to fill the cistern. Exhausted
I sat down again, and tried to squeeze myself up into a tiny ball, but with my
eyes glued to the gray disk above. Any movement, any movement at all along that
rim, might mean the arrival of a predator against which I was utterly
defenseless. I was soon wet and muddy,
and I began to chill. My wet clothes
clung to me. I could only helplessly
watch as the pour from the pipe increased.
And I wondered if I would be able to float and tread water with my hands
tied behind me, knowing that it would take a very large amount of water to
raise me up to the rim. It would be
twelve feet deep then and could drown me.
A sudden,
splashing thud across from me brought me instantly awake, all of my senses
straining with terror. I was rigid with
fear and could not, would not move. I
wanted to cry out, to scream, but I could not.
Something was moving toward me across the wet floor, a shape, a large
lump! And then Mr. Stealth’s voice said,
“Cheerly, it’s me. Don’t move; don’t
make a sound. We’ll have you out of here
in a few minutes.”
He was
beside me then and he whispered, “This may hurt a little. I’ll try to be as gentle as I can, but
remember, not a sound.” I felt and heard
the blade of a knife slit down the back of my head through my hair, separating
the bands of duct tape. Quickly he yanked them from my ears and face, first one
side and then the other, and suddenly I could breathe again freely. He put his hand over my mouth and said,
“Remember, not a word.” In another
moment he cut my hands free, and helped me to my feet. “Steady,” he cautioned. “I’m going to crouch down so you can get up
on my shoulders. As I lift you up, walk
your hands up the wall and see if you can reach the edge.”
I was
wobbly, but he helped me, and as he stood up and I raised my arms upward, two
pairs of hands seized each of mine and I was drawn quickly up and over the
edge. It was the Skipper and Rance. I could have wept for joy! In a moment Rance threw down a rope, and Mr.
Stealth scaled up the wall to join us.
The Skipper
grabbed me around my shoulders in a bear hug, and I almost screamed. I was so battered and bruised that any
pressure on my shoulders was excruciating.
But the relief of seeing the three of them all together and all alive
brought tears to my eyes.
“Skipper! They have Wendy and there are several
pythons!” I croaked.
“No, we
have Wendy, and don’t believe everything you’re told, Cheerly,” Mr. Stealth
corrected.
“Can you
walk, Cheerly?” the Skipper whispered.
“Yes, Sir,”
I said, nodding.
“Then
follow Mr. Stealth. There’s no time to
lose.”
Crouching
low, we made our way around the house and down the steps that led to the
dock. The pouring rain gave us the cover
and opportunity we needed. There were no
ninja guards on the dock, and Wanderlust was
not there. But the dinghy was. Slipping into it quickly and quietly, we
began to row, out away from that dark house, now silhouetted in the dark,
receding storm clouds against a new moon faintly visible in the east. That is, Mr. Stealth and Rance did the
rowing; I huddled next to the Skipper while he steered, one arm around me, and
I began to shake all over.
When we had
gotten well out from the cove, we turned to circle the island, and soon I saw Wanderlust riding quietly at anchor in
deep water behind the tip of the island.
Only then did the Skipper shine a flashlight on me that he had stowed in
the bottom of the boat.
“Boy, you
are filthy!” he said.
Rumbob’s
Revenge
Wanderlust rode gently at anchor in the
harbor of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, the capital of the US Virgin
Islands. The Skipper and many of her
crew had gone ashore, the Skipper and Mr. Stealth to report to the authorities,
the rest to settle their nerves after our harrowing experience with modern day
pirates. I lay on a blanket on the
afterdeck in my shorts allowing the sun to bake the meanness out of my poor,
battered body. Wendy and Mr. West sat in
the same deck chairs that Monique and Dr. Sangre de Toro had occupied not more
than a few days before. Tar was down
below fixing us a light lunch. Rance and
the previous night’s watch were sleeping.
Salty was sprawled on the deck close to my head; Blind Pew had found a
place to curl up forward by the bowsprit.
Mr. West had just completed another, long string of profanities on the
theme of our all being lucky to be alive and what he’d like to do to the doctor
and Scar if he were ever to have the chance.
“What I
don’t understand is how Mr. Stealth figured it out, was able to escape, and
rescue the rest of us,” I said, shading my eyes against the brightness of the
sun.
