By Tim Jones
Copyright©Tim Jones
We come off them
square riggers in a hurry onct they shet down the whaling. We's comin' down the Bering Sea out of
the Arctic when we heard, and the Skip, well, he says, What you want to do? and
I says, well, I heard they was doin' some high-priced fishing right there in
the Aleutian Chain. But, I also
heard they was the roughest kinda sailors and I'd jest as soon head back for
home. So the Skip, right
predictable like he was, he says he's dumpin' me ashore at Adak and to go pack
my kit. He says how we done so
poorly my share don't come to passage to San Francisco, so he's tyin' her up
right there and I could just go about takin' care of myself.
So, pretty soon
there we was in Adak way out there so close we might as wella been in Siberia,
which we might as well a been in anyways by the look of things. Just a little island out there,
somethin' you could trip over if you wasn't watching, it was so small. Anyway, I bends my head into the
horizontal rain and goes alookin' for some kinda ride. Weren't too many of them square riggers
left no more and I didn't know what I was goin' to do. I jest went along hunchin' into that
wind and rain proceeding one step forward and two steps back with my slicker a
flappin' and that's when I run into Adak Charlie.
A course, nobody
runs into Adak Charlie, he more runs
over you. What I did was commence
to crawl over this little hill until I realizes its the big bulb toe of a
bigger rubber boot and I looks up and there was Charlie, well, at least there
was Charlie's knees. Well, that
man stood tall as a mainmast and just as straight and he blocked out the sun;
at least he woulda blocked out the sun if there'd a been one. The sun showed up so little out there
most folks didn't really believe there was one except now and again somebody'd
recall seein' it one time or the other.
Anyway, I crawls into Charlie's lee and looks up. Sure enough up there on toppa all that
rubber, they's a face. I yells up
Howdy and he yells down Howdy and I says is there any work for a honest sailor
around here and he yells down he thinks they need crew on his boat and I yells
up what kinda boat is it and he yells down BERING SEA CRABBER and I yells up
Good-by and he yells down Ain't man enough, huh? and I yells up, Yeah, but I
ain't stupid enough and right there he commences to look a little disturbed and
I decides this ain't the kind of man to be callin' stupid so I decides I better
ship with 'im or the whole situation could get a whole lot worse right there in
the wind and the rain and the mud.
So, me and
Charlie heads toward the wharf and I'm runnin' along in his lee while he's
amblin' along and we gets to the ship and he steps over the gunwale and I
climbs the ladder and no sooner's we aboard than I hear a engine start up
somewheres and it scares me right out of my sail trim. See, I'm a sailin' man. I ain't never been on no steamer before
and all that machinery whirlin' and growlin' kin get to a man used to the quiet
creakin' in the rigging. I'm
lookin' around for masts and canvas and the boat's moving and against the wind
and I'm wonderin' how that could be when Charlie, he points to the focs'l and
says. "Stow your gear."
Well, I walks
down the companionway and runs into the roughest lookin' bunch a thugs ever
turned a windlass. There was more
eyepatches than a herd of spotted dogs and more scars than one doctor coulda
ever sewed up in a lifetime of stitchin' and they looks at me and I looks at
them and to myself I curses the Skip real hard for leavin' me to this and then
onea these thugs points to a empty bunk and grins so hard the scar that run
from his port side ear to clear under his chin turns so bright red he looks
like he's smilin' twice.
We cleared port and heads out to sea and
Twice-smilin', that was his name I swear by St. Elmo's fire, he says sleep
some, but I ain't sleepin' with that bunch of criminals in attendance. I did lay down but I keeps one eye
cocked, but I musta dozed some 'cause I hear this big CLANK and it wakes me up
and I says what's that, and Twice-Smilin' says that's the first buoy and to hit
the deck and then there's this other big clank and he says that's the other
buoy and we goes up on deck and Twice-smilin' starts to showin' me the
lines. I says I thought you picked
little rubber buoys outta the water where the pots was and he says that's the
way most of 'em do it but that was too slow for the likes of Adak Charlie and
what he does is run with these two big magnets and when they come up on one of
his steel buoys, them buoys jest fly outta the water and clangs into them
magnets. "Saves a lotta time findin’
‘em in the dark, too," Twice-smilin' says.
