June in St. Petersburg

VOLUME 159

NUMBER

JUNE 1937

BY HUGO JOHANSON

REMEMBER,’ said the bosun, ‘keep awake and mind what I told you. D’ ye hear me, boy? The company won’t stand sleeping on watch.’

‘Neither will I,’ vouchsafed the boy, who, although able to sleep in any imaginable posture, greatly preferred the supine one.

He was n’t much of a boy even as small boys go. He had just turned thirteen and he looked younger. His face was swollen from too violent sleep, prematurely disturbed; and decidedly he had not washed lately. On his cheeks were rosy valleys running parallel with sooty ridges of coal dust and knolls of tar and rust; probably he had cried in his sleep and rubbed his face with his knuckles. The blue dungarees and the jumper he wore were several sizes too large for him and were not yet broken in; they resembled a starched armor in which the boy had been placed accidentally and then forgotten. On his feet he had high leather sea boots with wooden soles. The blue velvet school cap, adorned with a yellow cockade and stuck carelessly on his soft, ash-blond hair, was really a very becoming head covering for a child — almost romantically so; but when the cap was put to practical use and forced to hobnob with dungarees, sea boots, and a dirty face, its small utility value and the hitherto latent madness of its hatter became strongly accented.

The bosun, too, was a seafaring anomaly. In the first place he was too old; he had served his company off and on for sixty years; and he had a silver medal inscribed ‘Experto Crede,’ a promise of a pension after ‘a few more voyages,’ and rheumatism to show for it. The bosun was as neat as the boy was untidy. He always dressed in black clothes, on duty or off, and disregarding temperatures, calms, or squalls, be it off Algiers or Archangel, he always wore a bowler hat on his bald, shrunken head, and needle-pointed yellow shoes on his tired old feet. The shoes, and also the red-and-white-striped celluloid collars with ties to match which he affected, he bought in any handy Mediterranean port (‘You can’t go wrong buying haberdashery from the Dagos,’ he used to say). An outfitting shop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, catering to a missionary clientele, had provided him with suits and bowler hats since the Franco-Prussian War.

Copyright 1937. by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

‘I’m turning the ship over to you, boy,’ continued the bosun.

‘I ain’t in no position to miss it,’ answered the boy.

The bosun did not pay any attention to the boy’s sauciness. He had dragged too many boys out of their bunks in his day, and watched their perverse lack of appreciation and stubborn animosity, to expect a sensible answer. Instead he was secretly satisfied that the boy was n’t a member of the whimpering clan. He almost let escape a ‘ Very well, boy,’ but, remembering the oceans of experience which divided the black suit from the dungarees and the dignity which must be preserved intact underneath the bowler hat, he checked himself in time and went below to turn in after an encouraging ‘Mind what I told you, boy, or . . .’

The boy’s first anchor watch had begun. The S. S. Brynhild had arrived empty that June day in 1908 at St. Petersburg from its Skager-Rak home port and had moored in Bolschaya Neva to buoys between two barges from which pit props for Hull were going to be loaded. The boy had been sent to bed at Kronstadt. The jolts and the rough handling which the little old tramp steamer had had to put up with from overbearing, pushing tugs and clumsy, badly navigated barges while coming up the crowded Morskoi Channel had rocked the boy to sleep; the racket from working gears, winches, and hatch covers, and the loud talking and horseplay which the men had indulged in while changing clothes before going ashore, had n’t in any way disturbed his slumber. At pratique, when the crew had been mustered and examined in the forecastle, the zealous mate had tried to shake daylight into him. The quarantine doctor interfered.

‘No need for that kind of thing in Russia, monsieur,’ he said, visibly irritated.

‘Just as well, Doc. You are seeing him at his best right now. When awake he is a bleedin’ plague,’ the mate answered, dumping the boy like a bag of meal into the bunk.