“Apparently
he realized something was wrong while we were still loading de Toro’s so-called
furniture in San Juan,” Wendy explained.
“He alerted Dad after we got underway and the two of them investigated
the cargo together and confirmed that it wasn’t furniture, but weapons and
ammunition. That’s when they decided to
create a diversion so that Whipple could disappear. When you went over the side during the
man-overboard drill, Dad gave the signal on his bosun’s pipe, and Mr. Stealth
hid himself down in the bilge. After they
took you and me as hostages, they forgot to count heads when they took over the
ship.”
“I must
have slept through a lot,” I said, shaking my head in dismay.
“You
did. You were completely out for more
than a day. At least you didn’t have to
put up with Monique and her disgusting python.
They kept me tied up in the same cabin with that beast!” Wendy
shuddered.
“Whipple
Stealth deserves a medal!” Mr. West added.
“They’d have gotten away with their scheme if it hadn’t been for him.”
“Well, what
were they trying to do? Did they
actually think they could steal Wanderlust
and kill us all?”
“Yes,
Cheerly, they did. As long as they had
you and Wendy as hostages, they could make the rest of us do as they
pleased. We were just slave labor to
them that they needed to get the ship landed and unloaded. After that we would have become food for
their pythons!”
“De Toro
runs a drug smuggling operation,” Wendy added.
“They wanted the ship for that.
Eventually he planned to use the weapons in a take-over of one of the
small South American republics and set himself up in really grand style.”
“It’s
amazing!” I said. “They really are
modern day pirates!”
“Greedy and
cruel!” Mr. West snorted. “They thought
they had it all going their way, once the ship was unloaded and all of us were
under guard in a kind of hurricane bunker beneath the house. They just didn’t count on Mr. Stealth.”
“I can’t
tell you how glad I was when Rance, that is, Mr. Besterman, came to let me out
of that cabin!” Wendy exclaimed. “I thought
they were coming for me!”
“Well, they
would have been, I guess, if Mr. Stealth hadn't managed to rescue the Skipper
and crew,” I said. “They wanted the
Skipper’s money and they hadn’t been able to locate his safe, so they were
gonna try to force it out of me. They
were going to go to work on you next, Wendy, if they couldn’t get it out of
me. What they didn’t know was that I don’t know where the Skipper’s safe is,
or if he even has one. So it would have
taken them awhile.”
“Oh, he has
one,” Wendy said. “I helped him plan
where it should be. But only he knows
the combination.”
“Well,
where is it?” I asked.
“Behind the
key box!” Wendy laughed.
“Behind the
key box?” Mr. West and I were both surprised.
“That’s
right. You know, Daddy always keeps all
of his keys in one place where they can be easily found. ‘A place for everything and everything in its
place’ he always says. Well, the safe is
built into the wall behind the key box.
We figured no one would think to look there. Don’t you want me to put some more lotion on
your back?” Wendy asked.
“Yes, but
gently,” I said. “I’m still sore all
over.”
I lay there
while Wendy gently massaged lotion into my aching body, and only winced a
little when she got to my shoulders.
“How many of
them were there?” I asked.
“There were
seven, plus the doctor and Monique,” Wendy said. “Three of the ninja types were traveling with
de Toro, and three more were on the island when we got there.”
“Did Mr.
Stealth have to kill any of them?”
“Oh, no! But he did
kill two pythons,” Mr. West laughed.
“Well, I
killed one myself,” Rance said, emerging from the hatch below.
“How did
you do that?” Wendy asked. She gave him
a big smile.
“I used a
rope and strangled it to death,” Rance said, nonchalantly. “I thought it was appropriate.”
“When did you do this?” Wendy asked.
“The Skipper and I reconnoitered the
place while Whipple took you and the others to the ship. We were looking for you, Cheerly. We thought you were in the house. I saw Fifi in an aquarium on the patio, and
there was this piece of rope lying there; well, I just couldn’t resist. Whenever de Toro and Monique came down to
breakfast the next morning, they not only found Scar and all their thugs locked
up in the downstairs bunker instead of us, but they also found Fifi hanging
from a tree.”
“One of us
was gonna wind up inside that thing’s belly,” I said, thinking it likely would
have been me.