Well, we's
standing there in rubber suits from head to toe and I says what's we supposed
to do and Twice-smilin' starts explainin'. He says on most boats a guy stands there by this here little
wheel pulley sort of a contraption, they call it a power block. Well, I ain't used to this power stuff
and I got to ask just how many sailors it takes to power this thing and
Twice-smilin', he shows me this know-it-all grin you save for a child, only
twice, and he says it's the engine does all that powerin'. Anyway, he says one guy usually stands
there and coils the line from the crab pot as it comes up through that block
and one guy he runs the engine controls.
I seen a guy in my mind with a whip floggin' them sailors to power that
block, that's the kinda controls we use on the square-riggers. So, when the pot comes up over the side
a coupla other guys wrassle it around and separate the crabs and put in new
bait and toss her overboard again.
I asks Twice-smilin' what I'm supposed to do and he says,
"Wrasslin'."
"Ya see,
Smit," he says, "On this boat she's done a bit differnt."
Right then Adak
Charlie himself comes walkin' out on deck. He looks at them two steel buoys aswingin' from them magnets
and he walks to the middle of the deck and he spreads his feet and he says, let
'er rip. Two guys start them two
pulleys and that line come flyin' up at about forty knots and Charlie he takes
one in his big right hand and he starts to makin' a coil in front of him and he
takes the other line in his big left hand and he starts to make a coil behind
him and we commences to hauling them first two crab pots.
Twice-smilin' he
takes me over to one a them coils and he says we should just be watchin' them
in case something goes galley west, but he says with Charlie coilin' nothin'
ever goes galley west and we just watch that line go into those coils and the
coils go higher and higher and Charlie's hands is just a blur and he's singin'
away at the top of his lungs about great storms at sea and all I'm doin' is
gettin' wet from all that spray flying offa that line as it comes over the
block. Of course, nothing goes
wrong and then there's the loud KEE-BANG! and then another one so loud, sounded
like the king's navy was holdin' down on us with all their cannons blazin'.
"Pots,"
says Twice-smilin'. "Here we
go."
We goes to one
side and here's this big square contraption with webbing all round it and
Charlie he reaches over the side and throws her up on deck and we tips her and
dumps the crabs out. Twice-smilin'
says how on most boats you have to separate out the female crabs and the small
ones but on this boat we never get none o’ them and sure enough, every one a
them crabs is a legal-sized male king crab, big ones and Twice-smilin' he explains
why. "Watch old Charlie
there," he says, "he always touches the bait with somethin' Charlie
ain't tellin' what it is but whatever it might be works. Guys get to jokin'," he says,
"and everybody figures it's the essence of Kiska Katie he's puttin' on
that bait and that bait draws them big males just like Katie herself draws them
crabbers to her place when they's ashore."
So, anyway,
Twice-smilin' says, "We put them in the big crab tank there," and I
says, "It's full of WATER," and I goes lookin' for a life jacket and
Twice-smilin' he smiles twice and says it's supposed to be full of water, but
he ain't convincin' me and I'm ready to abandon the sinking ship and he says
it's to keep the crabs alive and I says who ever heard of pumping water INTO a
boat and he says again it's OK, the boat's built that way and I says, all
right, but I ain't convinced and I'm watchin' the freeboard from then on.
We goes on to
dump them crabs into that water in the boat and Charlie he puts the bait into
the pots, touches the bait and tosses 'em over the side and off we goes a
runnin' until we hears them clangs again when two more a them steel buoys come
flyin' out of the water and she starts all over again. I says to Twice-smilin' how this ain't
near so bad as I'd heard and he gets to smiling real hard twice and looks at me
real knowledgeable-like and he says wait til you see the mile-squares, and I
says WHAT and he just walks off smilin' twice.
