Glebe Collegiate Institute - Lux Glebana Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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The Sea and Me b Allany Jenkins - - So, I packed my bag and left. Hali- fax saw me board the R. M. S. Colborne , and from that time on, I was lost somewhere in the Atlantic ocean. Perhaps the captain and mates knew where we were. I did not. At any rate, they figured and figured, swore a bit at the helmsman and we steamed in and out of the various West Indies islands, ending up in British Guiana, from whence we turned tail and headed for home. Throughout all this time, I was doing my best to do as a seaman should. I un- coiled ropes, threw them over the side, brought them in again and re-coiled them. All done with a definite purpose, I assure you, at least, that is what the bo'sun led me to believe. He also led me to believe that seamen who did not get all the work done that was assigned them, were very naughty. I admit that he did not use those exact words, but he put it in as delicate a manner as could be expected. CAnyone who has had anything to do with deep-sea work, will understand what I mean. The others might easily guess.J At this point, I should like to mention a quaint little custom, known to seamen as squeegeeing. The secret of the contents of this squeegee is locked fast in the bo'sun's heart. It is very interesting to see him, in the queer light of the eager dawn, take handfuls of this mysterious stuff and with weird incantations, throw it on the surface of a large barrelful of water. He then stirs it with a magic stick and doles it out in pails to the eagerly waiting seamen, who dash off with it, two chunks of waste and a pail of fresh water, to clean those many, many, many square feet of white paint. After about three days of hearty work, you think you are through, but, oh, no! the continued from page L0 September 5 we saw the towers of Man- hattan rising from the water and after endless red tape at the American customs, we straightened away for Ottawa in a friend's new Chevrolet. The morning of September 6, I was back at my desk in Room 213, finding it hard to realize that two weeks before I had been lolling on a hillside in Hellas. Lux GLEBANA bo'sun informs you that while you were working aft, Father Time and Dirt have been playing havoc with your nice, white paintwork up for'ardg so, back at it again. Squeegeeing is, I swear, the closest ap- proach to perpetual motion that man has yet discovered. Then, just by the way of variety, the bo'sun offers CDid I say Offers ? Well, it was a mistake, but please overlook it.J the bo'sun offers you the pastime of scraping the for'ard well-deck. Here, I thought, is a chance to spend a few comparatively idle days, so, with bounding spirits, I rushed for'ard, grabbed a scraper and began to scrape my way along the deck in the most heavenly bliss. After about an hour of keen enjoyment, the bo'sun's voice rudely tore aside the golden cobwebs entwined about my mind. You know this has gotta be finished by two bells, don'tcha? I did not. About half an hour later. An oiled! ' It was done. I do not know how and do not care, but from that day on, squeegeeing was a haven to meg a thing, haunted only by the fear of hearing, Hey, you! Go get a scraper and do that for'ard well-deck. All this time, we were wandering in and out of ports, with the usual tying up and casting off, or anchoring out. First, we came to Bermuda, which looks just like a travel-folder. Here, for the one and only time, we donned our cream flannels and went up to St. George's Hotel, where, I heard CGirls!J Fred Astaire was staying. They had a beautiful dance floor set out on the lawn, overlooking a moonlit bay. A number of blue lights, shining on the Hoor, lent themselves admirably to the charm of the surroundings. May I help the travel agencies, and say that Bermuda is an excellent place for a honeymoon. Much as I hate to, I must tear you away from Bermuda, for the boat sails at eight bells in the morning. From there, we went to Guadaloupe and Martinique. Page 41

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harbour and hills of 2,700 years old Marseilles claimed our attention more than Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes, we sped through the Riveira by night. We emerged into daylight at Genoa, birthplace of Columbus, and revelled in a Mediterranean swim at 7.30 a.m. Finding the Week-end hot in Milan, we spent it in the Italian Alps and came down from our mountain retreat on Monday to loiter around Venice, Uthroned on her hundred isles . We literally Went under the Ap- penines to Florence, home of the Renaissance, and came at last to Eternal Rome. Here the new and vigorous rubs shoulders with the old and timeworn. Pompeii brought the ancient world closer to me than any text book had ever done, and to stand in Brindisi where Vergil died brought the Aeneid to vivid life. A comfortable little Greek steamer bore us across a placid Ionian Sea to Greece, touching at Corcyra where the Pelopon- nesian War began and passing within a stone's throw of Ithaca, the little rocky kingdom of Ulysses. Threading the great sword-cut of the Corinth Canal We dropped anchor in the Piraeus, the harbour of Them- istocles. With a quickening of the heart we saw it at last-the Parthenon on the Acropolis, against a clear blue sky, and we knew we were in Athens, the violet-crowned. A bumpy, hair-breadth bus-ride took us to Delphi on the slope of Mt. Parnassus and a five mile-an-hour train carried us to Nauplia from where we explored prehistoric Tiryns and Homeric Mycenae. We took our last look at Ancient Greece at Olympia and our last look at modern Greece at Patras at which latter point we boarded the Italian Liner, Vulcania. Aboard her we met some charming people and with them explored Palermo and Mon- reale in Sicily, the Arab quarter of Algiers half-English, half-Levantine Gibraltar, where we saw a sinking Spanish Republican cruiser, Lisbon stirring to new life under the enlightened Salazar, and the Azores, the Happy Isles of the ancients. . p 1 fqcvrnavmfa - -0----r----v---V-,.. . XX 'LCJMII R . AX X V lf A Mzf Jag. Aff, J 4' . ' -.