CHAPTER XXXII
[THROUGH THE TRADES]
While still in the S.E. trades we started our last long drill of all hands on deck in the afternoon; the final clean-up for port was to be a thorough one. Paintwork was scrubbed and, when clean as new ivory, it was given a coat of fresh white paint, stroked on with the greatest care. This done, the decks were again holystoned fore and aft; a most thorough job. We then knocked about in the doldrums for a week or ten days, and on Sunday, August 21st, we crossed the line for the last time on that voyage.
Ordinarily one might suppose that this last leg of the long passage home would be the most pleasant of all and that as port loomed ahead we would once more feel the genial glow of good fellowship that blossomed so warm upon our approach to Honolulu. But we were apparently nearing a bleak coast; a hard material country where the sailor-man was on a strictly commercial basis of so little per month, and more men than billets; the crew would go, of course, and no one cared how much they cursed the ship, for they would do that anyway. The grub was worse because it was older; weevils were more in evidence than before, not to mention other pests such as rats and cockroaches, and we were feeling the effect of too close associations, a period of discontent, soon to change, but at that time most trying. Also, it was hot, as hot as it ever gets on the sea; our irritation became worse with every delay of head wind or of calm.
Mr. Zerk, for reasons unknown to us, became exceedingly brash; he went about looking for trouble, and always found it, working us without mercy in the heat of the day, and horsing us about at night. His relations with the second mate were strained more than ever, and some of the men of the starboard watch came forward with a tale of a big row between the skipper and the mate, the sounds having come up from the after companion; of course, anything like that would never take place upon those well-disciplined decks.
This succession of troubles had its climax one morning when the mate set upon Chips, that most gloomy and industrious of all carpenters. The lanky one, in returning from the poop with the running lights, had through some carelessness allowed several drops of oil to smirch the spotless planks.
"You dirty low-down bum! What do you mean by spilling that grease all over the deck?"
"Ay spill nothing!" shouted Chips, his slow soul riled to the point of protest at this latest insult.