The Boston Geisha and Chesapeake Bay

Log entry, the catch-scallet queen. Position 33 degrees 14 minutes west, 32 degrees 6 minutes north.

Gyro compass course 257. Wind fresh sky fair. Remarks, departed Covid Japan with three crew confined to 6 Bay, due to mutinous axons of first officer. Reason for mutiny, the Boston Gaysha and Chesapeake Bay. It was mid-afternoon when the Scarlet Queen stood into the broad harbor of Kobe.

Last time I'd been married I'd been teeming with merchant men and busy with lighters, wallowing between anchored ships and the crowded docks. That was before the war. Now there was only a scattering of native craft, flying in and out of a few American liberties and victories, and the rusted hoes of sunken Japanese freighters breaking through the dirty water.

The industrial section of the city behind had been fire-bonded and was skeleton of lonely chimneys and portions of single walls. I cleared in through army occupation officials, and we found docket to the half-collapsed peer that somehow gave you a sense of the apathy of the whole nation, which it was connected.

After night fell, my chief mate Gallagher and the rest of the crew, except one sad-eyed gangway watch, headed up a path through the ruined warehouses toward town. I settled down in my cabin. The night was stuffing and hot.

The whole picture was helped by the sampan that splashed our anchor on my winwood. The faint breeze sweeping across her came to me full of the stink of rotting fish, rancid soybean sauce and souring rice.

A couple of hours went by, and I heard the clatter of feet across our gangway. I hit my head out of the cabin door just to three of my crew stumbled aboard. They weren't drunk, they were hurt.