I left what I had stolen bundled up in my blanket. I walked forward
nonchalantly to see if anyone was out to observe me. I discovered the
sandy-haired Blacksmith, Klumpf, sitting on the main hatch. I saw that I
could not pass him with my bundle without strategy. The strategy I
employed was simple.
I drew him a bottle of brandy. I gave it to him. After he had drawn a
long drink I told him I was running away from the ship. He laughed and
took another drink. I passed him with my bundle. He shouted good-bye to
me.
Before I had gone by the nose of the old ship, who should I run into but
Klaus, coming back from a spree. He was pushing along on all fours like
an animal, he was so drunk ... good, simple Klaus, whom I liked. I laid
down my bundle, risking capture, while I helped him to the deck. He
stopped a moment to pat the ship's side affectionately as if it were a
living friend, or nearer, a mother.
"Gute alte _Valkyrie!_.. gute alte _Valkyrie!_" he murmured.
* * * * *
Safe so far. At the outside of the dock-gate Hoppner waited my arrival.
He was interested in the kümmel, and in the pistols, which were
pawnable.
He had been more daring than I. He had tried to pick his captain's
pocket of a gold watch while the latter slept. But every time he reached
for it the captain stirred uneasily. He would have snatched it anyhow,
but just then his first mate stepped into the cabin ... "and I hid till
the mate went out again."
"And what then?"
"I picked up a lot of silverware the captain had for show occasions ...
that I found, rummaging about."
"And him there sleeping?"
"Why not?"
"I found four revolvers that belonged to the mates and captain. I put
them all in one bundle and chucked them into a rowboat over the ship's
side. And now we must go back to your boat--"
"To my boat?" I asked, amazed.
"Yes" (I had told him how nearly I had missed our ship-money).
"To your boat, and ransack the cabin till we locate that coin."
"That's too risky."
"Hell, take a chance, can't you?"
That's what Hoppner was always saying as long as we travelled together:
"Hell, take a chance."
But when I began telling him with convulsive laughter, of the revenge I
had taken on the mate ... and also how I had thrown all the keys
overboard, Hoppner, instead of joining in with my laughter, struck at
me, not at all playfully, "What kind of damn jackass have I joined up
with, anyhow," he exclaimed. "Now it won't be any use going back, you've
thrown the keys away and we'd make too great a racket, breaking open
things...."
He insisted, however, on going back to his own boat, sliding down to the
rowboat, and rowing away with the loot he had cast into it. We had no
sooner reached the prow of the _Lord Summerville_ than we observed
people bestirring themselves on board her more than was natural.
"Come on, _now_ we'll beat it. They're after me."
Hoppner had also brought a blanket. We went "humping bluey" as swagmen,
as the tramp is called in Australia.
The existence of the swagman is the happiest vagrant's life in the
world. He is usually regarded as a bona fide seeker for work, and food
is readily given him for the asking. Unlike the American hobo, he is
given his food raw, and is expected to cook it himself. So he carries
what he calls a "tucker bag" to hold his provisions; also, almost more
important--his "billy can" or tea-pot....
Hoppner and I acquired the tea-habit as badly as the rest of the
Australian swagmen. Every mile or so the swagman seems to stop, build a
fire, and brew his draught of tea, which he makes strong enough to take
the place of the firiest swig of whiskey. I've seen an old swagman boil
his tea for an actual half-hour, till the resultant concoction was as
thick and black as New Orleans molasses. With such continual draughts of
tea, only the crystalline air, and the healthy dryness of the climate
keeps them from drugging themselves to death.
"Tea ain't any good to drink unless you can put a stick straight up in
it, and it can stand alone there," joked an old swagman, who had invited
us to partake of a hospitable "billy-can" with him.
* * * * *
We had long, marvellous talks with different swagmen, as we slowly
sauntered north to Newcastle....
We heard of the snakes of Australia, which workmen dug up in torpid
writhing knots, in the cold weather ... of native corrobories which one
old informant told us he had often attended, where he procured native
women or "gins" as they called them, for a mere drink of whiskey or gin
... "that's why they calls 'em 'gins'" he explained ... (wrong, for
"gin" or a word of corresponding sound is the name for "woman" in many
native languages in the antipodes)....
The azure beauty of those days!... tramping northward with nothing in
the world to do but swap stories and rest whenever we chose, about
campfires of resinous, sweetly smelling wood ... drinking and drinking
that villainous tea.
In Australia the law against stealing rides on freights is strictly
enforced. The tramp has always to walk--to the American tramp this is at
first a hardship, but you soon grow to like it ... you learn to enjoy
the wine in the air, the fragrance of the strange trees that shed bark
instead of leaves, the noise of scores of unseen Waterfalls in the hills
of New South Wales.
The morning that the little sea-port of Newcastle lay before us, I felt
as if I had been on tour through a strange world. For the first time the
story-books of my youth had come true.
But Hoppner rose from the camp fire that we'd been sleeping by,
stretched, and remarked, "now, thank Christ, I'll be able to find a good
seat in a pub again, just like in Sydney, and all the booze I can drink.
We can go to some sailors' boarding house here, tell them we want to
ship out, and they'll furnish us with the proper amount of drinks and
take care of us, all hunky dory, till they find us a berth on ship ...
of course they'll be well paid for their trouble ... two months' advance
pay handed over to them by the skipper ... but that won't bother me a
bit."
From the hill on which we lay encamped we saw all the ships in the
harbour. I no longer feared the sea. Your true adventurer forgets danger
and perils experienced as a woman forgets the pangs of childbirth.
* * * * *
We met a sailor on the street, who, though at first a stranger, soon
became our friend and, with the quick hospitality of the sea, steered us
to a pub known as the Green Emerald, bought us drinks, and introduced us
to Mother Conarty, the proprietress.
"I'll ship ye out all right, but where's your dunnage?"
We confessed that we had run away from our ships down at Sydney.
The old sailor had spoken of Mother Conarty as rough-mannered, but a
woman with "a good, warm heart."
She proved it by taking us in to board, with no dunnage for her to hold
as security.
"Oh, they're good lads, I'm sure," vouched our sailor-friend, speaking
of us as if we had been forecastle mates of his for twenty voyages on
end ... the way of the sea!
Now Mother Conarty was not stupid. She was a great-bodied, jolly
Irishwoman, but she possessed razor-keen, hazel eyes that narrowed on us
a bit when she first saw us. But the woman in her soon hushed her
passing suspicions. For Hoppner was a frank-faced, handsome lad, with
wide shoulders and a small waist like a girl's. It was Hoppner's good
looks took her in. She gave us a room together.
* * * * *
There was a blowsy cheeked bar-maid, Mother Conarty's daughter. She
knew well how to handle with a few sharp, ironic remarks anyone who
tried to "get fresh" with her ... and if she couldn't, there were plenty
of husky sailormen about, hearty in their admiration for the resolute,
clean girl, and ready with mauling fists.
* * * * *
"Mother Conarty's proud o' that kid o' hers, she is."
"And well she may be!"
* * * * *
"I've been thinkin' over you b'yes, an' as ye hain't no dunnage wit' ye,
I'm thinkin' ye'll be workin' fer yer board an' room."
"We're willing enough, mother," I responded, with a sinking of the
heart, while Hoppner grimaced to me, behind her back.
We scrubbed out rooms, and the stairs, the bar, behind the bar, the
rooms back and front, where the sailors drank. We earned our board and
room ... for a few days.
* * * * *
At the Green Emerald I met my first case of delirium tremens. And it was
a townsman who had 'em, not a sailor. The townsman was well-dressed and
well-behaved--at first ... but there lurked a wild stare in his eye that
was almost a glaze ... and he hung on the bar and drank and drank and
drank. It apparently had no effect on him, the liquor that he took.
"Say, but you're a tough one," complimented Molly.
But _it_ began in the afternoon. He picked up a stray dog from the floor
and began kissing it. And the dog slavered back, returning his
affection. Then he dropped the dog and began picking blue monkeys off
the wall ... wee things, he explained to us ... that he could hold
between thumb and forefinger ... only there were so many of them ...
multitudes of them ... that they rather distressed him ... they carried
the man away in an ambulance.
* * * * *
Hoppner and I tired of the ceaseless scrubbing. One day we simply walked
out of the Green Emerald and never showed up again. Hoppner stayed on in
town.