The bosun looked on in silence. ‘The mate ought to know better,’ he reflected, ‘than to shake the boy like that before foreigners. It makes a bad impression and it’s against the principles of the company. Why don’t he go about it in a humane way? Twist the little devil’s ears a turn or two, or, still better, if he could catch him with those sea boots off, wrench his toes and watch him come to and squirm.’

II

The boy was n’t too sleepy to find his way to the galley for something to eat when the bosun had turned in. The cook had gone ashore, but on the range, which was still warm, simmered a pot of thick pea soup with a large slab of American salt pork hidden in its depths. The boy divided the pork into two portions, the fat and the lean; shuddering, he dumped the fat back into the pot and put the lean between a couple of hard ship’s biscuits. With his dirk he manipulated the lock of a cupboard labeled ‘Salon Stores Only’ until it sprang open. Banishing the troubles of to-morrow (in this case the cook’s reactions), he stripped a freshly baked cake of its covering of raisins and nuts and filled his pockets with dried prunes and sugar cubes. He returned to the forecastle head and, leaning against the capstan, ate his supper with relish. It was then a bit past eight o’clock in the evening and the sun was still high in the sky. The daylight would last until about eleven o’clock, when it would be spelled off for a couple of hours by the pale northern twilight.

The boy did n’t worry about the anchor watch. It lasted from eight in the evening to four in the morning, when the crew was called. Then he had to polish brass and trim lamps for another four hours until eight o’clock. The next twelve hours were his own. On this particular night an extra job was added to the usual routine work. Leftovers from a previous cargo of grain had been found rotting in the forward hold and had been collected and piled on the deck and covered with a tarpaulin. As the port regulations prohibited the dumping of refuse in the harbor, the bosun had ordered the boy to dump the grain surreptitiously during the night. He knew in a hazy way what he was supposed to do (the bosun had told him over and over again) and he was perfectly drilled in what he could get away with. The men in the forecastle had said that Boniface, the three-legged shepherd dog more commonly known as ‘Boncface,’ could be depended upon to chase away Abraham-men and sneak thieves and to give the alarm if the lights went out or the anchor showed signs of dragging. The men also said that if old Boneface had n’t lost his starboard-number-one leg while loitering around a butcher shop in Palermo he would have tended to the ship’s bell as well. The boy asked if he had done this before the accident. Well, it seemed there had n’t been any call for it. No offense meant, but in those carefree days the ship always carried smart, lively-stepping boys, not the kind that turned a peaceful home into a floating hell by asking silly questions.

‘The men are all right, though,’ mused the boy. ‘That old bosun in his gravedigger’s suit would be all right, too, if he didn’t say one thing and mean another.’ The captain, a tall, moody sort of man, who, according to the men, spent most of his time at sea quilting and playing the ocarina and when ashore betting on horse races, never noticed the boy; nor did the second mate, a youngster just out of navigation school and too busy with his duties. If the cook went raving mad once in a while he probably had private reasons for it; no use to go into that. But the mate . . . The boy hated the mate. When the boy had been seasick in the choppy Kattegat the mate had kept him on deck until he was cured; when the boy had gone to sleep on the lookout the mate had handed him a candle and a hammer and had sent him down in the spooky chain locker to chip rust in the middle of the night; when the boy had spilled the captain’s coffee on the bridge deck the mate had rubbed the boy’s face in it. The boy’s misdeeds and the mate’s never-failing retribution had become so interwoven and spectacular that the men congratulated themselves upon the fact that if the ship had to carry a boy (which they doubted) it could n’t possibly carry one who suited the mate less — a fact so wholesome and stimulating that they ceased grumbling over the weather and the poor chow and instead fell enthusiastically upon the new topic of the day.

