"Well, for one I am damn glad we are through with it," said Brenden during a discussion of Cape Horn weather that went on forward as we cleared out the damp fo'c'sle that wonderful Sunday following the gales. "This makes five times around for me and I hope to God the last."
"How far to Pilladelpia?" chirped up Kahemuku, his face again approaching its natural brown, though lean and worn beyond all resemblance of his Honolulu poi-fed chubbiness.
"Ha! The Kanaka is coming to life!" kidded Australia. "Well, me brown brother and fellow shipmate, if I do call you that, even though you are not white, Pillerdelpia is a long way off yet. The walking is bad and if I was you I would stay aboard a while longer. In fact you will have to ride all the way with nothing to do but work, me hearty, work."
All hands were feeling good. Black Joe hung around the galley all Sunday helping Chow and for supper that night he was rewarded by a large sea pie, one of the bright-red confections made of the mysterious "pie fruit." A chemist might analyze it as a composition of apple peelings, glucose, acetic acid and aniline dye. My, but how good it did taste! The human system demands its poison. Folks ashore prefer theirs in the most expensive form, while we poor sailors on the ship Fuller, on that memorable voyage in the year of the great war with Spain, took our weevils, which are no worse than Roquefort, only larger, and relished them. We ate many cockroaches browned in the cracker hash and dandy funk, and drank their extract in the tea and coffee, beverages, so called, for want of other names. As for the sea pie, it acted as a corrective to the gingerbread. When Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name?" he had certainly never experienced such a voyage as ours.
Following our dose of weather we entered upon a spell of work that carried us well up to the latitude of Cape Frio. The gear had to be overhauled in all of its details; whips of braces shifted end for end, new chafing mats and battens seized on to the stays taking the place of those worn through, and the slack standing rigging set up.
Our own gear, the clothing of the crew, was sadly in need of attention and every dog watch found the fo'c'sle busy with thread and needle. Frenchy was our top notch sailor man at sewing. He could ply a needle with the best housewife that ever swapped a bit of scandal at a sewing bee. He did not use a thimble, but handled a long coarse needle, pushing it through with the calloused end of his thumb, a simple and effective method for those gifted with the necessary toughness of cuticle. I had always wanted a pair of real seagoing canvas pants such as Robinson Crusoe must have worn, before he skinned the historic goat, pants wide in the legs, and fashioned of well weathered stuff, soft and comfortable. My good shipmate constructed them for me. They were not beautiful, but being what was left of an old skysail, a veteran of many voyages, a romantic piece of canvas that had swept the starry paths on many a balmy night, dew-bleached and mellow, they meant much to me. These pants were very homelike, and I never was able to wear them out.
In patching and sewing we managed to do wonders with old rags that at first seemed beyond all hope of redemption. Also, owing to the near approach of the payday, we begrudged the slop chest any further inroads upon the accumulated wealth that was to belong to us; the sailor's pot of gold, sitting so brightly, way beyond to the north, where our dream rainbow ended in cynical old New York.
About this time Peter came in for a lot of joshing by the men of his watch. He had an old long-tailed oilskin coat given him by Chips. Such a garment is never worn by sailor-men who have to go aloft, it being the sole prerogative of officers and idlers who never venture above the sheer pole. However, with Second Mate Tom on deck, many strange things happened in the starboard watch, and Peter, the stiff tails of his long coat sticking out in the wind, would go up the rigging as unconcerned as if it was the recognized and proper thing for a sailor-man to wear.
It happened that during a rain squall at the latter part of his watch on deck, he was sent up to furl the main skysail, and we tumbled out just in time to see him going up the weather rigging with his long yellow tail sticking out above his legs for all the world like a huge pale cockroach. At the same time First Mate Zerk stood aghast at the unusual spectacle.