I found that the _Valkyrie_ had run up from Sydney to coal at Newcastle,
for the West Coast. I thought that in this case a little knowledge was
not a dangerous thing, but a good thing, as long as I confined that
knowledge to myself. I knew that the _Valkyrie_ was there. It was not
necessary that the officers of the boat should know I was there ...
which I wasn't, for I turned south, my swag on my back, and made Sydney
again.
* * * * *
In Sydney and "on the rocks," that is with nothing to eat and no place
to sleep but outdoors.
Of course I couldn't keep away from the ships. I arrived at the Circular
Quay. I ran into the Sailors' Mission. They were serving tea and having
a prayer-meeting. I wandered in.
A thin, wisplike man, timid, in black, but very gentlemanly, made me
heartily welcome. Not with that obnoxious, forced heartiness sky-pilots
think the proper manner to affect in dealing with sailors, but in a
human way genuinely felt.
After a service of hearty singing, he asked me if he could help me in
any way.
"I suppose you can. I'm on the rocks bad."
He gave me all the cakes to eat which were left over from the tea. And a
couple of shillings beside.
"I wonder if there's anything else I can do?"
"Yes, I'm a poet," I ventured, "and I'd like to get Chaucer's
_Canterbury Tales_ to read again." I said this as much to startle the
man as really meaning it. I can go so long without reading certain
poets, and after that I starve for them as the hungry starve for food. I
was hungry for Chaucer.
Such a request, coming from a youth almost in rags, impressed the
sky-pilot so deeply that he insisted on giving me a job pumping the
organ during services and a little room to sleep in at the mission. What
is more, he lent me Skeats' edition of Chaucer, complete. And all the
time I was with him he proved a "good sport." He didn't take advantage
of my dependence on him to bother me so very much about God.
He took it for granted that I was a Christian, since I never discussed
religion with him.
* * * * *
It began to grow wearisome, pumping an organ for a living. And I had fed
myself full on Chaucer.
I began to yawn, behind the organ, over the growing staleness of life in
a sailors' mission. And also I was being pestered by a tall, frigid old
maid in purples and blacks, who had fixed her eye on me as a heathen she
must convert.
* * * * *
"How'd you like a voyage to China?" the sky-pilot asked, one day.
Cathay ... Marco Polo ... Milton's description of the Chinese moving
their wheelbarrows along the land by means of sails ... many poetic
visions marched across my mind at the question.
"I'd like to, right enough."
"Then here's a chance for you," and he handed me a copy of the Bulletin,
pointing out an advertisement for cattlemen on the steamboat, _South Sea
King_, about to take a cargo of steers from Queensland to Taku, province
of Pechi-li, Northern China.
"What are they sending cattle away up there for?"
"Supplies for troops ... The Boxer outbreak, you know ... go down to the
number given in the advertisement, and I'm sure they'll sign you on as
cattleman, if you want the job."
"All right. I'll go now."
"No," looking me over dubiously, "you'd better not go there or anywhere
else, in your present rig ... you're too ragged to apply even for such
work ... hang around till morning, and I'll go home to-night and bring
you a decent coat, at least. Your coat is worse than your trousers ...
though _they_ are ravelled at the bottoms and coming through in the left
knee ... every time you take a step I can see a glint of white through
the cloth, and," walking round me in a tour of inspection, "the seat
might break through at any moment." All this was said without a glint of
humour in his eyes.
* * * * *
Next morning the sky-pilot came down very late. It was twelve. But he
had not forgotten me. "Here's the coat," and he solemnly unwrapped and
trailed before my astonished gaze a coat with a long, ministerial tail.
I put it on. The tail came below the bend of my knees. I laughed. The
sky-pilot did not.
Finally he stepped back, cracked a solemn smile, and remarked, "You _do_
look rather odd!"
The intonation of his voice, his solemn almost deprecatory smile, set me
off and I laughed till the tears ran down my face.
"I say, what's so funny?"
"Me! I am!... in your long-tailed coat."
"If I was on the rocks like you I wouldn't see anything to laugh
about."
* * * * *
At the shipping office, the place mentioned in the advertisement, in the
dimly lit, grey-paned room, there sat one lone, pasty-faced,
old-youngish clerk on the traditional clerk's high stool. But he proved
lively beyond his appearance.
"My God! do look who's here!" he exclaimed facetiously, and then,
rapidly, without giving me room for a biting word in return, "no,
there's no use now, my boy ... we took on all the cattlemen we needed by
ten o'clock this morning."
I walked away, disconsolate. I bore on my back my swagman's blanket. In
the blanket I carried a change of shirts the sky-pilot had given me, a
razor, a toothbrush, a Tennyson, and a Westcott and Hort's Greek New
Testament with glossary, that I had stolen from a bookstall in Sydney.
* * * * *
I found out where the dock was, nevertheless, where the men were loafing
about in groups, waiting to be taken out to the _South Sea King_ ...
which lay in the harbour.
At the entrance to the pier I met a powerful, chunky lad who was called
"Nippers," he said. He, too, was going with the _South Sea King_ ... not
as a cattleman, but as stowaway. He urged me to stow away along with
him. And he gave me, unimaginatively, my name of "Skinny," which the
rest called me during the voyage.
* * * * *
We strolled up to the men and joined them.
"Hello, kids!"
"Hello, fellows! Are you the cattlemen for the _South Sea King_?"
"Right you are, my lad ... we are that!"
The men went on with their arguing. They were fighting the Boer War all
over again with their mouths. Some of them had been in it. Many of them
had tramped in South Africa. They shouted violently, profanely, at each
other at the tops of their voices, contending with loud assertions and
counter-assertions, as if about to engage in an all-round fight.
Several personal altercations sprang up, the points of the debate
forgotten ... I couldn't discover what it was about, myself ... only
that one man was a fool ... another, a silly ass ... another, a bloody
liar!
* * * * *
The launch which was to carry them to the _South Sea King_ at this
moment started nosing into the dock, on a turbulent zig-zag across the
harbour; and the men forgot their quarrelling. It brought up at the foot
of a pile and made fast.
"Come on, Skinny," Nippers urged me aggressively, "it's front seats or
nothing. Act as if you owned the boat." We thrust ahead of the others
and swarmed down the ladder ... heaping, swearing, horse-playing, the
cattlemen filled the launch from stern to bow.
Nippers had been a professional stowaway since his tenth year. He had
gone all over the world in that fashion, he had informed me. He was now
sixteen. I was almost eighteen.
His six years of rough life with rough men had brought him to premature
manhood, taught him to exhibit a saucy aplomb to everybody, to have at
his finger-ends all the knockabout resourcefulness and impudence that
the successful vagrant must acquire in order to live at all as an
individual....
* * * * *
We were the first on deck.
"Where are the cattlemen's bunks?" Nippers asked of an oiler who stood,
nonchalant, somewhat contemptuous, looking over the side at the
seething, vociferous cattlemen.
Not wasting a word on us, the oiler pointed aft over his shoulder, with
a grimy thumb.
We found a dark entrance like the mouth to a cave, that led down below.
In our hurry we lost our footing on the greasy ladder and tumbled all
the way to the bottom.
We had not time to rub our bruises. We plumped down and under the lower
tier of bunks ... just in time ... the men came pouring down
helter-skelter ... the talking, arguing, voluble swearing, and obscenity
was renewed ... all we could see, from where we lay, was a confusion of
legs to the knee, moving about....
They settled down on the benches about the table. They slackened their
talk and began smacking their lips over ship-biscuit, marmalade, and
tea.
* * * * *
Still we lay in silence. The screw of the propeller had not started
yet. We dared not come out or we would be put ashore.
* * * * *
We were hungry. We could hear their tin plates clattering and clinking
as the cattlemen ate supper, and smell the smell of cornbeef and boiled
potatoes. Our mouths ran from hunger.
--"wish I had something to scoff, I'm starvin'," groaned Nippers, "but
we'll hafta lay low till the bloody tub pulls out or we'll get caught
an' dumped ashore."
Supper done with, the men were sitting about and smoking. They were
soon, however, summoned up on deck, by a voice that roared down to them,
from above, filling their quarters with a gust of sound.
We were alone now, perhaps,--it was so still.
With an almost imperceptible slowness, Nippers thrust his head out, as
cautiously as a turtle ... he emerged further.
