The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics) by John Steinbeck Read Free Book Online

surfaces shining and damp with oil and the green paint fresh and new on the housings. The engine-room floor was clean and all the tools polished and hung in their places. One look into the engine-room inspired confidence in the master. We had seen other engines in the fishing fleet and this perfection on the Western Flyer was by no means a general thing.
     
    As crew we signed Tex Travis, engineer, and Sparky Enea and Tiny Colletto, seamen. All three were a little reluctant to go, for the whole thing was crazy. None of us had been into the Gulf, although the master had been as far as Cape San Lucas, and the Gulf has a really bad name. It was a thoughtful crew who agreed to go with us.
     
    We could never tell when the change of attitude toward us came, but it came very rapidly. Perhaps it was because Tony Berry was known as a cautious man who would not indulge in nonsense, or perhaps it was pure relief that at last it had been settled. All of a sudden we were overwhelmed with help. We had offers from men to go with us without pay. Sparky was offered a certain price for his job that was more than he would get from us. All he had to do was turn over his job and sit in Monterey and spend the money. But Sparky refused. Our project had become honorable. We had more help than we could use and advice enough to move the navies of the world.
     
    We did not know what our crew thought of the expedition but later, in the field, they became good collectors—a little emotional sometimes, as when Tiny, in outrage at being pinched, declared a war of extermination on the whole Sally Lightfoot species, but on the whole collectors of taste and quickness.
     
    The charter was signed with dignity and reverence. It is impossible to be light-hearted in the face of a ship’s charter, for the law has foreseen or remembered the most doleful and arbitrary acts of God and has set them down as possibilities, but in the tone of inevitabilities. Thus, you read what you or the others must do in the case of wreck, or sunken rocks; of death at sea in its most painful and astonishing aspects; of injury to plank and keel; of water shortage and mutiny. Next to marriage settlement or sentence of death, a ship’s charter is as portentous a document as has ever been written. Penalties are set down against both parties, and if on some morning the rising sun should find your ship in the middle of the Mojave Desert you have only to look again at the charter to find the blame assigned and the penalty indicated. It took us several hours to get over the solemn feeling the charter put on us. We thought we might live better lives and pay our debts, and one at least of us contemplated for one holy, horrified moment a vow of chastity.
     
    But the charter was signed and food began to move into the Western Flyer. It is amazing how much food seven people need to exist for six weeks. Cases of spaghetti, cases and cases of peaches and pineapple, of tomatoes, whole Romano cheeses, canned milk in coveys, flour and cornmeal, gallons of olive oil, tomato paste, crackers, cans of butter and jam, catsup and rice, beans and bacon and canned meats, vegetables and soups in cans; truckloads of food. And all this food was stored eagerly and happily by the crew. It disappeared into cupboards, under little hatches in the galley floor, and many cases went below.
     
    We had done a good deal of collecting, but largely in temperate zones. The equipment for collecting, preserving, and storing specimens was selected on the basis of experience in other waters and of anticipation of difficulties imposed by a hot humid country. In some cases we were right, in others very wrong.
     
    In a small boat, the library should be compact and available. We had constructed a strong, steel-reinforced wooden case, the front of which hinged down to form a desk. This case holds about twenty large volumes and has two filing cases, one for separates (scientific reprints) and one for letters; a small metal box