THE GOLDEN DEED THE LOSS OF THE OCEAN'S PRIDE I HAD grown into a good strong lad, and having from infancy had to fight all my own battles, I was able now to hold my own pretty well with any one. Well it was for me that it was so. For now I was to sail on a ship where I was to be with a drunken skipper, fearless alike of God or man. life at sea had been, so far, the best that I had known, for at least I had always had enough to eat and drink. Though I know now what dangers I was passing through, I did not then regret having been sent to the fisheries. The I shipped this time as "fourth hand." The vessel's name was the Ocean's Pride. The cook, like myself, was a town waif sent to the fisheries as an apprentice. The skipper had once been admiral of our fleet, but had been turned out by the owners for the losses that some of his drunken escapades had caused them. On one occasion he had sailed his fleet in under the little island of Heligoland. The set of men that were always aboard him at sea went ashore to get liquor. The island had no end of opportunities for getting what they wanted. Soon, however, their senses and their money began to leave them, and the islanders wanted to get rid of them. It was no easy task, however. For as soon as they tried it, the men showed fight, and very soon had the whole island at their mercy. They did what they liked then with the saloons, wallowing in drink for the next two days; then we all cleared off to sea again. After that, only the crew of a single fishing vessel was allowed to land at one time. The admiral's last spree was to take the whole fleet right into the territorial waters under the coast of Holland, so that his gang again might go ashore and get grog. Not only were some of the vessels seized and towed into port for fishing in illegal waters, but some of the skippers stayed so long ashore that their mates went off and took their vessels home, leaving the skippers to get home as best they could, by passenger steamers or otherwise. I need not say that all on board the smack were afraid of the "skipper," and his cruelty to the little cook, Charlie, was such that on our first time home, just as we were getting to sea again, we found he had bolted and was nowhere to be found. His work fell on my shoulders, and though I did my best to give no cause for angering the skipper, many a blow and many a bucket of cold water were my portion before I turned in at night. Several times he made me stay on deck all night, when it was my time to be turned in; and that made him all the crankier the next day, because I was then unfit to do my work. When the voyage was up, and we reached home, we found that his master had had Charlie sent to prison for breaking the apprenticeship laws, and when we next went to sea, the poor lad was led down and put on board, so that he had no chance to escape. As for me, I should have escaped too, only I knew it was no good, I was half afraid the skipper meant to kill Charlie, and I had some sort of hope that I might be of use to him. It was no good going and telling our master about it; he would only have told the skipper, for he never would listen to anything against his skippers, so long as they did well with fish. And our skipper was at least a good fisherman in that respect, for he would carry a whole sail when all the rest of the fleet had two reefs down, and so he managed to drag his net faster and further, perhaps. Anyhow, there was nothing to say in that respect, as we made good voyages." 66 The lust for money is as cruel as the craving for drink. One of the owners, I was told, actually threatened to sack his skipper, because he broke his fishing voyage to bring home a crew of unfortunate Dutchmen that he had taken off a sinking schooner. There was a time, in Grimsby, when the prentice lads in the winter months spent more time in jail for deserting than they did at sea. When we left, the skipper came aboard drunk, with a "list aport," a thing we used |