He made a quick thrust of the arm for a platter of beef and potatoes,
that stood, untouched, on the table ... someone coughed. We had thought
we were alone. Nippers jerked back. The tin came down with a clatter,
first to the bench, then to the floor. A big friendly potato rolled
under to where we were. We seized on it, divided it, ate it.
Contrary to our conjecture, some of the men must have stayed below.
Someone jumped out of a bunk.
"There's rats down here!"
"--mighty big rats, if you arsks me."
"It's not rats," and I could hear a fear in the voice that quavered the
words forth, "I tell you, buddy, this ship is haunted."
"--haunted!" boomed the voice of a man coming down the ladder, "you stop
this silly nonsense right now ... don't spread such talk as that ...
it's stowaways!"
We saw a pair of legs to the knees again. We lay still, breathless. A
watch chain dangled down in a parabolic loop. Then followed a round
face, beef-red with stooping. It looked under apoplectically at us.
"Ah, me b'yes, c'm on out o' there!"
And out we came, dragged by the foot, one after the other, as I myself
in my childhood have pulled frogs out from a hole in a brook-bank.
"I've been hearing them for hours, Mister," spoke up the little,
shrivelled, leathery-skinned West Indian negro, who spoke English
without a trace of dialect, "and I was sure the place was haunted."
* * * * *
We stood before the captain, cap deferentially in hand.
But he looked like anything but a man in charge of a ship. He was short.
In outward appearance, moreover, he was like a wax doll. He had
waxen-white cheeks with daubs of pink as if they had been put there from
a rouge pot. His hair was nicely scented, oiled, and patted down. His
small hands were white and perfectly manicured.
Nippers began to snicker openly at him. But the sharp variety and
incisiveness of the oaths he vented at us, soon disabused us of any
opinion we might have held that he was sissified....
"What's wrong with _you_, you young ---- ---- ---- ---- you?" began the
captain. The snicker died slowly from Nipper's lips, and in his face
dawned an infinite, surprised respect....
Then, after he had subdued us:
"So you're stowaways, eh?... and you think you're going to be given a
free ride to Brisbane and let go ashore, scot free?... not much! You'll
either go to jail there or sign up here, as cattlemen for the trip to
China--even though I can see that your mouths are still wet from your
mothers' tits!" And he ended with a blasphemous flourish.
Nippers and I looked at each other in astonishment. Of course we wanted
to sign on as cattlemen. No doubt some of the men hired at Sydney had
failed to show up at the wharf.
The ship's book was pushed before us.
"Sign here!" I signed "John Gregory" with satisfaction. Nippers signed
after, laboriously.
"And now get aft with you, you ----!" cursed the captain, dismissing us
with a parting volley that beat about our ears.
"Gawd, but the skipper's a _right_ man enough!" worshipped Nippers.
We hurried down the ladder to gobble up what was left of the cornbeef
and potatoes.... Nippers looked up at me, with a hunk of beef sticking
from his mouth, which he poked in with the butt-end of his knife....
"Say, didn't the old man cuss wonderful, and him lookin' like such a
lady!"
* * * * *
There was plenty of work to do in the few days it took to reach
Brisbane, where the cattle were to be taken aboard. The boat was an
ordinary tramp steamer, and we had to make an improvised cattleboat out
of her. Already carpenters had done much to that effect by erecting
enclosures on the top deck, the main deck, by putting up stalls in the
hold. Every available foot was to be packed with the living flesh of
cattle.
We gave the finishing touches to the work, trying to make the boarding
and scantling more solid--solid enough to withstand the plunging,
lurching, and kicking of fear-stricken, wild Queensland steers unused to
being cooped up on shipboard....
* * * * *
We had made fast to a dock down the Brisbane River, several miles out
from Brisbane ... nearby stood the stockyards, with no cattle in them
yet.
In a day's time of lusty heaving and running and hauling we had taken on
the bales of compressed fodder that were to feed the cattle for the
twenty-day trip to Taku, China.
Then the little, fiery, doll-like skipper made the tactical error of
paying each man a couple of bob advance on his forthcoming wages.
In a shouting, singing mob we made for Brisbane, like schoolboys on a
holiday.
Two shilling apiece wasn't much. But a vagabond can make a little silver
go far. And there are more friends to be found by men in such a
condition, more good times to be had--of a sort--than a world held by
more proper standards can imagine.
In both brothel and pub the men found friends. There were other sailors
ashore, there were many swagmen just in from the bush--some with
"stakes" they had earned on the ranches out in the country ... and in
their good, simple hearts they were not averse to "standing treats."
* * * * *
As if by previous appointment, one by one we drifted together, we
cattlemen of the _South Sea King_--we drifted together and found each
other in the fine park near the Queensland House of Parliament.
We had, all of us, already over-stayed our shore-leave by many hours.
We grouped together in informal consultation as to what should be
done--should we go back to the ship or not?
"We might run into a typhoon ... with all them crazy cattle on board!"
voiced one....
* * * * *
Nevertheless, perhaps because it was, after all, the line of least
resistance, because there regular meals awaited us, and a secure place
of sleep, by twos and threes we drifted back, down the long, hot, dusty
road, to where the _South Sea King_ lay waiting for us ... the mate, the
captain, and the cattle-boss furious at us for our over-stayed
shore-leave....
* * * * *
The cattle had been there these many hours, bellowing and moving
restlessly in their land-pens, the hot sun blazing down upon them.
* * * * *
Our cattle-boss, it seems, knew all about the handling of his animals on
land. But not on sea. When, the following morning, we started early,
trying to drive the cattle on board ship, they refused to walk up the
runway. In vain the boss strewed earth and sod along its course, to make
it seem a natural passage for them ... they rushed around and around
their pens, kicking up a vast, white, choking dust,--snorting,
bellowing, and throwing their rumps out gaily in sidelong gallopades ...
all young Queensland steers; wild, but not vicious. Still full of the
life and strength of the open range....
Then we scattered bits of the broken bales of their prepared food, along
the runway, to lure them ... a few were led aboard thus. But the captain
cried with oaths that they didn't have time to make a coaxing-party of
the job....
At last the donkey-engine was started, forward. A small cable was run
through a block, and, fastened by their halters around their horns, one
after the other the steers, now bellowing in great terror, their eyes
popping for fear--were hoisted up in the air, poised on high, kicking,
then swung down, and on deck.
You had to keep well from under each one as he descended, or suffer the
befouling consequences of his fear ... we had great laughter over
several men who came within the explosive radius ... till the mate hit
on the device of tying each beast's tail close before he was jerked up
into the air.
What a pandemonium ... shouting ... swearing ... whistles blowing
signals ... the chugging respiration of the labouring donkey-engine ...
and then the attempted stampede of each trembling, fear-crazy animal as
soon as he rose four-footed, on deck, after his ride through the sky....
* * * * *
The ship was crammed as full as Noah's ark. In the holds and on the main
deck stood the steers, in long rows....
On the upper deck, exposed to all the weather, were housed the more
tractable sheep, who had, without objection, bleated their way aboard
docilely up the runway--behind their black ram ... that the cattle-boss
had to help on a bit, by pulling him the few first yards by his curly
horns.
* * * * *
As we swam by in the fading day, a pale ghost of a moon was already up.
Ghostly rows of knee-ing trees stood out like live things in the
river....
Under the night, off at sea, what with the mooing and baaing through all
the ship, it seemed like an absurd farmyard that had somehow got on the
ocean.
* * * * *
There were two quarters for the men ... a place under the forecastle
head, forward--as well as the after-quarters. Nippers and I had been
separated--he staying aft, while I took up my bunk forward.
* * * * *
But the men on the boat, the few that stick in my memory as distinct
personages:
There was the bloated, fat Scotch boy, whom we called just Fatty, a
sheepherder by calling. He had signed on for the trip, to take care of
the sheep on the upper deck;
There was a weak, pathetic cockney, who died of sun-stroke;
The ex-jockey, a bit of a man with a withered left arm--made that way
from an injury received in his last race, when his mount fell on him;
There was the West Indian Negro, a woolly, ebony wisp of a creature, a
great believer in ghosts (he who thought we stowaways were ghosts when
we hid under the bunk). The Irish cattle-boss gave him the job of
night-watchman, "to break him of his superstitious silliness";
There was the big, black Jamaica cook ... as black as if he was polished
ebony ... a fine, big, polite chap, whom everyone liked. He had a white
wife in Southampton (the sailors who had seen her said she was pretty
... that the cook was true to her ... that she came down to the boat the
minute the _South Sea King_ reached an English port, they loved each
other so deeply!) ...
