Tramp Steaming

Shuddering again, I turned to see where he was going to find that the captain was standing in the hatch door Christophe was headed to. As Christophe passed Thorensen, I heard him say, “Rough him up as you like; he wants it rough.”

I didn’t remember having said anything of the sort, but here I was, out on the wide, empty sea, as Christophe had said, and there Captain Thorensen was, smiling a little smile and beckoning me to come to him. I did, but as I reached him, his smile morphed into a sneer, he backhanded me hard across my cheek, and I went down on the deck. He simply reached down, hauled me up with his strong arms, slung me over his shoulder, and carried me to his cabin.

He was too strong for me to resist him even if I saw any good that would do. I was exhausted from the other “serving of the ship” I’d done that day.

We had arrived at shipside shortly after lunch, maybe around 1:30 p.m. The crew was still loading the ship with supplies going to smaller islands to the east of Fiji. I was later told that supplies would also be taken on, first in Pago Pago, in American Samoa, and then again, after islands in the Cook Islands had been supplied, in Tahiti, before the ship swung north and came back toward Australia by way of the Line Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Solomon Islands.