III

The food stowed away, the boy turned his attention upon the city for the first time. Like most children, and indeed a great many grown-up persons as well, he had pictured St. Petersburg as a loud, wintry city where pig-eyed, potato-nosed moujiks led dancing bears, where leering Cossacks brandished nagaikas, and where priests with candle grease in their whiskers and icons under their arms stamped chilled feet around great bonfires that burned brightly on the street corners. What disappointed him most when face to face with the actual St. Petersburg (after the snow and ice had melted as befitted the season) was the clammy, heavy heat which forced him to remove his jumper and sea boots. The stillness of the city undermined his boyish spirit — a stillness which the clatter of the tramcars moving slowly along the immense, cobbled quays and the slam-bang of the many church bells could only intensify and make more creepy. And lastly the graveness of the huge piles of dull red stone — mostly barracks, hospitals, fortresses, and palaces — made him feel that he was out of place here.

Although he was as eager as any pup that makes small, queer noises and bangs its tail against a hard floor to attract attention, the boy could not catch the city’s sympathetic eye. Sprawling all around him in the stifling heat, it remained cold and distant; it refused to give him a soft hand to nuzzle against. Seemingly it wished to be remembered only as a name on the chart upon which the course of his voyage was plotted — a voyage taking him, against his will, he did n’t know where.

The boy did n’t blame anybody but himself for his predicament. He had grown too old, too old at thirteen, for the Orphan Home. As soon as the boys placed there had reached his age they had to go out and scratch for themselves.

‘We believe in giving our boys the very best start possible in life,’ the superintendent had said casually, as if pinch-hitting for Dame Fortune were the least important of his many chores. ‘We always send our most promising boys to sea. You are hale and hearty and of good sense, my boy. If you were not, we would make a parson or a school-teacher out of you.’

So to sea they had sent him. He had nothing to complain of; the Orphan Home never turned a boy out barehanded. They gave him a sea bag crammed with mattress and blanket, oilskin, cup and plate, and a combination knife, fork, and spoon. On top of this they placed a poisonous-looking chunk of yellow salt-water soap, a scrubbing brush, and the New Testament, and sprinkled the whole with a goodly amount of assorted advice. The boy had, so far, restricted himself to the use of the bottom content. The matron told him to keep the blue velvet school cap. She hinted that, wherever he went in the great wide world, he would meet up with other boys forging ahead in life and wearing proudly the emblem of the old institution which had guided their first tottering steps. He did n’t. mind forging ahead, whatever that was, but, knowing the older boys’ habit of ordering him about, he drew the line at being recognized. Still, he had to put up with the stinking old thing; it was the only cap he had.

When the S. S. Brynhild arrived in Hull, the consul of his country would put him on a train for Falmouth, where another consul would nab him. What happened after that the boy did n’t know. When he had told the men about Falmouth, the lone gentleman of the forecastle had looked sidewise, scratched his head, and expectorated into the cold stove; the polite couple had confined themselves to scratching and expectorating and the remaining majority had merely spat — this demonstration signifying exactly nothing, because that’s what they would have done anyhow, Falmouth or no Falmouth. Only Jan, the big Hollander, whose size made it possible for him to dispense with formalities, had spoken. ‘That’s where the full-rigged guano ships touch for orders, ain’t it?’ he had asked.

The answer came in the form of another salvo aimed at the hapless stove.

The mate was less considerate. Once, when the boy ‘snaked’ the ship while steering, the mate clutched his arm until it went to sleep and turned blue and yellow, and barked, ‘Better not pull that stunt in your next ship. If you do, they’ll take you apart and throw what ain’t any good overboard.’

Then he stepped backwards a few paces, looked the boy over, and concluded, ‘And if I’m any judge of varmints, that means the whole of you — cap an’ all.’

IV

At midnight, when the boy forgot to sound eight bells, the bosun, an aged Hamlet in one-piece underwear and bowler hat, haunted the ship to investigate. At last he found the boy in the chartroom surrounded by dog-eared, ancient copies of Kladderadatsch, Le Rire, Strix, and the Redeemer — ‘a life line for errant seamen in exotic ports.’ It being too late to bother about the bell, the bosun gave the impotent Redeemer a vicious kick and led the miscreant by the scruff of the neck down to the grain pile, which was as yet untouched.

