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Uploaded 19 November 2007

Capt. Gary's Log

a record of events and memories
sailing along with the Sloop, RED WOLF
transcribed and edited by Wm. Van Ness

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Wm. Van Ness

October, 1898
Barbary Coast of San Francisco CA

             The cold evening fog, thick with the smalls of the sea, rolled in from the Bay, cloaking the grey wreathed boards of the ramshackle waterfront buildings.  Hunched figures, collars turned up against the chill, hurried through the narrow streets, anxious to reach their destinations.  One figure stopped momentarily to cast a thick cigar butt towards the gutter before entering a cheap eatery.  As he passed into its light, a small figure darted out of a side alley to recover the discarded prize, nearly tripping a drunken longshoreman coming the other way!  With a curse, the wharf rat aimed a blow at the small, tattered figure.  It never landed.  The rat’s fist was caught in the hard paw of a burley grey wolf dressed as a merchant seaman.

            “That little one’s too small to be worth your while, mate.  Here, buy yourself a drink and let it be.”

            Whatever the wharf rat planed to say died on his lips as he looked at the big sailor, and the four similarly dressed sailors standing behind him!  Instead, he just took the proffered coin with a snarl and went on his way.

            “Well shipmates,” the wolf said, “let’s see what we have here”.

            The small figure stood before them, the prized cigar butt defiantly between its teeth.  A young alley cat – a kitten really – with mottled dark calico fur and a light blaze that, if clean, may have been white, over the right eye and into it’s head fur beneath the battered cap many times too big for it.

            “Tell me, Lad,” the sailor asked, “why all that trouble over an old cigar butt?”

            The kitten looked incredulously at the big wolf.  Striking a 'tough', it answered: “You blind, you dumb sailor? It’s got more ‘bacca in it than a damn cigarette butt does!”

            Laughing, the other sailors told the wolf that the kitten made good sense, and he had to agree.  Still, he said the lad was too young to be smoking on an empty stomach and they should really do something about that.  The five quickly decided that the thing to do was to take the urchin back to their boarding house and “fatten the lad up a mite”! Once assured no one was going to take its cigar away, and with the hope of the offer of food being true, the alley cat agreed to accompany them.

            Eng Wu, owner of the Shanghai Boarding House, was used to the sudden whims of sailors, so when five of his boarders brought a small and very dirty alley cat into his establishment with the demand it be fed, he knew better than object, and just pointed towards the kitchen.  Mrs. Wu was another matter, and insisted the kitten “get good washee” while her husband finished getting dinner ready.  For a moment it seemed the kitten was going to bolt, but the smells of cooking food overpowered its fear of soap and hot water, and grimly allowed Mrs. Wu to lead it towards its doom.

            While waiting for the kitten and dinner to appear. The sailors sat down at the table to discuss what they were going to do next.   While small, the lad seemed tough enough, but from what he’d said on the way to the boarding house, on his own in the world. The consensus was that the next day they’d ask the skipper to sign the lad aboard as cabin boy & ship’s cat, and they’d make a sailor out of him!  They were congratulating themselves on such a tidy plan when Mrs. Wu returned with the freshly scrubbed and brushed kitten.  When the grey wolf announced the course they’d set, however, the reaction was not at all what they’d expected!  The kitten began sputtering angrily while Mrs. Wu began laughing!

            “Cabin boy”? she laughed, “Stupid sailor mans!  This no boy-kitten, this girl-kitten!”

            “Damn right I’m a girl, you dumb sailor!” the outraged kitten snarled. “Been one my whole damn life!  Name’s Sadie, and I’m not about to be a “boy” for anybody!”

            After they got over their surprise, the sailors put their heads together with the Wu family and it was agreed that Sadie could stay at the Shanghai with the sailor’s pooling to pay her board while she did odd jobs to make herself useful.  With no better prospects than returning to the back alleys, the chance for a full stomach and warm place to sleep sounded good to Sadie, so she agreed…after Mrs. Wu promised not to make her quit smoking cigars!

 

Log of Sloop RED WOLF
2/9/30

Pirates Cove, Casino Island. Sloop securely moored, & intend to spend a day ashore.

             With the increase in the tourist trade, Casino Island has seen a building boom with new resorts, gambling dens, restaurants, and other establishments dedicated to detaching currency from the island’s visitors popping up like sharks attracted to chum!  Most follow the “Tiki” style more-or-less, but one new building at Pirates’ Cove caught my eye. With false front, weathered and unpainted board-&-batten walls, and a litter of old fish nets and other nautical debris piled by its door, it reminded me of a thousand harbor dives I’d known in the past.  All it needed was to change the warm sunshine of the Spontoon’s for a cold sea-fog!

            When I got close enough to read the swinging sign over the entrance, my ears perked!  It couldn’t be!

            Going inside, I saw a dimly lit room right out of the 1890s, with waitresses, dressed as saloon girls from that time, scurrying between the tables.  Most of them seemed to be rabbits for some reason.   As my eyes adjusted to the light, I made out a dark, thick-set figure in a cloud of cigar smoke behind the bar.  I made my way over & called out “Ahoy there, lad!  Ready to sign on as a cabin boy yet”?

            Spinning around, Sadie looked at me for a moment, then rushed over and gave me a bone-cracking hug.

            “Damn you eyes, you old son of a bitch! It’s been damn near 20 years now, and you still just as much a dumb sailor as ever!

            It had been about 20 years ago when, as the last survivor of the five of us who’d found our little alley cat, I’d given her away when she married the Wu’s oldest boy Charlie.  Shortly after that I’d drifted east to the Atlantic & we’d lost touch.  Sadie told me that she & Charlie had heard of money to be made in the Spontoons, but after looking the island over, decided to have a place that would stand out from the rest.  The result was “Shanghai Sadie’s, the only Barbary Coast saloon in the South Seas.” And I had to admit, for being on land, it did feel like I was home again!