- . N.-. ' ' ' I QQ I 4? I f Z4f7'UC l 065417 gang? 0. me Q I 'f . I-'YL x x :dia I K ' .Y f.. by ,. rw mfaf, I Wffmpmm l. s T0 ' KJW .- Il f 'I 'im 'VZ K Ml 4- 4 ---MN SEA ' S'-' ,,. ,, ,, 1' T kg, NN-fhsxs ,r,,.- 4---MMX Ill 1 I S 1- 1 ,H WMI 65105 I 55 f ! x mp ay- nzfwmwzo 'R- ' Page 1,0 GLUX GLEBANA

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At Barbados, our next stop, where we decided a dip would be nice, the old man said no. W hy? Sharks. And yet the nig- gers swam around the ship for hours at a time, without even a single shark trying to make a meal of them. Oh, well. And Barbados was very pretty. A On to Trinidad, where we saw even more negroes. By this time, I felt that I never wanted to smell the sight of another negro. Being stuck down in the holds was a nasty job. The stevedores stole the stuff right under your eyes and you had to yell your lungs out for the mate before they would even start to think of putting it back. Then, when the day's work was through and you went ashore, there were more of them and you had to take care that you did not get the back of your head stove in for the sake of what little money you had with you. Oh, yes, it was exciting. Our last port, on the voyage south, was Georgetown QDemeraraj, British Guiana. Here we spent five or six very hot days. The mercury, hidden in the shade, shot a red finger of protest up to the one hundred and twenty mark. I, for my part, just sweated and swore. The whole time at Demerara, I think I saw no more than three white people, other than the passengers and crew. All together, things looked pretty black and British fluiana was another place I was glad to cave. Back to that rock, Trinidad, where we loaded corned beef and pineapple juice and then to Grenada. Grenada, if any of the islands, holds a high place in my affections, for it was there we had that swim. The day being Sunday, we lowered one of the life boats and rowed over to a beach about three miles distant. Man is a stupid animal. We worked hard all week and hated it, but we cheerfully took a twelve-foot oar and broke our backs slushing it through the water in order that we might run sand through our fingers and dabble our toes in the water. Still, for all the sun-burn, sore hands and stiff backs, we would willingly do it again and yet again. By the time we had beached the boat, or nearly beached it, for a life boat is a deucedly heavy thing, we had developed a tremendous thirst, but scorning the bottles of water in the boat, we dashed off, in among the palms and gathered a few freshly-fallen coconuts, tore the husks from them and, having knocked Page 42 off the head of the nut, drank the milk. Now, it may not sound very appetising, but unless you have actually done it, you cannot know the thorough enjoyment of standing in the spray of the surf, your head tipped back, with the cool, sweet milk gurgling down your throat and, occasion- ally, your chin and chest. You feel abso- lutely at peace with the world and feel that perhaps a seaman's life is not too bad, after all. No sooner have you reached this frame of mind, than, again, the bo'sun is at it. All right, shove off and grab them oars. The bo'sun never asked a man to do anything he would not do himself, the only trouble was that he expected us to do as well as he did. Never was man set a harder task. The bo'sun stood only about five foot eight, but he had shoulders that would have jammed in the Arch of Triumph, so, you see what we were up against. I have inserted this little bit of praise, because, if ever I go to sea again and run up against the bo'sun, I do not want to have to buy a new set of teeth at the next port. Be- sides, he wasn't such a bad fellow. QCan you hear me, Bos'?J That swim was the last we had on the trip. The closest thing left was a bucket of water slung at you by some obligiing fellow. We touched Barbados again and then went on to St. Lucia, where you could get a five-foot stalk of bananas for a shilling. Every man bought one-and then-the steward gave us bananas on- fruit night. Irony? Well-I do not know. Then out into the open sea. A wind blew up a few nights out and did its best to give the helmsman an overdose of exercise. The old tub would nose down into a wave as if she were going to follow through to the bottom. Oh, it was a gay affair. I should like to be dramatic and speak of the wild waves and the wind whistling in the hal- yards, but I will not. It did, though. We see-sawed our way into the Gulf of St. Lawrence until it finally smoothed out. The only damage done, was when a beauty came racing over the for'ard peak and did its best to rid us of the animal pen stuck up on the port side of the well-deck. It took away half, but must have become disgusted, for it went away, leaving us a pile of debris to clear away. Why it couldn't have taken the whole thing overboard, I do not know. LUX GLEBANA