‘If it ain’t overboard by the time the mate comes aboard you’ll catch it, and if the Harbor Patrol spots you you ’ll catch it, so pick yer choice,’ lectured the bosun somewhat illogically, but the odds against the boy’s keeping out of trouble were so heavy that he did n’t deign to waste time by suggesting a middle, successful way to get rid of the grain.

The boy fell to pitching the evilsmelling stuff into the river. After about an hour, when (if he could trust his sleep-drunken eyes) the pile had grown larger instead of smaller, he heard Boneface come limping along the deck. Looking up to find out if anything was amiss, he noticed that he was n’t alone. A st ranger, and a woman at that, was standing on the forecastle head looking down upon him. His first impulse was to run for the bosun, but, when he did n’t hear Boneface barking, he calmed down a bit. Boneface was negotiating the iron ladder leading to the forecastle head as rapidly as his three legs permitted. The woman — or rather the girl, for she seemed very slender and graceful among the heavy machinery surrounding her — stood perfectly still, but tense and ready to vault the railing if the dog charged her.

Boneface circled her twice slowly, sniffed at her bare legs, and, finding nothing to get excited about, scrambled down the ladder again. The girl followed the dog. She approached the boy, held out an empty sack, pointed at the grain, and smiled. The boy understood. Sure, she could have it and good riddance. He was n’t afraid any longer; the girl and her sack were going to save him a lot of dirty work. She went back upon the forecastle head and disappeared over the railing. The boy ran after her and watched her climb down the hawser by which the starboard barge was made fast to the ship. On the barge she collected an armful of old sacks, secured them with a line, and threw it to the boy. He hauled up the bundle and the girl boarded the ship again.

While helping the girl to fill her sacks, the boy glanced at her on the sly. She was only a girl all right, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, but she was full grown, and she was wonderfully limber and active. She would have to be, judging from the way she had climbed that hawser with its dangerous rat guard. She had on neither shoes nor stockings and she wore nothing on her head. So far as the boy could make out she was dressed only in a short red skirt and a sleeveless, blousy-looking upper thing embroidered with colored yarn. Her hair, plaited in two braids and wound around her head, would have reached to her knees if freed; it was charcoal black, not bluish black, and the boy thought it was lovely. He did n’t care much about her nose, a saucy little feature, tilted upwards almost as much as his own. Her cream-and-strawberry complexion did n’t impress him either; it was entirely too common where he had come from. But her hair made up for those shortcomings; it simply fascinated him.

She made nice company even if bashful glances and charming, fleeting blushes had to substitute for conversation. Soon they had filled all the sacks — ten of them — and the pile of grain was half gone. The boy made up a tackle, swung out a boom, and they lowered the heavy sacks by hand power. Although steam was up he did n’t dare to run a winch; it would have roused everybody aboard the ship. He felt bad about it, because he would have liked to impress the girl with his ability. The girl went overboard again to empty the sacks. While down on the barge, she pointed at a razorback hog and a scrawny little cow not much bigger than a Shetland pony. The boy nodded dreamily. The barge was the wilderness, the starved ‘critters’ were the Israelites, the S. S. Brynhild was heaven, and he himself was Old Man Jehovah who furnished the manna. But who was the girl? He could n’t place her. The Scripture said nothing about a barefooted, dark-haired girl, in a red skirt, coming unexpectedly up from Bolschaya Neva. And the boy was glad of it. He did n’t want to share her with anybody — not even with the Old Testament.

While they were busy filling the second and last batch of sacks, the boy suddenly felt hungry. He took the girl by the hand and led her to the galley. She shied at first, but when the boy opened the galley door, and with a magnificent gesture with his grimy little paw bade her behold the splendor, she had to capitulate. More than likely she had never before seen anything like it.

