In truth, i've got no one to blame but myself for this whole sordid affair. If i had given up drinking, if i hadn't gone to that gambling den in the muddy logging town of Astoria on a foggy evening in late November. If I had just gone home, like I said i would. None of what I'm about to tell you would've ever occurred, at least not to me. Plenty of people have been shanghaied, less so have come back to tell about it. Perhaps, my father is to blame for calling me Jinx my whole life, a nickname which like a bad case of warts, kept coming back and claiming its' name-right.
The last thing I remember was knocking over my amber glass with a sincere dizziness while trying to stand from my chair. Someone caught me by the arm and with a foul smelling breath spat, "Where you think yer goin' sailor?" About to protest, as I was in no way a sailor and much aggrieved by the water when everything went black. I awoke somewhere in the middle of the Pacific on a ship called the Clementine. A pretty name for such a wretched pit with nothing but the foulest men aboard. Named after the captain's late daughter, who reportedly died of a childhood sickness or some whispered drowned by his own hand. Ever often, the Cap'n would sing
Ruby lips above the water,
Blowing bubbles, soft and fine,
But, alas, I was no swimmer,So I lost my Clementine
and cry like a poor whelping pup. It almost made you feel sorry for him, until a moment later you recalled he was a mean son of a bitch with a look of cold venom that could scare the devil.
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It was illegal for a man to leave a vessel once it set off on its' journey until it reached its destination. The penalty was imprisonment. My choice was play out my luck on this doomed vessel or meet a quicker death in the frigid Alaskan waters.
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A month gone and no word, Isabella must've thought me dead by now. Perhaps worse, thought I run oft with some other woman. Though I can't say it never crossed my mind, truly I loved no one but her and those three grimy children she said were mine.
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