Then there was the giant of an Irishman ... who, working side by side
with me in the hold, shovelling out cattle-ordure there with me,
informed me that I looked as if I had consumption ... that I would not
be able to stand the terrific heat for many days without keeling over
... but, his prediction came true of himself, not of me.
One morning, not many days out, the little West Indian watchman,
bringing down the before-daylight coffee and ships-biscuits and rousing
the men, as was his duty,--found the big fellow, with whom he used to
crack cheery jokes, apparently sound asleep. The watchman shook him by
the foot to rouse him ... found his big friend stiff and cold.
The watchman let out a scream of horror that woke us right and proper,
for _that_ day....
The next day was Sunday. It was a still, religious afternoon.
We men ranged in two rows aft. The body had been sewn up in coarse
canvas, the Union Jack draped over it.
The captain, dapper in his gold-braided uniform, stood over the body as
it lay on the plank from which it was to descend into the sea. In a
high, clear voice he read that beautiful burial-service for the dead ...
an upward tilt of the board in the hands of two brown-armed seamen, the
body flashed over the side, to swing feet-down, laden with shot, for
interminable days and nights, in the vast tides of the Pacific.
No one reached quickly enough. The Union Jack went off with the body,
like a floral decoration flung after....
* * * * *
We drank the coffee brought to us before dawn, in grouchy, sleepy,
monosyllabic silence. Immediately after, the cattle were to water and
feed ... and a hungry lot they were ... but despite their appetites,
with each day, because of the excessive heat of the tropics, and the
confined existence that was theirs--such an abrupt transition from the
open range--they waxed thinner and thinner, acquired more of large-eyed
mournfulness and an aspect of almost human suffering in their piteous,
pleading faces....
* * * * *
If the big chap who succumbed to heart failure that night had lived a
few days longer, he would have wondered still more at me or anyone else
surviving a day's work in the hold.
For the thermometer ran up incredibly ... hotter and hotter it grew ...
and down there in the hold we had to shovel out the excrement every
morning after breakfast. It was too infernal for even the prudish
Anglo-Saxon souls of us to wear clothes beyond a breechclout, and shoes,
to protect our feet from the harder hoof.
Our eyes stung and watered from the reek of the ammonia in the
cattle-urine. What with the crowding, the bad air (despite the canvas
ventilators let down) and the sudden change from green pasturage to
dry, baled food, most of the beasts contracted "the skitters." This
mess was what we had to shovel out through the portholes ... an
offensive-smelling, greenish, fluidic material, that spilled, the half
of it, always, from the carefully-held scoop of the shovel.
Cursing, with the bitter sweat streaming off our bodies and into our
eyes, and with an oblique eye to guard from heat-maddened, frantic
steer-kicks,--each day, for several hours, we suffered through this hell
... to emerge panting, like runners after a long race; befouled ... to
throw ourselves down on the upper deck, under the blue, wind-free sky
and feel as if we had come into paradise....
* * * * *
"I wish I had never come back to this hell-ship, at Brisbane!"
"I wish I had never come aboard at all at Sydney!"
* * * * *
At such times, and at other odd ends of leisure, I brought my Westcott
and Hort's Greek New Testament from my bunk, and with the nasty smell of
sheep close-by, but unheeded through custom--I studied with greater
pleasure than I ever did before or since.
* * * * *
As I said before, it was not long before these poor steers were
broken-spirited things.
But there was one among them whose spirit kept its flag in the air,
"The Black Devil," as the cook had named him fondly ... a steer, all
glossy-black, excepting for a white spot in the center of his forehead.
He behaved, from the first, more like a turbulent little bull than a
gelding. The cook fed him with tid-bits from the galley.
He had evidently been someone's pet before he had been sold for live
meat, to be shipped to China.
When we took him on board by the horns he showed no fear as he rode in
the air. And, once on his feet again, and loose on deck, he showed us
hell's own fight--out of sheer indignation--back there in Brisbane. He
flashed after us, with the rapid motions of a bullfight in the movies.
Most of us climbed every available thing to get out of his reach. He
smashed here and there through wooden supports as if they were of
cardboard.
The agile little ex-jockey kept running in front of him, hitting him on
the nose and nimbly escaping--in spite of his wing-like, wasted arm,
quicker than his pursuer ... that smashed through, while he ducked and
turned....
"I'll be God-damned," yelled the captain from the safe vantage of the
bridge, "fetch me my pistol," to the cabin boy, "I'll have to shoot the
beast!"
All this while the big black Jamaica cook had been calmly looking on,
leaning fearlessly out over the half-door of the galley ... while the
infuriated animal rushed back and forth.
The cook said nothing. He disappeared, and reappeared with a bunch of
carrots which he held out toward "The Black Devil."...
In immediate transformation, the little beast stopped, forgot his anger,
stretched forth his moist, black nuzzle, sniffing ... and walked up to
the cook, accepting the carrots. The cook began to stroke the animal's
nose....
"_You_ little black devil," he said, in a soft voice, "you're all right
... they don't understand you ... but we're going to be pals--us
two--aren't we?"
Then he came out at the door to where the steer stood, took "The Black
Devil," as we henceforth called him, gently by the under-jaw,--and led
him into a standing-place right across from the galley.
* * * * *
As we struck further north under vast nights of stars, and days of
furnace-hot sunshine, the heat, confinement, and dry, baled food told
hideously on the animals ... the sheep seemed to endure better, partly
because they were not halted stationary in one spot and could move about
a little on the top deck.... But they suffered hardships that came of
changing weather.
* * * * *
Especially the cattle in the lower hold suffered, grew weak and
emaciated.... We were ever on the watch to keep them from going down ...
there was danger of their sprawling over each other and breaking legs in
the scramble. So when one tried to lie down, his tail was twisted till
the suffering made him rise to his feet ... sometimes a steer would be
too weak to regain his feet ... in such a case, in a vain effort to make
the beast rise, I have seen the Irish foreman twist the tail nearly off,
while the animal at first bellowed, then moaned weakly, with anguish ...
a final boot at the victim in angry frustration....
Last, a milky glaze would settle over the beast's eyes ... and we would
drag him out and up by donkey-engine, swing him over and out, and drop
him, to float, a bobbing tan object, down our receding ocean-path.
* * * * *
The coast of Borneo hovered, far and blue, in the offing, when we struck
our first, and last, typhoon. The mate avowed it was merely the tail-end
of a typhoon; if that was the tail-end, it is good that the body of it
did not strike down on us.
The surface of the ocean was kicked up into high, ridge-running masses.
The tops of the waves were caught in the wind and whipped into a wide,
level froth as if a giant egg-beater were at work ... then water, water,
water came sweeping and mounting and climbing aboard, hill after
bursting hill.
The deck was swept as by a mountain-torrent ... boards whirled about
with an uncanny motion in them. They came forward toward you with a
bound, menacing shin and midriff,--then on the motion of the ship, they
paused, and washed in the opposite direction.
Here and there a steer broke loose, which had to be caught and tethered
again. But in general the animals were too much frightened to do
anything but stand trembling and moaning ... when they were not
floundering about....
Down below was a suffocating inferno. For the hatches that were
ordinarily kept open for more air, had to be battened down till the
waves subsided.
* * * * *
At the very height of the storm, we heard a screaming of the most abject
fear.
The jockey had passed, in forgetful excitement, too close to his enemy,
The Black Devil--who had not forgotten, and gave him a horn in the side,
under the withered arm.
Several sailors carried the bleeding man aft to the captain ... who
dressed his wound with fair skill. The jockey was not so badly injured,
all things considered. The thrust had slanted and made only a flesh
wound ... which enabled the fellow to loaf on a sort of sick-leave,
during the rest of the trip.
* * * * *
The storm over, frantically we tore off the hatches again ... to find
only ten steers dead below. The rest were gasping piteously for air. It
was a day's work, heaving the dead stock overboard ... including the two
more which died of the after-effects....