The boy rattled the rings of the range, worked the little pump which conveyed water from the fresh-water tanks, turned the coffee grinder and the meat grinder, and made a bad nick in the meat block (the cook’s pride) with the heaviest cleaver he could lay his hands upon — all in order to make her acquainted with the technicalities of a culinary workshop. Then he lifted the lid of the pot containing the still-warm pea soup and invited her to partake. Scorning plates, they ate happily directly out of the pot. When the piece of salt fat American pork bobbed to the surface the girl clapped her hands out of sheer joy. The boy acted as any thoughtful host would have done. After having cut off a small portion for Boneface, who had scented the banquet, he presented the girl with the whole chunk. No, she would have none of it unless the boy kept her company. Straining his sense of chivalry to the utmost, he managed to down a slice of warm, jellied fat, but it was worth it. She licked her fingers so bewitchingly and enjoyed herself so much that the boy would have done anything possible to keep her happy.

A visit to the ‘Salon Stores Only’ completed the feast. The boy was going to make an incision in the bottom of the already browbeaten cake, but the girl’s natural housekeeping instinct revolted at such a sacrilege and she held him back. Instead, she pounced upon the sugar cubes and the dried prunes. Declining to eat them on the spot, she pointed in the direction of the barge, and the boy understood; she wanted to save some for the folks. He ‘borrowed’ one of the cook’s least offensive dishrags and made up a dainty little parcel for her to take away.

The meal had cemented their friendship. Flustered with happiness, pea soup, and youth, they returned, hand in hand, to the work.

V

Next evening, when the boy went on watch, he looked down at the starboard barge for the girl. She was n’t there. The old bargemaster, who might have been her grandfather, touched his cap respectfully when he noticed the boy. The girl had probably told him that their benefactor was the tiniest member of the crewa The razorback had swelled to the size of a fox terrier and the little cow looked almost bovine. The boy wished that he had more rotten grain to squander; then perhaps the girl would come aboard again. Now, she had already forgotten him. Perhaps pea soup would bring her back, though? He ran over to the galley to see if the cook had left anything good on the range. The galley door was padlocked. The cook had placed a covered dish outside. In it were six cold potatoes, a handful of ship’s biscuits, a dyspepticlooking herring, and a cryptic little memorandum saying, ‘Hope ye choke.’ The bosun saved him from doing some desperate act.

‘Make ready the skiff for the captain,’ he called.

‘Can you row?’ asked the captain.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy optimistically.

The captain seemed too preoccupied to notice the boy’s crab-catching and fumbling, and they reached the landing stage without mishap.

‘Return to the ship at once. Don’t hang around here. Have you been ashore yet?’ asked the captain.

‘No, sir,’ said the boy.

‘Well, you may go sometime on your spare time. Tell the bosun that you have my permission,’ said the captain, and handed him a silver coin. The boy fingered it ecstatically. Perhaps it was a ruble. It was heavy enough and shiny enough to be almost anything.

Back on board the ship, the hours passed slowly for the boy. At midnight he sounded eight bells on the dot, but soon afterwards he whistled for Boneface and, doing an excellent imitation of the bosun, told the dog, ‘I’m turning the ship over to you, Boneface. Mind what I told you, dog, or . . .’ Then he climbed into a lifeboat and went to sleep.

He awoke when something soft touched his eyes. Whatever it was, it was nice and tender. He did n’t dare to move; if he did, the spell would surely break. But when the girl lifted her fingers from his eyes and raised his head slightly, he knew that the spell would never break as long as she was near him. How glad he was that she had returned! Her presence changed everything. Loneliness and fear disappeared; the battered, rusty old S. S. Brynhild became a hospitable home; even the great, hulking city lost its aloofness.