Well, we run
like that day and night right into winter. Lost track of the days we just hummed along respondin' to
them clangs and tossin' them crabs and working on the gear when there's time
and I learned this and that and along the way I learnt these crab guys look the
way they do from flingin' them pots and lines and crabs around all the time and
gettin' banged up all the time and afore long I got a pretty good scar a
formin' on my hand from the day the boat rolled when I was choppin' up bait and
I'm startin' to look a little bit like the rest of them thugs, myself.
There was this
day we was runnin' between strings of gear and everybody's sittin' around on
deck on piles of line and we can hear the radio goin' and they come up on the
weather report and we all liked to listen, even if it didn't make no matter,
'cause that Charlie, he didn't stop for nuthin, even a typhoon.
So, this guy
gets through the weather report and starts to givin' what he calls notices to
mariners and he says in this real official voice: "Two Aleutian islands are reported off station and
missing," and he gives some latitude and longitude numbers from their last
known position, and then he says, "Mariners are urged to exercise extreme
caution when transiting the area."
Then he says anyone seein' them islands should report them and that sets
the whole crew to laughing. I’m
wondering what's so funny about two missing islands and how they could be
missing and Twice-smilin', who's laughing twice now, between giggles he says,
"I seen 'em. Fer sure,
Smit," he says, "You seen 'em too." And I says, "Where'd I see 'em?" Then he gets to laughin' all the more
and when he catches his breath, he says, "They're right up there in the
wheel house" and that gets everybody to listing with laughter even more. When they finally got 'er down to where
they can breathe and talk at the same time, Boarder, now he's a story, lets off
with that high-pitched giggle of his and commences to tell me the story.
Now I been told
not to pay much mind to Boarder 'cause he's a little off his trim, like maybe
he don't have both oars in the water, and nobody knows if he's called Boarder
because he's borderline crazy or because of the two-by-four he's usin' for a
starboard side leg.
Well, he goes
into this real authoritative-soundin' voice he could muster when he wanted to
and he says, "You see, Smit, we came in from a long hard trip one
time. We unloaded the crab and
then everybody crawled off into town for the party. Adak Charlie, there, he went up onto a hill after a while
and laid down for a nap. He's so
big when he spread out his arms sprawled out there, his hands sort of slopped
off the island and his hands landed palm up in the water. And he fell asleep that way. Unfortunately that was the day the government
people came to chart that part of the country. They went flying over and drew everything they saw and when
the charts came out, there were these two new islands. Of course, they weren't new to the
people doing the charting because they'd never seen any of it before. Those islands are a perfect picture of
Charlie's hands. Well, when
Charlie woke up and went back to the ship, he took those two islands with him
and they've been off station ever since."
"They help
him a lot with coilin', Twice-smilin' laughed twice and that set them all off
to laughing again and Boarder finishes the story by sayin' the government
people been out there every so often lookin' for the two islands and every so
often they ask on the radio if anybody's seen 'em. That give us a laugh fer most of the day and we needed it
'cause it was that night we run into the big ones.
I was layin' in
my bunk tryin' to get some sleep listenin' to them crabs a scritchy-scrawlin'
around in that tank which didn't help none. Had a lot of trouble sleepin' on that boat and I had a lotta
dreams about spiders, too.
Anyway, all of a
sudden there comes onea them clangs again only, this one, it's different. For one thing, there's only one of them
and for another it was louder than any I'd heard before. Twice-smilin' comes awake, too, and
looks at me, only real serious, like he's frownin' twice and he says,
"mile-squares."
Well, all us
thugs, yup I was one of 'em by this time, didn't have no eye patch, but I was
gettin' pretty cut up, all us thugs comes a-boilin' up on deck and there's
Charlie standin' there real serious, too, rubber all the way to the sky.