“Well,
Tar’s got us some chicken salad sandwiches ready down below,” Rance said, “and
I, for one, am ready to put some in my
belly. But before we go below, I have a
question for you, Wendy.
Whiskers…Cheerly, you two might as well be witnesses. I asked your dad, last night, and he gave me
his approval. He said I could if I’d
finish college first on the condition, of course, that you say ‘yes’.”
“Say ‘yes’
to what?” Wendy asked.
“Will you
marry me?” Rance said.
Spinning Yarn
What’s
that, you say? That Jack was just
‘spinning yarn’? We’ll never know for
certain, now, will we? You know there’s
what sailors call ‘The Devil’s Triangle’.
It runs from Miami to Bermuda, and from Bermuda down to the northeastern
most part of the Antilles, and from there back to Miami. The Wanderlust
and her crew spent a lot of time in The Devil’s Triangle on that first voyage,
and that tiny island of horror, if such really exists, must sit right in the
southeastern corner of that triangle! I
take it that it was somewhere in the American Virgin Islands, probably close to
St. Croix. One thing I know is that Jack
said he hoped never to meet devils like Dr. Sangre de Toro and his henchmen
again.
We’ll never
know for certain because that was all Jack wrote during the second summer’s
voyage to the Pacific about his previous summer’s voyage into the
Caribbean. I have talked with Jack many
times over the years since and, as I said, he tells fascinating stories, but
for whatever reasons he never wrote any more of his journal.
I think it
only fair to say that Captain Narwhal, and Jack, and the others, did fly to Puerto Rico on more than one
occasion to give testimony, apparently, in a maritime court convened
there. Wendy Narwhal returned to FSU in
September following that first voyage, and in January of the next year Rance
Brewster Besterman enrolled there as well.
Some time thereafter, there was an announcement of their engagement in
the local newspaper. Jack spent that
year back at Fernandina High School (his 10th grade; I think he was
actually a year behind others his age), but at some point Captain Narwhal
apparently decided to keep Cedric West as a full-time tutor to home school the
boy. Interestingly, every one of the
first voyage crew signed on the next summer for the second voyage into the
Pacific.
When Jack
began the second cruise, he was seventeen, shortly to become eighteen in July,
and he must have written the journal as we have it in the first part of that
second voyage. I think he probably wrote
it before they went through the Panama Canal.
OLD JACK—A FERNANDINA
SAILOR
Do I know Old Jack? Of course I
do. Nearly everyone on Amelia Island
knows him, and nearly everyone likes him.
I don’t know that they understand him very well, but they like him. Of course, some people don’t like him. I guess he’s given some reason not to. But many of them don’t live here any more,
and I think everybody’s pretty happy about that. The kind of people that wouldn’t like Old
Jack wouldn’t make good neighbors.
Old Jack is a salty kind of guy who came on to this island
as a boy many years ago. Some people
seem to think that he came from
Old Jack gives away stories. He is forever swapping yarns with somebody,
and the kids love the tales he tells. He
is one of those men who has a keen eye for detail and would have made a fine
author, but I’m not sure he had a lot of education. He did go to college for a couple of years,
but I don’t know if he got a degree. He
can keep people howling with laughter or entranced by mystery with the stories
he tells. But Jack is so busy enjoying
his own stories himself that he never spends much time writing them down or
profiting by them. What follows is a
rare exception, something he wrote years ago and I was able to talk him into
letting me publish it for him, along with some of my versions of the tales he
told.
He lives on board a boat, the ‘Merry
Lyn’. He keeps it anchored out yonder in
the sound close to
Jack happened to come under the
tutelage of a retired Navy Captain by the name of Thor Gunter Narwhal, who won
a lot of money playing the lotto and spent it on a big sailing ship he fixed up
to go cruising in. It was just about
that time that Jack came on to the island.
Narwhal found Jack working down at The Seafood Market, an orphan with no
place to stay. He liked the boy and
hired him on to work on his new ship.
The two of them became like father and son. Narwhal was the Skipper of the Boy Scouts’
Sea Explorer Ship back then. About
twenty some boys were part of that group.
The next thing I heard, Narwhal had taken off on a long voyage down into
the
J.
Charles Cripps