Sitting by his side in the lifeboat, the girl spoke to him and pointed towards the city. Literally he did n’t understand a word of what she said, but it did n’t matter. When she pointed at the dark masses of Peter and Paul, the fortress, she shuddered and moved instinctively closer to the boy; when she outlined the great Prospekts, the Nevskii, the Gorokhovaya, the Voznesenskii, which, with the Admiralty as a base, thrust themselves into the city like an enormous, brilliantly illuminated trident, she spoke so excitedly and so fast that the boy, without the least difficulty, could imagine the richness and the splendor of the streets. She crossed herself and swayed slightly, back and forth, at the sight of the churches, but when the fireworks on Apothecaries’ Island flared unexpectedly she hid behind the boy’s back. Fireworks were nothing new to the boy. Spluttering and whizzing, he staged a display of his own, and his histrionic talent must have been equal to the girl’s, because soon she was peeking bravely at the authentic display.

After the finish of the fireworks, they went exploring. He showed her the compass, the telescopes, the wheel, and he wound the chronometers (a capital offense). He ransacked the flag locker and bedecked her with pennants and signal flags until she looked like a Maypole. They went down in the salon (also a capital offense) and sat reverently on the red plush settee and admired the dining table, which was covered with a checkered oilcloth and on which reposed the table cruet, a clever — if flyspecked — contraption which, no matter how violently the ship pitched, always kept its balance. (The boy demonstrated and broke the vinegar bottle!) The whir and the groaning from the pumps and the dynamos in the engine room tempted them to investigate. They did n’t venture far. The intense heat and the stale smells of oil, grease, and bilge water, the unfamiliar sounds, and the ghastly dull gauge lights repulsed them and they turned back. They were fresh-air creatures; the cool dewy steel deck and the deep-blue starry sky were good enough for them.

The boy stumbled over his midnight lunch. Blushing furiously, he apologized for the scanty fare. He need not have done so, for, judging by her enraptured mien, lean Scandinavian herring delighted her just as much as fat American pork. They carried the dish up to the forecastle head, and, instead of pleasing the cook by choking, they got a great deal of nourishment — not to mention laughter and herring bones — out of the meal.

The hours fled rapidly and soon it was time to call the crew. Before they said good-bye, the boy showed her the skiff and pointed at the sun and the approximate spot in the sky where it ought to be at eight o’clock in the morning. They were going ashore when he was done with his work. Nodding her head, she accepted his invitation.

VI

For the next ten days the boy and the girl were almost inseparable. The tall, straight, barefooted girl and the small boy, also barefooted, in his dungarees and with the blue velvet cap pushed back on his head, roamed all over St. Petersburg. The boy held the silver ruble clutched in his fist for emergency expenses, but nobody seemed able to exchange it. If they boarded a tramcar, the conductor took a good look at them and suspended traffic indefinitely. The summer days were long and a bit of entertainment was always welcome.

Where did the little foreigner come from and what was he doing in Russia? After many exclamations and much moustache twirling, the conductor consulted the motorman and the passengers, and the girl was asked to state the case once more. Thereafter the conductor eyed everybody defiantly and wished to know if anybody present would estimate the boy to be past six years of age and therefore excluded from the privilege of traveling gratis, and, if such were the case, would the gentleman please prove it, and, granted that it could be proved, was it customary in Russia to extract money from a child thousands of miles away from home, and if, indeed, such a custom was prevalent, would the gentleman please, etc., etc. Extracting money from children must have been an uncommon pastime in Russia, because the conductor always started the car triumphantly and the women passengers poked into bundles and market baskets for cucumbers and sugared buns to tempt the boy with and crowded closer to the girl for more intimate details. Even the policemen, when the girl asked them for directions, were not above letting the traffic handle itself for ten minutes or so while they interviewed the girl and punched the boy playfully in the stomach to find out what kind of man he was.