When we went to look the sheep over, we found that over a third of them
had been washed overboard. The rest were huddled, in frightened,
bleating heaps, wondering perhaps what kind of an insane world it was
that they had been harried into.
* * * * *
The story of this cattleboat unfolds freshly before me again, out of the
records of memory ... the pitiful suffering of the cattle ... the lives
and daily doings of the rowdy, likeable men, who were really still
undeveloped children, and would so go down to the grave ... with their
boasting and continual vanity of small and trivial things of life.
* * * * *
All the time I was keeping a diary of my adventures ... in a large,
brown copybook, with flexible covers. I carried it, tightened away,
usually, in the lining of my coat, but occasionally I left it under the
mattress of my bunk.
Nippers observed me writing in it one day.
That night it was gone. I surmised who had taken it.
Seeking Nippers, I came upon him haltingly reading my diary aloud to an
amused circle of cattlemen, in his quarters aft.
"Give me that book back!" I demanded.
He ignored me.
"Give him a rap in the kisser, Skinny!"
I drew back, aiming a blow at Nippers. He flung the book down and was on
me like the tornado we had just run through ... he was a natural-born
fighter ... in a twinkling I was on the floor, with a black eye, a
bleeding mouth.
I flung myself to my feet, full of fury ... then something went in my
brain like the click of a camera-shutter ... I had an hallucination of
Uncle Landon, coming at me with a club....
I plumped into a corner, crouching. "Don't hit me any more ... please
don't, Uncle Lan!"
"He's gone crazy!"
"Naw, he's only a bloody, bleedin' coward," returned another voice, in
surprise and disgust.
Someone spat on me. I was let up at last.... I staggered forward to my
bunk. My book had been handed back to me. It's a wonder I didn't throw
myself into the sea, in disgust over the queer fit that had come over
me. I lay half the night, puzzling ... was I a coward?
Not unless an unparalleled change had occurred in me. I had fought with
other children, when a boy ... had whipped two lads at once, when
working in the Composite factory, that time they spit into my book.
* * * * *
One day a fishing-junk hove into sight, just as if it had sailed out of
a Maxfield Parrish illustration,--swinging there in the mouth of a
blood-red sunset ... then, like magic, appeared another and another and
another....
"Fishing-junks," ejaculated the mate, "--pretty far out, too, but a
Chink'll risk his life for a few bleedin' cash ... and yet he won't
fight at all ... an' if you do him an injury he's like as not likely to
up an' commit suicide at your door, to get even!"
"That's a bally orful way to get even with a henemy!" exclaimed a
stoker, who sat on the edge of the forward hatch.
"I should say so, too!"
Then, far and faint, were heard a crew of Chinese sailors, on the
nearest junk, singing a curious, falsetto chantey as they hauled on a
bamboo-braced sail....
"A feller wot never travelled wouldn't bloody well believe they was
such queer people in the world," further observed the philosophic
coal-heaver.
* * * * *
Next morning the coast of China lay right against us, on the starboard
side ... we ran into the thick of a fleet of sampans, boats fashioned
flat like overgrown rowboats, propelled each by a huge sculling oar,
from the stern ... they were fishers who manned them ... two or three to
a boat ... huge, bronze-bodied, fine-muscled, breech-clouted men ... as
they sculled swiftly to give us sea-room each one looked fit to be a
sculptor's model.
Their bodies shone in the sun like bronze. Several, fearing we might run
them down, as we clove straight through their midst, raised their arms
with a shout full of pleading and fright.
"What's the matter? are they trying to murder some of these poor chaps?"
I asked.
"No ... we're just having a little fun ... what's the life of a Chink
matter?"
* * * * *
"I say, if the Chinks up where the Boxers are fighting are big and
strong as them duffers, here's one that don't want no shore-leave!"
commented someone, as we stood ranged by the side.
"I always thought Chinamen was runts."
"Oh, it's only city Chinks--mostly from Canton, that come to civilized
countries to run laundries ... but these are the real Chinamen."
* * * * *
After the cattle had been unladen, the crew were to be taken down to
Shanghai and dumped ashore ... as it was an English Treaty port, that
would be, technically, living up to the ship's articles, which
guaranteed that the cattlemen aboard would be given passage back to
English ground....
But I was all excitement over the prospect of making my way ashore to
where the Allied troops were fighting....
* * * * *
Dawn ... we were anchored in Taku Bay among the warships of the Allied
nations ... grey warships gleaming in the sun like silver ... the sound
of bugles ... flags of all nations ... of as many colours as the coat of
Joseph.
"Well, here we are at last!"
* * * * *
Next day the work of unloading the cattle began ... hoisted again by the
horns from our boat of heavy draught to the hold of a coasting steamer,
that had English captain and mates, and a Chinese crew.
Some of the steers were so weak that they died on deck ... as they were
dying, butchers cut their throats so their beef could be called fresh.
The only one who desired to go ashore there, I made my way, when it was
dark and the last load of steers was being transferred to shore, down
below to the hold of the coaster. I stood in a corner, behind an iron
ladder, so that the cattle couldn't crush me during the night ... for
the Chinese had turned them loose, there, in a mass.
* * * * *
I stumbled ashore at Tongku, a station up a way on the banks of the Pei
Ho river.
My first night ashore in China was a far cry from the China of my dreams
... the Cathay of Marco Polo, with its towers of porcelain.... I crept,
to escape a cold drizzle, under the huge tarpaulin which covered a great
stack of tinned goods--army supplies. A soldier on guard over the stack,
an American soldier, spotted me.
"Come, my lad," lifting up the tarpaulin, "what are you doing there?"
"--Trying to keep from the wet!"
"--run off from one of the transports?"
"Yes," was as good an answer as any.
"You're pretty cold ... your teeth are chattering. Here, take a swig o'
this."
And the sentinel reached me a flask of whiskey from which I drew a nip.
Unaccustomed as I was to drink, it nearly strangled me. It went all the
way down like fire. Then it spread with a pleasant warmth all through my
body....
"Stay here to-night ... rather uncomfortable bed, but at least it's dry.
No one 'ull bother you ... in the morning Captain ----, who is in charge
of the commissariat here, might give you a job."
* * * * *
That next morning Captain ---- gave me a job as mate, eighty dollars
Mex. and a place to sleep, along with others, in a Compound, and find my
food at my own expense....
Mate, on a supply-launch that went in and out to and from the
transports, that were continually anchoring in the bay. Our job was to
keep the officers' mess in supplies....
"And, if you stick to your job six months," I was informed, "you'll be
entitled to free transportation back to San Francisco."
My captain was a neat, young Englishman, with the merest hint of a
moustache of fair gold.
Our crew--two Chinamen who jested about us between themselves in a
continuous splutter of Chinese. We could tell, by their grimaces and
gestures ... we rather liked their harmless, human impudence ... as long
as they did the work, while we lazed about, talking ... while up and
down the yellow sweep of the Pei-ho the little boat tramped.
* * * * *
"It's too bad you didn't arrive on the present scene a few weeks,
sooner," said my young captain ... "it was quite exciting here, at that
time. I used to have to take the boathook and push off the Chinese
corpses that caught on the prow of the boat as they floated down, thick
... they seemed to catch hold of the prow as if still alive. It was
uncanny!"
* * * * *
We slept, rolled up in our blankets, on the floor of a Chinese compound
... adventurers bound up and down the river, to and from Tien-Tsin and
Woo-shi-Woo and Pekin ... a sort of caravanserai....
* * * * *
Though it was the fall of the year and the nights were cold enough to
make two blankets feel good, yet some days the sun blazed down
intolerably on our boat, on the river....
When we grew thirsty the captain and myself resorted to our jug of
distilled water. I had been warned against drinking the yellow,
pea-soup-like water of the Pei-ho....
But one afternoon I found our water had run out.
So I took the gourd used by the Chinese crew, and dipped up, as they
did, the river water.
The captain clutched me by the wrist.
"Don't drink that water! If you'd seen what I have, floating in it,
you'd be afraid!"
"What won't hurt a Chinaman, won't hurt me," I boasted....
The result of my folly was a mild case of dysentery....
In a few days I was so weak that I went around as if I had no bones left
in my body. And I wanted to leave the country. And I repaired to Captain
---- who had given me the job, and asked him for my pay and my
discharge. He lit into me, disgusted, upbraiding me for a worthless
tramp....