Boarder told me
once how a Mr. Helly and a Mr. Hanson come all the way from Scandinavia
somewheres to build that suit of rain gear for Charlie. They brought 400 acres, that's right
acres, of cloth. Then they built a
scaffolding around Charlie and twenty-seven tailors with block and tackle
climbed that scaffold and built that suit of rain gear for Adak Charlie. Took 'em a month. His boots is another story.
Well, we's
standin' on deck with Charlie and one of them thugs puts the line through both
blocks and they crank ‘em up and pretty soon line's comin' on board only slower
and the boat's listin' way over to one side and Charlie's straining to take
some of the weight off them blocks and I know somethin' heavy's coming up but
all anybody says is "mile-squares."
Even Boarder
come clumping up on that two-by-four and giggles the way he does sometimes real
shrill and he says, "Now you'll see, Smit, mile-squares," and he
giggles again and clumps off and I know he ain't rowin' straight.
When everybody
got finally to settled in and alls you can hear is the creakin' and groanin' of
that line comin' through two blocks and Adak Charlie strainin', too, and
singin' a slower song about a storm at sea, and the coil just keeps gettin'
higher and higher, Twice-smilin' comes over and he says, "Smit, yer about
to see somethin'. Seems," he
says, "out here somewheres there's this king crab. At least we think there's just one and
he's a big old crab. We seen a leg
or a claw now and again where he's holdin' onto a pot tryin' to git at that
essence of Kiska Katie and we had to wrassle a pot away from him more'n
once. So, Charlie, he decides he's
goin' to catch that crab and he went and made him up some pots just for that
and he's going to be catching it onea these days. See, a crab that big couldn't get into one of our regular
pots, so Charlie, he made up some pots and they're a mile square. I don't have to tell you, Smit, they're
big and they're heavy and even Charlie there, he needs some help pushin' them around
and we got a string of 'em out here and onea these days that big old crab's
gonna be in one of 'em and that ought to be really somethin'."
Well, about this
time the coil got up over even Charlie's head and he climbs up into the crow's
nest still singing that song about that storm at sea and he's still coilin',
and now and then a big grin comes 'cross his face when he looks over the side fer that pot and what might be
in it.
The boat kept a
leanin' until the pot finally slams the boat's bottom and Charlie peers down
from the crow's nest but he don't care for what he sees and we rigs all the
winches and lines we can find and haul her up and it's loaded with crabs but
there ain't none like Twice-smilin'
was talkin' about. We can't
put a pot that big on board so a couple of us thugs crawls down in it and
starts to pitchin' them crabs up on deck.
That big old
crab, he wasn't in that one and he ain't in the next one either, but he'd been
around, 'cause the next one's got the web all tore out and the bait's all gone
and all the rest of 'em on that string's just like it, tore to shreds and the
bait gone like somethin' real big goin' real crazy after it and we're spendin'
more time repairin' and sewin' pots than we're fishin'. In time we gets through them mile-squares
and come back to the regular gear again and the hold's gettin' real full, which
is fine with me cause there ain't so much room for water comin' aboard
anymore. Never could get used to
pumpin' water into a boat.
We finally got
to the point where there wasn't no more room for crabs or water in that hold
and I asks Twice-smilin' what happens now and he smiles twice and nods toward
Charlie who's takin' off his boots.
‘Twas then I noticed the little pipes comin' from the heel and toe and a
couple of thugs hooks up some hoses to them pipes and all of a sudden we got
two new crab tanks. We kept agoin'
til we filled them boots, too, and then we turned 'er for Adak.
Charlie says
it'll be a quick turnaround 'cause he wants to git back to them mile-squares
and he has an idea.
I'll tell you it
was a quick turnaround, all right.
We got in late evenin' and we just worked right through unloadin' and
we's pullin' out before first light.
Charlie, he's gone most of the time, come back on the boat real sneaky,
nobody really seen him come back, but there he was and he sets a course for
them mile-squares out there in the big ocean. He never come outta the house, just serious runnin', but
every so often we'd be hearing these high-pitched tones and we's all wondering
just what's goin' on and where Charlie was when he was off the boat while we
was unloadin' and what he mighta brought aboard.