The boy soon changed his opinion about the city. It was n’t hard-faced and unyielding any more. The sun shone every day and the people, instead of throwing children to the wolves, smiled when they passed by. The city was dotted with parks where anybody was welcome to rest on the green turf or join in the games played by young and old. They spent whole days on the communal bathing beaches, playing in the water or sunning themselves on the strand. They had no sins to regret and no blemishes to hide; even if mixed bathing had n’t been the custom of the country, they were too healthy and unspoiled to pay undue attention to mere nakedness. The girl brought needle and thread and cut down and fixed the boy’s oversized dungarees or did sewing of her own while the boy slept untroubled with his head on her lap.

In the afternoon they often went to some of the seamen’s taverns along the river front, where the music and the dancing never stopped. If they managed to find a seat in a corner, they ordered glasses of tea and bread. The magic ruble kept itself as intact here as in the tramcars. The waiter took the coin to the proprietor and pointed out his odd customers. The proprietor, or more often his wife, added a couple of hard-boiled eggs or a piece of sausage to the order and told the waiter to return the money to the boy. Sometimes a foreign seaman, his ballast trimmed a bit unevenly, would put his arm around the girl or pass a pointed remark. The girl never hesitated to retaliate. She struck quickly and she struck so hard that the baffled courtier retreated, only to be rushed by the boy. At this ludicrous stage the man would usually collect himself and beg the girl to pardon him for his mistake; if he did n’t, the laughing bystanders would snatch the boy out of the man’s reach and send the drunken seaman flying through the door. The music and the dancing, the loud singing and the stamping, enchanted them. If the girl had n’t kept track of the time the boy would have been hours late for the anchor watch.

The pretty, vivacious ladies in highlaced boots and starched white shirtwaists used to come over to their corner to finger the girl’s braided hair and to bend the boy’s head backwards and look into his eyes. Once the youngest and the prettiest of them all snatched his velvet cap, put it on her head, and danced alone, on her toes, around and around the room. All noise stopped abruptly and everybody stood so still that the boy believed he could hear himself blushing — blushing at the thought of how awful that cap must be if a lady liked it so well. When the dance ended, the lady ran across the floor, put the cap back on his head, and kissed him square on the mouth. The spellbound audience came to life again. Everybody, with the exception of the boy and the girl, applauded, shouted, stamped, and banged on the tables. The boy, too dazed to know quite what had happened, tried to wipe the unfamiliar patchouli scent off his lips with the back of his hand, and the laughter and the noise grew still louder. The girl, her eyes cloudy with emotion and looking straight ahead, took his hand and they walked out, the boy wondering why the din was dying down so quickly and why everybody looked so uncomfortable.

VII

The S. S. Brynhild was entering the Gulf of Finland. The spires of St. Petersburg had disappeared, but the bastions of Kronstadt were still clearly etched abaft. The wind, blowing strong from up Bothnia way, was turning out good-sized seas which broke over the high deck cargo, seeped through the pit props until they reached the deck, and swished out through the scuppers, making the ship look like a pitching old black-painted sieve daubed here and there with red lead. Out in the Baltic they would catch it good and plenty on the starboard side, so the mate and all hands were busy rigging life lines and securing odds and ends.

The boy was downhearted. He had known that he would have to part with the girl, but he had n’t known how hard it was going to be until she had taken him in her arms and brushed her lips against his cheek. He would have liked to kiss her, but, not knowing how to go about it, he had offered her the silver ruble instead. She had put it back into his pocket and smiled. He had cut the cockade off his cap and she had pinned it to her embroidered blouse. In return she had given him a dandy leather sheath for his dirk. That was all.

