Read Online The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck, Richard Astro - Free Book Online

friends.

    Perhaps toward the end, our observations were a little warped by emotion. Time and again as it sat on the stern with its pretty little propeller lying idly in the water, it was very close to death. And in the end, even we were infected with its malignancy and its dishonesty. We should have destroyed it, but we did not. Arriving home, we gave it a new coat of aluminum paint, spotted it at points with new red enamel, and sold it. And we might have rid the world of this mechanical cancer!

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    It would be ridiculous to suggest that ours was anything but a makeshift expedition. The owner of a boat on short charter does not look happily on any re-designing of his ship. In a month or two we could have changed the Western Flyer about and made her a collector’s dream, but we had neither the time nor the money to do it. The low-tide period was approaching. We had on board no permanent laboratory. There was plenty of room for one in the fish-hold, but the dampness there would have rusted the instruments overnight. We had no dark-room, no permanent aquaria, no tanks for keeping animals alive, no pumps for delivering sea water. We had not even a desk except the galley table. Microscopes and cameras were put away in an empty bunk. The enameled pans for laying out animals were in a large crate lashed to the net-table aft, where it shared the space with the two skiffs. The hatch cover of the fish-hold became laboratory and aquarium, and we carried sea water in buckets to fill the pans. Another empty bunk was filled with flashlights, medicines, and the more precious chemicals. Dip-nets, wooden collecting buckets, and vials and jars in their cases were stowed in the fish-hold. The barrels of alcohol and formaldehyde were lashed firmly to the rail on deck, for all of us had, I think, a horror-thought of fifteen gallons of U.S.P. formaldehyde broken loose and burst. One achieves a respect and a distaste for formaldehyde from working with it. Fortunately, none of us had a developed formalin allergy. Our small refrigerating chamber, powered by a two-cycle gasoline engine and designed to cool sea water for circulation to living animals, began the trip on top of the deckhouse and ended back on the net-table. This unit, by the way, was not very effective, the motor being jerky and not of sufficient power. But on certain days in the Gulf it did manage to cool a little beer or perhaps more than a little, for the crew fell in joyfully with our theory that it is unwise to drink unboiled water, and boiled water isn’t any good. In addition, the weather was too hot to boil water, and besides the crew wished to test this perfectly sound scientific observation thoroughly. We tested it by reducing the drinking of water to an absolute minimum.

    A big pressure tube of oxygen was lashed to a deck rail, its gauges and valves wrapped in canvas. Gradually, the boat was loaded and the materials put away, some never to be taken out again. It was agreed that we should all stand wheel-watch when we were running night and day; but once in the Gulf, and working at collecting stations, the hired crew should work the boat, since we would anchor at night and run only during the daytime.

    Toward the end of the preparation, a small hysteria began to build in ourselves and our friends. There were hundreds of unnecessary trips back and forth. Some materials were stowed on board with such cleverness that we never found them again. Now the whole town of Monterey was becoming fevered and festive—but not because of our going. At the end of the sardine season, canneries and boat owners provide a celebration. There is a huge barbecue on the end of the pier with free beef and beer and salad for all comers. The sardine fleet is decorated with streamers and bunting and serpentine, and the boat with the biggest season catch is queen of a strange nautical parade of boats; and every boat is an open house, receiving friends of owners and of crew. Wine flows beautifully,