Boarder, he
giggles now and again and says he knows, but nobody'd listen to him anyway and
Twice-smilin' says he thinks he knows but he ain't guessin' out loud and all we
did was steam toward them pots.
We come to the
first one and the buoy hit the magnet and Charlie commenced to coilin' with his
big jaw set and the hairs in his beard stickin' out straight and singing a new
song about a storm at sea.
"Looks like Adak Charlie means business this time,"
Twice-smilin" says.
Charlie just
keeps coilin’ and again when the coil gets too high he goes up to the crow's
nest and keeps on coilin' and when the pot's almost to the surface, he stops
his song and lets out a bellow and the cabin door opens.
We's all lookin'
to the door and out comes this woman and she's almost as big as Charlie himself
and she's all gussied up with paint and perfume and when the wind spreads that
aroma around it overpowers the smell of the herring bait; all them thugs come
to a stop with their mouths open like a bunch of them Florida groupers, froze
right there.
Twice-smilin'
was standin' right next to me.
"Kiska Katie," he says and that's all and she sashays over to
the rail lookin' to that pot comin' up and it comes to the surface with them
little crabs in it but not this big one Charlie's lookin' for. Well, we finally collected ourselves
enough to get them crabs out and Charlie's gettin' ready to dump the pot over
again but this time Katie herself puts the bait into the pot and blows a little
kiss at it and Charlie sends 'er down, the pot that is, not Katie, and we heads
for the next one.
It was on the
next one that it all happened.
Charlie coiled that pot up and Katie she watched and she put the new
bait in it and, well, just as she was leanin' over to blow that kiss, this leg
and then the claw come up over the far side of that pot and this giant crab
come a clicking and raging out of the water after Katie. She screams and then she falls right
into that pot and the crab come over the top a crackin' and a snappin' and all
that weight on it was too much and she starts headin' for the bottom. About this time, Charlie sees what's
goin' on and he's got to do somethin' and he dives right outta the crow's nest
and right into that pot after the crab who was after Kiska Katie and him and
the crab and Katie and the pot goes down and started pullin' the boat right
along with them. Me and Boarder
and Twice-smilin' jumps to it and lets the line fly so's the boat don't go
down, too, and we looks over the side and all we see is water a boilin' and a
bubblin' and a foamin' and every once in a while we see a big crab leg come up
and go smashing down, or a big fist of Charlie's or a claw or somethin' and
then more foamin’ and boilin'.
Then Katie come floatin' to the surface spitting and sputtering and
sayin' a few unladylike words and we tosses her a line. But, instead of comin' to the boat, she
takes that line and dives back down into the foam with it and the boilin' gets
all the worse and then she come up again and swims for the boat. ‘Bout this time we wasn't so sure we
wanted her on board. With her in
the water, the crab coulda cared less about the boat, but with her on deck he
might be comin' after us, too. We
brung her aboard anyway. Even
thugs can't be completely fergettin' their upbringing. After all, she was a lady, at least fer
them parts. So she joins us at the
rail and says she got a line on the critter somewheres and now that she's outta
the water and the current's carrying the essence away, it looks like the
fight's calming down. Either the
crab's lost interest or he's got the best of Charlie which nobody really believes,
or Charlie got the best of the crab which everybody wants to believe and sure
enough here come Charlie to the surface and he's spittin' and cussin' almost as
bad as Katie, but the foamin's
stopped and he crawls aboard, well, he's too big to just crawl aboard;
we had to winch him up and then we gets him on deck and takes a good look. Well, Twice-smilin' takes to twice
laughing and Boarder starts to giggling and everybody's laughing but me and
Charlie and then he starts up. To
look at him. He's got more
pinholes in them rain clothes than a man can count. They were from all them spines on that crab and when Adak
Charlie stands up every one of them holes starts spoutin' water soes he looks
like he ought to be a statue in a fountain in a park somewheres. Here and there you could see where that
crab got in a good slash at him, too.