The mate sent the boy aft to salute the naval guard ship. The boy knew how to do it and it was lots of fun. When the bows of the two vessels were on an even line he would slowly lower the ship’s flag and keep it down until the cruiser answered by dipping her blue St. Andrew’s cross. The captain and the pilot aboard the S. S. Brynhild would touch their caps and the ranking officer on the quarter-deck of the cruiser would do likewise. The boy loosened the lanyard and turned about to estimate the distance to the cruiser. But the white rakish man-of-war was doomed to play a secondary role this time. A wheezy, wood-burning tug, towing the two barges that the boy knew so well, was being overtaken by the S.S.Brynhild. The boy could hardly believe his eyes. On the last barge was the girl, steering with the tiller between her knees and waving excitedly to him. The boy greeted her in a truly royal manner; he honored her by dipping the flag of his king and country. The girl grabbed a garment from a clothesline next to her, held it out straight, lowered it majestically, and raised it slowly again. One moment her barge rode the crest of a white-capped, green sea, and the tall, slender girl, lovelier than any mermaid, her strong white arms raised above her coal-black hair and supporting the tattered, faded blue skirt which the stiff breeze held straight and free from wrinkles like a piece of sheet iron, was high up among the screaming, looping sea gulls; the next moment it pitched downwards, until the hem of the skirt was barely visible, only to reappear in full view a bit farther away.

Then the cruiser flashed by. Its many decks were crowded with laughing, cheering sailors who had witnessed the astounding spectacle of a king’s emblem bowing humbly to a girl’s ragged skirt. The sailors did n’t content themselves with laughing and cheering; they waved their white, beribboned hats and blew kisses toward the girl. Even the officers on the quarter-deck smiled interestedly and trained binoculars on the girl. The mate, crazy with rage and shaking his fist, came running on top of the deck cargo. The boy made no belated efforts to salute the mighty flag of an emperor and a czar. He was going to be true to the girl. And he was. When the mate knocked him down and lifted him up to knock him down again the boy butted his head into the mate’s stomach, broke away, and crawled to the railing to have a last look at the girl. It was too late. The steep seas and the thick smoke from the tug blotted out the barges. The bosun caught the boy and hustled him up to the bridge and the captain.

The captain looked moodier than ever. The first day at sea was always hard on him. He had n’t found his true embouchure on the ocarina yet and his nerves, still raw and sore from the excitements of the St. Petersburg race courses, needed soothing with a few slip-and-treble stitches. And now this brawl between the mate and that forlorn little pup that the bosun held imprisoned in his bony hands only made matters worse.

‘He should be put in irons, sir,’ raved the mate. ‘I did n’t mean to hit him, but by Gawd, sir, he tried me sorely. That worthless barge wench . . .’

The boy tried to swing at the mate, but the pilot — a bearded, jocular, German-speaking Balt — gathered him in his arms and chuckled, ‘Ach, der Spitzbube! Ach, dcr Spitzbube!’

‘Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,’ croaked the bosun, while holding his bowler hat pressed respectfully against his chest, ‘them Muscovites ain’t gonna put up with bein’ slighted. The company is bound to hear from ’em. Diplomatic rippycushions an’ perlitical strife is —’

The captain cut him short.

‘Carry on, Mister Mate. The boy may relieve the man at the wheel. As for you, Bosun, confine your repercussions and strife to the starboard uprights. I can’t use any bad omens on the bridge,’ he said, looking disgustedly at the bosun’s black suit. ‘It’s blowing too hard already.’ Then he beckoned to the pilot and they went into the chartroom to talk shop.

The boy repeated the course and took the wheel. The seas were running so bad that he had to ‘walk the spokes’ before he could turn the heavy, oldfashioned wheel. The second mate felt sorry for him. ‘Mister Mate’ would certainly keep the kid on deck all night to give him a slight foretaste of coming punishment; and, as an added ‘attraction,’ across the seas was an undermanned, starvation-fed, full-rigged guano ship awaiting him. Surely the little beggar did n’t have much to be happy about. Still, the boy seemed to be smiling. His face, smeared with caked blood and salt spray, was a shocking background for happiness, but it fairly glittered with joy. Suppose he had been hit too hard in the head?

The second mate became downright uneasy when the boy suddenly took off his blue velvet cap, pressed his split lips to the vacant space once covered by the cockade, and then flung it far out into the Gulf of Finland.