"I might have known that you were of that ilk, from the first, just by
looking at you!"
He handed me the eighty dollars in Mexican silver, that was coming to
me.... I repaid the captain the forty I had borrowed, for food.
"Sick! yes, sick of laziness!"
Captain ---- was partly right. I had an uncontrollable distaste for the
monotony of daily work, repeated in the same environment, surrounded by
the same scenery ... but I was also quite weak and sick, and I am
persuaded, that, if I had stayed on there, I might have died.
* * * * *
I sat on one of the wharves and played host to a crowd of romantic
thoughts that moved in their pageant through my brain ... now I would go
on to Pekin and see the great Forbidden City. Now I would dress in
Chinese clothes and beg my way through the very heart of the Chinese
Empire ... and write a book, subsequently, about my experiences and
adventures ... and perhaps win a medal of some famous society for it ...
and I had a dream of marrying some quaintly beautiful mandarin's
daughter, of becoming a famous, revered Chinese scholar, bringing
together with my influence the East and the West....
I reached so far, in the dream, as to buy several novels of the Chinese,
printed in their characters, of an itinerant vendor....
The everyday world swung into my ken again.
Three junks, laden with American marines, dropping down the river from
Pekin, cut across my abstracted gaze ... the boys were singing.
They marched off on the dock on which I sat. They were stationed right
where they deployed from the junks. Men were put in guard over them.
At Tien Tsin they had behaved rather badly, I was told by one of
them,--had gone on a Samshu jag ... a Chinese drink, worse than the
worst American "rot-gut." ...
"Wisht I c'd git off the dock an' rustle up another drink somewheres."
"They wouldn't let us off this dock fer love nor money," spoke up a
lithe, blue-shaven marine to me--the company's barber, I afterward
learned him to be....
"Yah, we got ter stay here all afternoon, an' me t'roat's es dry es
san'paper."
"Where are they taking you to, from here?"
"Manila!... the _Indiana's_ waitin' out in th' bay fer us."
"--Wish I could get off with you!" I remarked.
"Wot's the matter? On th' bum here?"
"Yes."
Immediately the barber and two others, his pals, became intensely,
suspiciously so, interested in my desire to sail with them....
"--Tell you wot," and the company barber reached into his pocket with a
surreptitious glance about, "if you'll take these bills an' sneak past
to that coaster lyin' along the next dock, the Chinese steward 'ull sell
you three bottles o' whiskey fer these," and he handed me a bunch of
bills ... "an' w'en you come back with th' booze, we'll see to it that
you get took out to the transport with us, all right ... won't we,
boys?"
"--betcher boots we will."
* * * * *
"God, but this is like heaven to me," exclaimed the barber, as he tilted
up his bottle, while the two others stood about him, to keep him from
being seen. The three of them drank their bottles of whiskey as if it
was water.
"That saved me life...."
"An' mine, too. You go to Manila wit' us, all right,--kid!"
* * * * *
Toward dusk came the sharp command for the men to march aboard the
coaster that had drawn up for them. The boys kept their word. They
loaded me down with their accoutrements to carry. I marched up the
gangway with them, and we were off to the _Indiana_.
I was the first, almost, to scamper aboard the waiting transport in the
gathering dusk ... and, to make sure of staying aboard, I hurried down
one ladder after the other, till I reached the heavy darkness of the
lowermost hold. Having nothing to do but sleep, I stumbled over some
oblong boxes, climbed onto one, and composed myself for the night, using
a coil of rope for a pillow.
I woke to find a grey patch of day streaming down the ladder-way. My
eyes soon adjusted themselves to the obscurity.
And then it was that I gave a great, scared leap. And with difficulty I
held myself back from crying out.
Those curious oblong boxes among which I had passed the night--they were
hermetically sealed coffins, and there were dead soldiers in them.
Ridges of terror crept along my flesh. Stifling a panic in me, I forced
myself to go slow as I climbed the iron rungs to the hold above ...
where living soldiers lay sleeping in long rows....
Still undetected, I scrambled along an aisle between them and put myself
away in a sort of life-preserver closet. Not till I had heard the
familiar throb of the propeller in motion for a long time, did I come
forth.
* * * * *
During the voyage of, I believe, eight days, I loafed about, lining up
for rations with the boys ... no one questioned me. My engineer's
clothes that I had taken, in lieu of part of my wages, from the
slop-chest of _The South Sea King_, caused the officers of the marines
to think I belonged to the ship's crew ... and the ship-officers must
have thought I was in some way connected with the marines ... anyhow, I
was not molested, and I led a life much to my liking ... an easy-going
and loafing and tale-telling one ... mixing about and talking and
listening ... and reading back-number magazines.
* * * * *
One day my friend the barber called me aside:
"Say, kid, I've been delegated to tell you that you've got lice." I
flamed indignant.
"That's a God-damned lie! and whoever told you so is a God-damned liar,
too! I never had a louse in my life."
"Easy! Easy!... no use gittin' huffy ... if it ain't lice you got, wot
you scratchin' all the time fer? Look in the crotch of yer pants and the
seams of your shirt, an' see!"
I _had_ been scratching a lot ... and wondering what was wrong ... my
breast was all red ... but I had explained it to myself that I was
wearing a coarse woolen undershirt next my skin ... that I had picked up
from the slop-chest, also.
The barber walked jauntily away, leaving me standing sullenly alone.
I sneaked into the toilet, looking to see if anyone was about. I turned
my shirt back. To my horror, my loathing,--the soldier's accusation was
true!... they were so thick, thanks to my ignorant neglect, that I could
see them moving in battalions ... if I had been the victim of some
filthy disease, I could scarcely have felt more beyond the pale, more a
pariah. I had not detected them before, because I was ignorant of the
thought of having them, and because their grey colour was exactly that
of the inside of my woolen shirt.
I threw the shirt away, content to shiver for a few days till we had
steamed to warmer weather ... I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed
myself.... I had, up to now, had experience with head-lice only ... as a
child, in school....
I look back with a shudder even yet to that experience. During my
subsequent tramp-career I never could grow callous to vermin, as a few
others that I met, did. Once I met a tramp who advised me not to bother
about 'em ... and you would soon get used to 'em ... and not feel them
biting at all ... but most tramps "boil up"--that is, take off their
clothes, a piece at a time, and boil them--whenever they find
opportunity.
* * * * *
Manila. A brief adventure there ... a bum for a few weeks, hanging
around soldiers' barracks, blacking shoes for free meals ... till
Provost Marshal General Bell, in an effort to clear the islands of boys
who were vags and mascots of regiments, gave me and several other rovers
and stowaways free transportation back to America....
A brief stop at Nagasaki to have a broken propeller shaft mended: a long
Pacific voyage ... then hilly San Francisco one golden morning....
* * * * *
All these ocean days I peeled potatoes and helped to dish out rations
to the lined-up soldiers at meal-times ... one slice of meat, one or two
potatoes, to a tin plate ...
For long hours I listened to their lying tales and boasting ... then
lied and boasted, myself....
My most unique adventure aboard the _Thomas_; making friends with a
four-times-enlisted soldier named Lang, who liked army life because, he
said, outside of drills and dress parade, it was lazy and easy ... and
it gave him leisure to read and re-read his Shakespeare. He was a
Shakespearean scholar....
"It's the best life in the world ... no worries or responsibilities
about food and lodging--it spoils a fellow for any other kind of life
... the officers are always decent to a fellow who respects himself as a
soldier and citizen."
Lang and I became good pals. Day after day I sat listening to him, as,
to the accompaniment of the rumble and pulse of the great boat a-move,
he quoted and explained Shakespeare to me, nearly always without the
book.
His talk was fascinating--except when he insisted on repeating to me his
own wretched rhymes ... in which he showed he had learned nothing about
how to write poetry from his revered Shakespeare ... it was very bad
Kiplingesque stuff ... much like my own bad verse of that period....
Once Lang recited by heart the whole of _King Lear_ to me, having me
hold a copy of the play, to prove that he did not fumble a single line
or miss a single word ... which he did not....
Lang was a prodigious drunkard. At Nagasaki I rescued him from the
water-butt. Coming back drunk on rice wine, he had stuck his head down
for a cool drink, as a horse does. And in he had tumbled, head-first. If
I had not seen his legs wiggling futilely in the air, and drawn him
forth, dripping, he would have drowned, as the butt was too solid for
his struggles to dump, and he couldn't make a sound for help.
