Johan van Zyl
The Story of the Pink Sea Chest
Seven-year-old Mary lived with her mother in a fishing village close by the sea. They had been living there for as long as she could remember. The menfolk were all seafaring types and were rarely seen in the village, as they frequently went out in their boats and ships and stayed away, sometimes for many months at a time. So Mary and her mother were used to being alone in the small thatched cottage on the slope of the mountain close by the sea.
Often they would go out visiting friends and relatives, when her mother would sell the ornaments she made from seashells and dried coral. Mary had playmates, and often the girls romped on the small lawn in front of the house, drinking tea from toy cups and saucers, and having a good time. They played much like children play nowadays, with the exception that they had no battery-driven ipods or playstation games that plug into television sets. There were no cassette or CD players to provide music for them to dance to. They did not even have electricity.
There were none of these modern things, because in fact Mary lived a long, long time ago.
Mary’s grandfather had been a sea captain before his retirement. He still often went out on voyages with his mates just to sail the open sea again, although he was not a captain anymore. One day he arrived at the cottage looking worried. It had been many months since he had heard from his son. The ship his son served on had not arrived at its destination, and the crew were presumed lost.
The grandfather was very sad indeed, and Mary came up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder to console him. When he looked into her eyes, they were tearful. She clambered onto his lap and embraced him, sobbing silently. He was surprised that this young girl showed such understanding of his sadness, when it was not even her own father that was lost at sea. Suddenly he knew that this granddaughter of his was a very special child, and he loved her dearly for her kind and compassionate ways.
Not long afterwards, the grandfather sailed away to a distant land in search of news of his son. All that he found, however, was the shattered hulk of his son’s ship which had been battered by a gale and swept up on sharp rocks on the coast. The only important things that he could salvage amongst the wreckage on the beach, was the remnants of a big old sea-chest with his son’s initials carved on the lid. He gathered as many pieces as he could find and took them as a remembrance back to his ship.
On the long voyage back to Mary’s village, the grandfather looked at the pieces of wood and decided they were sturdy enough to use for something else. He took his crude seaman’s tools and started to fashion something from that same wood, as a present for his loving grandchild. It would be a miniature sea-chest, he decided, small enough for her to handle, but big enough so that she could put her favourite playthings in it for safekeeping.
The voyage took many weeks, and he had ample time to make the small lidded box just the right size for Mary. He had a problem with the colour, though, as the only paint that was available on the ship was bright red and white – not the right colour for a young girl’s miniature sea-chest! Girls liked pink, he thought.
He started playing around with the two tins of paint that he got from out of the bosun’s cabin, and soon found that if he mixed the two colours in just the right way, the resulting colour was… pink.
So he painted the little box pink and sat back to view his work. Not satisfied yet, he made a little tray with three compartments for the inside and put a mock padlock through the clasp in front, so that the lid could not fall open. This done, he wrapped his handywork in a piece of canvas and stored it safely on one of the shelves in his cabin.
A week later, on one overcast, stormy day, a frigate flying the Jolly Roger flag ordered the ship to heave to by firing a cannon shot across its bow. Twenty burly pirates boarded the ship and took the crew’s possessions, leaving them with very little. Most unfortunate of all, they took the ship’s navigation instruments. After that, the pirates sailed away, abandoning the crew to their fate. Without a compass and sextant to steer by, the grandfather’s ship followed an uncertain course and, heavily damaged by the wind, eventually beached on a deserted island.
The grandfather and his crewmates had to fend for themselves on that island. With wood salvaged from the ship, they erected a makeshift shelter and made a stockade to keep out the wild animals.
While he was busy stripping wood from what had previously been his cabin, the grandfather found to his amazement that the little pink sea-chest, now out of its canvas wrapping, had fallen from the shelf and had lain hidden from view while the pirates were robbing them. It was scuffed and damp from seeping seawater, but otherwise undamaged. He was very happy that Mary’s intended present was safe, and he carried it triumphantly to the shelter, where he showed it to his mates.
Not having any proper container to put their few small, prized belongings in, that had escaped the attention of the pirates, the crew asked the grandfather to let them all use the little chest to hold the assorted silver thalers and gold doubloons that they had hidden from the eyes of the thieving pirates. They would need the money after they were rescued.
The days became months and the months years. No one came to rescue them, as the island was too far from the regular shipping lanes. In time, the grandfather and some others died and the younger crew members grew old. When, eventually, a research ship sighted the smoke from their campfire and investigated, they took the ragged survivors aboard.
The rescued men took their few remaining possessions, including the little sea-chest containing their money. More importantly, they remembered the story that the grandfather had told them, that he had made it from pieces of his son’s big sea-chest, intending it as a present for his grandchild Mary.
One of the survivors, a sailor who had been a very close friend of the grandfather, travelled to the cottage where he recalled that Mary and her mother lived, only to find the house occupied by people who knew very little of Mary. Her mother had passed away, they said, and Mary had married and had children. They had moved, but no one knew of their whereabouts.
At his wit’s end at not being able to hand the little sea-chest to Mary, the sailor sold it to a shopkeeper in the village, and went on his way. The dealer cleaned it as much as he could, considering the many years that it had been subjected to wind and weather, and put it on a shelf in the window of his shop.
Soon the pink box attracted the attention of a little girl who passed by the window with her mother and father. She loved the colour pink and wanted it to put some of her cherished things in. She could see it was obviously very old, but she did not mind that it was battered and tarnished. Having a vivid and lively imagination, she wondered how many places the chest had travelled to, and to whom it had belonged.
She used and adored the little box for many years, and called it her “pirate treasure chest”. When she grew older and left the house to study overseas, the chest was put out during a garage-sale, where a local antique dealer saw it and purchased it for next to nothing.
He placed it on a table near the entrance to the antique shop, and that was where a white-haired gentleman saw it and instantly took a liking to it. He knew just what to do with it. He had a young granddaughter whom he loved very much, only seven years old, living in another city with her mother. He planned to travel to see her in a few months time, and he would take the chest with him and make a gift of it to that grandchild. He knew she adored pink, and it would be an ideal present!
And so, that is how it all came about that the pink sea-chest, although old, scuffed and tarnished, now belongs to a lovely little girl living with her mother in a big city near the sea.
She often looks at it, and wonders, with her vivid imagination, how many places the chest had travelled to, and to whom it had belonged.
AUTHOR PROFILE: JOHAN VAN ZYL
Johan van Zyl, a proud product of the South African Navy Gymnasium, Saldanha (1964), has found the art of writing a proper short story to be an intricate yet rewarding undertaking, making it a challenge worth taking on. Having written many stories covering a myriad of topics, published and unpublished, as well as two books, he has in the process come to realise that one might spend a long life at it, only to find how far one still is from the ideal. His search for that elusive, ideal short story from his pen, goes on. He has tried to craft The Story of the Pink Sea-Chest to be suitable for reading by children (girls?) of about seven to twelve years old, or to be read to them. For an Afrikaans Boertjie-type guy, this was a daunting undertaking.
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