Charlie looks down at himself and allows how he's going to have to send
for that Mr. Helly and Mr. Hanson again.
Anyway, they's
all havin' a good laugh but me.
I'm lookin' at what a crab can do to a man and I'm not so sure about
this crabbin' anyway and I'm deciding right then I'm gettin' off this boat fer
good next time she comes anywhere near land. About then, when I was decidin' that, the laughing kind of
ebbs and they starts wonderin' about this here crab. Charlie says it's inside the pot and we got that line on it
that Katie got a wrap with so he starts to pullin' the pot again and us thugs
coiled on the Katie line. I really
shouldn't say "we" cause I got as far away from that side of the boat
as I could case that crab got a second wind or somethin' when he sees Katie and
comes up snarlin'.
It took quite a
strain on all the deck gear but they finally come up with the crab and the pot
and the crab was sure enough subdued for good and they had to winch it on board,
too, just like Charlie, and all in all it looks to be in a whole lot worse
shape than Charlie did. There was
no way we could figure the size of that crab. He took up the whole back deck, but a lot of him was still
hangin' over the sides. Them legs
was as big as spars on the clippers and the shell, well, they coulda held a
concert in there. We tried to
weigh the thing but he was so unconventional shaped, we couldn't ever get the
lines on him right with the scale to haul it off the deck whole. We finally took to chopping up the legs
in sections and tryin' to weight them one at a time. We come up over a ton and then the scale broke, sproinged
right over the side and we give 'er up.
Charlie, he says save the shell and he gits this faraway look in his eyes
and says how someday when he gets shut o' this business he just might haul her
someplace sunny, settle down and make a swimmin' pool out of it. Katie, she hears this and looks at
Charlie real misty like.
Then we, well,
Charlie and all them thugs, agrees the one crab'll make one heck of a payday
and they turns the boat for Adak.
I don't mind
tellin' you that was the end of my career in the king crab fishery. When we got 'er back to Adak I jumped
ship, I come off that boat runnin', lookin' for anything I could find to get
outta there. I think I woulda
rowed for Frisco if I coulda found a boat. While I was lookin' and moving down the road leanin' into
that wind again, there he was, I run right into the Skip. He almost passed me up; he didn't
recognize me at first.
"Smit,"
he hollers out when he finally figgers out just who the heck I am. "What happened to you?"
"I been
crabbin', you Jack Tar," I says real mean like.
"You look
like you been cut up by half the rum-runners in Shanghai," he says,
"You look criminal."
"Crabbin'
did it to me," I says, "And I owe you."
"Gotta
ship," the Skip says. I don't
think he even knew I was threatening him.
"A tramp, sailing south."
"Square-rigger?"
I asks, forgettin' the threat for a minute myself.
"Yup."
"Got any
fishin' gear aboard?" I asks.
"Not so
much as a hook," he says.
"Good!"
I says.
Then he gets
this dirty smile of his and he says, "Git some if you want."
"‘Bout then
I was ready to let him have it and he seen it commin' and he took a step
back. He musta realized I was
serious now, 'cause I never seen the Skip take a step back in his life. But I let him go. One punch wasn't going to make up fer
what he did to me and right there I started to schemin' what was goin' to
happen to the Skip for a payback.
So, like always,
I shipped with him and we set our sails for the South Seas and that was that
for my crabbin' days and I was pretty glad for it.
Still, you know,
there's days at sea when a man's mind wanders and he gets to recalling this and
that and there's even a day now and again in the doldrums and I'll get to
thinkin' about that crew of thugs and Twice-smilin' and Boarder and who could
ever forgit that Kiska Katie. But,
mostly I recall that big man, that Adak Charlie, standin' there just as tall as
a mainmast and just as straight and coilin' them lines clear to the sky with
both hands and most of all singin' them songs about them storms at sea. Those times I gets to thinkin' real
fondly about them poor souls in the Bering Sea and the time I spent there. Don't last long, though. I always come back to my senses.”
That is a great story (or stories)!
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