* * * * *
As we neared San Francisco several of the boys spoke to me of taking up
a purse for my benefit. Soldiers are always generous and
warm-hearted--the best men, individually, in the world.
I said no to them, that they must not take up a collection for me ... I
did not really feel that way, at heart, but I liked better seeming proud
and independent, American and self-reliant....
Later on, at the very dock, I acceded ... but now I was punished for my
hypocrisy. The boys were so eager to be home again, they only threw
together about five dollars for me ... when, if I hadn't been foolish, I
might have had enough to loaf with, say a month, at San Francisco, and
do a lot of reading in the Library, and in books of poetry that I might
have picked up at second-hand book stores....
However, I gathered together, before I went ashore, two suits of khaki
and two army blankets, and a pair of good army shoes that afterwards
seemed never to wear out.
And a young chap named Simmons, who had been sergeant, had joined the
army by running away from home, took me to an obscure hotel as his valet
... he wanted to "put on dog," as the Indians say.
He had parents of wealth, back in Des Moines.
I served him as his valet for the two weeks he stayed at the hotel. He
had been shot through the left foot so that a tendon was severed, and he
had to walk with a cane, with a foot that flopped at every step.
He gave me fifteen dollars for wages. After he had departed I rented a
cheap room for a week.
* * * * *
Standing in front of a store on Kearney Street, one afternoon, dressed
in my suit of soldier's khaki, looking at the display in the window, I
got the cue that shaped my subsequent adventures in California....
"Poor lad," I heard one girl say to another, standing close by, "he
looks so sick and thin, I'm sorry for him."
They did not notice that my soldier's uniform had cloth buttons. Simmons
had made me put cloth buttons on, at the hotel,--had furnished them to
me--
"I don't want you going about the other way ... you're such a nut, you
might get into trouble."
Mule-drivers and others in subsidiary service were allowed khaki with
cloth buttons only ... at that time ... I don't know how it goes now.
* * * * *
The girls' taking me for a sick, discharged soldier made me think. I
would travel in that guise.
* * * * *
With a second-hand Shakespeare, in one volume, of wretched print, with a
much-abused school-copy of Cæsar, in the Latin (of whose idiomatic Latin
I have never tired), an extra suit of khaki, a razor, tooth-brush, and
tooth-powder--and a cake of soap--all wrapped up in my army blankets, I
set forth on my peregrinations as blanket-stiff or "bindle-bum."
Where I saw I could escape without awkward questioning, I played the
convalescent ex-soldier ... I thrived. My shadow-thinness almost turned
to fatness. It would have, had there been any disposition toward obesity
in me....
At times I was ashamed of doing nothing ... queer spurts of American
economic conscience....
Once I worked, plowing ... to drive the horses as far as a tall tree for
shade, at the end of the third day, sneak back to the house ... and out
to the highway with my bundle and my belongings, kicking up my heels
ecstatically, glad to be freed from work.
I plumped down in a fence corner and did not stir till I had read a
whole play of Shakespeare, and a snatch of my Cæsar.
Once or twice, sheriffs who were bent on arresting me because I had no
visible means of support, let me go, because it awed them to find a
tramp reading Shakespeare....
"It's a shame, a clever lad like you bein' a bum!"
* * * * *
Tramps, though anti-social in the larger aspects of society (as, for
that matter, all special classes are, from millionaires down--or up),
are more than usually companionable among themselves. I never lived and
moved with a better-hearted group of people.
By "jungle" camp-fires--("the jungles," any tramp rendezvous located
just outside the city limits, to be beyond police jurisdiction), in
jails, on freights ... I found a feeling of sincere companionship ... a
companionship that without ostentation and as a matter of course, shared
the last cent the last meal ... when every cent _was_ the last cent,
every meal the _last_ meal ... the rest depending on luck and
Providence....
* * * * *
Tramps often travel in pairs. I picked up a "buddy" ... a short,
thick-set man of young middle age, of Scandinavian descent ... so blond
that his eyebrows were white in contrast with his face, which was ruddy
with work in the sun. He, like me, was a "gaycat" or tramp who is not
above occasional work (as the word meant then--now it means a cheap,
no-account grafter). He had recently been working picking oranges ...
previous to that, he had been employed in a Washington lumber camp.
* * * * *
Together we drifted along the seacoast south to San Diego ... then back
again to Santa Barbara ... for no reason but just to drift. Then we
sauntered over to San Bernardino--"San Berdu," as the tramps call it....
* * * * *
It struck chilly, one night. So chilly that we went into the freightyard
to put up in an empty box-car till the sun of next day rose to warm the
world.
We found a car. There were many other men already there, which was good;
the animal heat of their bodies made the interior warmer.
The interior of the car sounded like a Scotch bagpipe a-drone ... what
with snoring, breaking of wind in various ways, groaning, and muttering
thickly in dreams ... the air was sickeningly thick and fetid. But to
open a side door meant to let in the cold.
Softly my buddy and I drew off our shoes, putting them under our heads
to serve as pillows, and also to keep them from being stolen. (Often a
tramp comes along with a deft enough touch to untie a man's shoes from
his feet without waking him. I've heard of its being done.) We wrapped
our feet in newspapers, then. Our coats we removed, to wrap them about
us ... one keeps warmer that way than by just wearing the coat....
* * * * *
The door on each side crashed back!
"Here's another nest full of 'em!"
"Come on out, boys!"
"What's the matter?" I queried.
"'stoo cold out here. We have a nice, warm calaboose waitin' fer ye!"
Grunting and grumbling, we dropped to the cinders, one after the other.
A posse of deputies and citizens, had, for some dark reason, rounded us
up.
One or two made a break for it, and escaped, followed by a random shot.
After that, no one else cared to be chased after by a bullet.
They conducted us to what they had termed "the calaboose," a big,
ramshackle, one-roomed barn-like structure. Piled in so thick that we
almost had to stand up, there were so many of us--we were held there
till next morning.
But we were served, then, a good breakfast, at the town's expense. The
owner of the restaurant was a queer little, grey-faced, stringy fellow.
He fed us all the buckwheat cakes and sausages we could hold, and won
every hobo's heart, by giving all the coffee we could drink ... we held
our cups with our hands about them, grateful for the warmth.
"Say, you're all right, mister!" ventured a tramp to the proprietor, as
he walked by.
"Bet your God-damned life I'm all right!... because I ain't nothin' but
a bum myself ... yes, an' I'm not ashamed of it, neither ... before I
struck this burg an' started this "ham-and" and made it pay, I was on
the road same es all o' you!"
"Kin I have more pancakes, boss, an' another cup of coffee?"
"You sure can, bo!... es I was sayin', I'm a bum myself, an' proud of it
... and I think these here damn bulls (policemen ... who were sitting
nearby, waiting for us to finish) have mighty little to 'tend to,
roundin' up you boys, now the orange-pickin' season's over with, an'
puttin' you away like this ... why, if any one of them was half as
decent as one o' you bums--"
"Sh! fer Christ's sake!" I admonished, "they're hearing you."
"That's jest what I want 'em to do ... I don't owe nothin' to no man,
an' it's time someone told 'em somethin'."
* * * * *
Breakfast over, we were marched off to the courthouse. We were turned
loose together in a large room. We felt so good with the sausage, cakes
and coffee in our bellies, that we pushed each other about, sang,
jigged, whistled.
As we had walked in, I had asked, of the cop who walked by my side--who
seemed affable....
"Say, mister, after all what's the idea?"
"We had to make an example," he returned, frankly.
"I don't quite get you!"
"Last week a bunch of bums dropped off here at our town, and they
almost ran the diggings for about twenty-four hours ... insulted women
on the streets ... robbed ice-boxes ... even stole the clothes off the
lines."
"In other words, you mean that a bunch of drunken yeggs dropped in on
the town, gutted it, and then jumped out ... and we poor harmless bums
are the ones that have to pay."
"--guess that's about how it is."
I passed the word along the line. My companion tramps cursed the yegg
and his ways....
"They're always raisin' hell ... an' we git the blame ... when all we
want is not loot, but hand-outs and a cup o' coffee ... and a piece of
change now and then."
The yegg, the tiger among tramps--the criminal tramp--despises the
ordinary bum and the "gaycat." And they in turn fear him for his
ruthlessness and recklessness.
He joins with them at their camp-fires ... rides with them on the road
... robs his store or house, or cracks his safe, then flies on, taking
the blinds or decking on top of a "flyer." The law, missing the right
quarry, descends on the slower-moving, harmless bum. And often some poor
"fall-guy" gets a good "frame-up" for a job he never thought of ... and
the majesty of the law stands vindicated.
* * * * *
The charge against us was vagrancy. We were tried by twos.
"Come on, buddy!... you an' your pal."
My companion and I were led in before, I think, a justice of the peace.
The latter was kindly-disposed toward me because I was young and looked
delicate.
When I began my plea for clemency I appropriated the name, career, and
antecedents of Simmons, the young soldier whose body-servant I had been,
back in San Francisco. The man on the bench was impressed by my story of
coming of a wealthy family ... my father was a banker, no less.
The justice waved me aside. He asked my buddy to show his hands. As the
callouses on the palms gave evidence of recent hard work, he was set
free along with me. We were the only two who were let off. The rest were
sent up for three months each, I am told....
And, after all that, what did my buddy do but up and steal my blanket
roll, with all in it--including my Cæsar and Shakespeare--and my extra
soldier uniform--the first chance he got!...
* * * * *
An American who had married a Mexican girl gave me work sawing and
chopping wood. I stayed with him long enough to earn a second-hand suit
of clothes he owned, which was too small for him, but almost fitted me
... civilian clothes ... my soldier clothes were worn to tatters.
* * * * *
I picked up another pal. A chunky, beefy nondescript. I was meditating a
jump across "the desert." The older hoboes had warned me against it,
saying it was a cruel trip ... the train crews knew no compunction
against ditching a fellow anywhere out in the desert, where there would
be nothing but a tank of brackish water....
My new chum, on the other hand, swore, that, to one who knew the ropes,
it was not so hard to make the jump on the Southern Pacific ... through
Arizona and New Mexico, to El Paso. He said he would show me how to
wiggle into the refrigerator box of an orange car ... on either end of
the orange car is a refrigerator box, if I remember correctly ... access
to which is gained through the criss-cross bars that hold up a sort of
trap-door at the top. It was in the cold season, so there was now no ice
inside. These trap-doors are always officially sealed, when the car is
loaded. To break a seal is a penitentiary offense.
I stood off and inspected the place I was supposed to go in at. The
triangular opening seemed too small for a baby to slide through. I
looked my chunky pal up and down and laughed.
"--think I can't make it, eh?... well, you watch ... there's an art in
this kind of thing just like there is in anything."
Inch by inch he squeezed himself in. Then he stood up inside and called
to me to try ... and he would pull me the rest of the way, if I stuck.
He was plump and I was skinny. It ought to be easy for me. Nevertheless,
it was the hardest task I ever set myself ... I stuck half-way. My pal
pulled my shirt into rags, helping me through,--I had handed my coat in,
previously, or he would have ripped that to pieces, too. It seemed that
all the skin went off my hips, as I shot inside with a bang. And none
too soon. A "shack" (brakeman) passed over the tops of the cars at
almost that very moment. We lay still. He would have handed me a
merciless drubbing if he had caught me, with my nether end hanging
helplessly on the outside.
* * * * *
We squatted on the floor of the refrigerator box. When we reached Yuma
my pal rose to his feet.
"Ain't yer goin' ta throw yer feet fer a hand-out?" he asked me.
"No, I'm going to stick in here till I reach El Paso, if I can."
"What's the fun bein' a bum, if you're goin' ter punish yerself like
that!"
"I want to find a country where there's growing green things, as soon as
I can."
"So long, then."
"So long.. don't you think you'd better stick till we reach Tuscon? Some
of the boys told me the 'bulls' (officers) here have been 'horstile'
(had it in for the tramp fraternity) ... ever since a yegg bumped off a
deputy, a while back."
"Naw, I'll take my chances."
As I rode on, alone, I stood up and took in the scenery like a tourist
... there danced away, and gathered in, the shimmering, sun-flooded
desert ... an endless flat expanse of silver sage and sentinel cactus. I
saw bleached bones and a side-cast skull with whitened horns, poking up
into the sky ... I saw a sick steer straggling alone, exactly like some
melodramatic painting of Western life ... the kind we see hanging for
sale in second-rate art stores.
* * * * *
I stuck till Tuscon was reached. There I was all in for lack of food and
water....
A woman gave me a good "set-down" at her kitchen table. I was as hungry
for something to read as I was for something to eat. When she walked out
of the kitchen, leaving me alone for a moment, I caught sight of a
compact little Bible that lay on the leaf of her sewing machine. Two
steps, and I had it stowed in my hip pocket, and was back innocently
eating ... the taking of the Bible was providential. I believe that it
served as the main instrument, later on, in saving me from ten years in
the penitentiary.
* * * * *
I was glad enough to hop to the cinders at El Paso. But El Paso at that
time was "unhealthy" for hoboes. They were holding twenty or thirty of
us in the city jail, and mysterious word had gone down the line in all
directions, that quick telegraph by word-of-mouth that tramps use among
themselves, to avoid the town--that it was "horstile."...
* * * * *
Again rolling miles of arid country. But this time, like a soldier on a
long march, I was prepared: I had begged, from door to door, enough
"hand-outs" to last a week ... throwing away most of the bread ...
keeping the cold meats and the pie and cake. I sat in my open box-car,
on a box that I had flung in with me, reading my Bible and eating my
"hand-outs" and a millionaire had nothing on me for enjoyment.
I was half-way to San Antonio when I fell in with as jolly a bunch of
bums as I ever hope to see in this world ... just outside a little town,
in the "jungles."
These tramps were gathered together on a definite plan, and I was
invited to join them in it: the plan was, to go, _en masse_, from town
to town, and systematically exploit it; one day one man would go to the
butcher shops, the next, another man would take them, and the first
would, let's say, beg at the baker's ... and each day a different man
would take a different section among the houses. Then all the food so
procured would be put together and shared in common.
As usual, there was among them an individual who held them together--the
originator of the idea. He was a fat, ruddy-faced alcoholic ex-cook, who
had never held a job for long because he loved whiskey so much.
Besides being the presiding genius of the gang, he also did all the
cooking. He loved to cook. Each day he jumbled all the mixable portions
of the food together, and, in a big tin wash-boiler which he had rescued
from "the dump" outside of town, he stewed up quite a palatable mess
which we called "slum" or "slumgullion," or, more profanely,
"son-of-a-b----."
For plates we used old tomato cans hammered out flat ... for knives and
forks, our fingers, pocket-knives, and chips of wood.
It was a happy life.
One afternoon mysteriously our leader and cook disappeared--with a broad
grin on his face. Soon he returned, rolling a whole barrel of beer which
he had stolen during the night from the back of a saloon ... and had
hidden it nearby in the bushes till it was time to bring it forth....
We held a roaring party, and had several fights. ("Slopping up" is what
the tramps call a drinking jamboree.) This was the first time I got
drunk in my life. It took very little to set me off ... I burned a big
hole in my coat. I woke lying in the mud near the willows ... and with a
black eye ... a fellow tramp affectionately showed me his finger that I
had bitten severely ... for a day we had bad nerves, and lay about
grumbling....
We kept quite clean. The tramp is as clean as his life permits him to be
... usually ... the myth about his dirtiness is another of the myths of
the newspaper and magazine world ... though I have seen ones who were
extraordinarily filthy....
We "boiled up" regularly ... and hung our shirts and other articles of
apparel on the near-by willows to dry....
After about ten days of scientific exploitation of them, the "natives"
of the town on the verge of which we were encamping, began to evidence
signs of restlessness.
So we moved on to another town by means of a local freight.
Settled there in "the jungles," we hilariously voted to crown the cook
our king. We held the ceremony, presenting him with a crown made out of
an old tin pan, which one of the more expert among us hammered into a
circlet and scoured bright with sand....
* * * * *
But soon I grew tired of the gang and started on alone.
"You'd better beat it on out of the South as quick as you can," an old
tramp had warned me, "they're hell on a bum down here, and harder yet on
a Yankee ... no, they haven't forgot _that_ yet--not by a damn sight!"