My Bonny Lies over the Ocean--Lies and Lies and Lies
Of course, we had a bridal couple and a troupe of professional deep-sea
fishermen aboard. We just naturally had to have them. Without them, I
doubt whether the ship could have sailed. The bridal couple were
from somewhere in the central part of Ohio and they were taking their
honeymoon tour; but, if I were a bridal couple from the central part
of Ohio and had never been to sea before, as was the case in this
particular instance, I should take my honeymoon ashore and keep it
there. I most certainly should! This couple of ours came aboard billing
and cooing to beat the lovebirds. They made it plain to all that they
had just been married and were proud of it. Their baggage was brand-new,
and the groom's shoes were shiny with that pristine shininess
which, once destroyed, can never be restored; and the bride wore her
going-and-giving-away outfit.
Just prior to sailing and on the morning after they were all over the
ship. Everywhere you went you seemed to meet them and they were always
wrestling. You entered a quiet side passage--there they were, exchanging
a kiss--one of the long-drawn, deep-siphoned, sirupy kind. You stepped
into the writing room thinking to find it deserted, and at sight of you
they broke grips and sprang apart, eyeing you like a pair of startled
fawns surprised by the cruel huntsman in a forest glade. At all other
times, though, they had eyes but for each other.
A day came, however--and it was the second day out--when they were among
the missing. For two days and two nights, while the good ship floundered
on the tempestuous bosom of the overwrought ocean, they were gone from
human ken. On the afternoon of the third day, the sea being calmer now,
but still sufficiently rough to satisfy the most exacting, a few hardy
and convalescent souls sat in a shawl-wrapped row on the lee side of the
ship.
There came two stewards, bearing with them pillows and blankets and
rugs. These articles were disposed to advantage in two steamer chairs.
Then the stewards hurried away; but presently they reappeared, dragging
the limp and dangling forms of the bridal couple from the central part
of Ohio. But oh, my countrymen, what a spectacle! And what a change from
what had been!
The going-away gown was wrinkled, as though worn for a period of time
by one suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health. The bride's
once well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a face that was the
color of prime old sage cheese--yellow, with a fleck of green here and
there--and in her wan and rolling eye was the hunted look of one who
hears something unpleasant stirring a long way off and fears it is
coming this way.
Side by side the stewards stretched them prone on their chairs and
tucked them in. Her face was turned from him. For some time both of
them lay there without visible signs of life--just two muffled,
misery-stricken heaps. Then, slowly and languidly, the youth stretched
forth an arm from his wrappings and fingered the swaddling folds that
enveloped the form of his beloved.
It may have been he thought it was about time to begin picking the
coverlid, or it may have been the promptings of reawakened romance, once
more feebly astir within his bosom. At any rate, gently and softly, his
hand fell on the rug about where her shoulder ought to be. She still had
life enough left in her to shake it off--and she did. Hurt, he waited
a moment, then caressed her again. "Stop that!" she cried in a low but
venomous tone. "Don't you dare touch me!"
So he touched her no more, but only lay there mute and motionless;
and from his look one might plumb the sorrows of his soul and know how
shocked he was, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream
was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. Their
marriage had been a terrible mistake and he would give her back her
freedom; he would give it back to her as soon as he was able to sit up.
Thus one interpreted his expression.
On the day we landed, however, they were seen again. We were nosing
northward through a dimpled duckpond of a sea, with the Welsh coast on
one side and Ireland just over the way. People who had not been seen
during the voyage came up to breathe, wearing the air of persons who had
just returned from the valley of the shadow and were mighty glad to be
back; and with those others came our bridal couple.
I inadvertently stumbled on them in an obscure companionway. Their
cheeks again wore the bloom of youth and health, and they were in a
tight clinch; it was indeed a pretty sight. Love had returned on roseate
pinions and the honeymoon had been resumed at the point where postponed
on account of bad weather.
They had not been seasick, though. I heard them say so. They had been
indisposed, possibly from something they had eaten; but they had not
been seasick. Well, I had my own periods of indisposition going over;
and if it had been seasickness I should not hesitate a moment about
coming right out and saying so. In these matters I believe in being
absolutely frank and aboveboard. For the life of me I cannot understand
why people will dissemble and lie about this thing of being seasick. To
me their attitude is a source of constant wonderment.
On land the average person is reasonably proud of having been
sick--after he begins to get better. It gives him something to talk
about. The pale and interesting invalid invariably commands respect
ashore. In my own list of acquaintances I number several persons--mainly
widowed ladies with satisfactory incomes--who never feel well unless
they are ill. In the old days they would have had resort to patent
medicines and the family lot at Laurel Grove Cemetery; but now they
go in for rest cures and sea voyages, and the baths at Carlsbad and
specialists, these same being main contributing causes to the present
high cost of living, and also helping to explain what becomes of some
of those large life-insurance policies you read about. Possibly you know
the type I am describing--the lady who, when planning where she will
spend the summer, sends for catalogues from all the leading sanatoriums.
We had one such person with us.
She had been surgically remodeled so many times that she dated
everything from her last operation. At least six times in her life she
had been down with something that was absolutely incurable, and she was
now going to Homburg to have one of the newest and most fatal German
diseases in its native haunts, where it would be at its best. She
herself said that she was but a mere shell; and for the first few meals
she ate like one--like a large, empty shell with plenty of curves inside
it.
However, when, after a subsequent period of seclusion, she emerged from
her stateroom wearing the same disheveled look that Jonah must have worn
when he and the whale parted company, do you think she would confess
she had been seasick? Not by any means! She said she had had a raging
headache. But she could not fool me. She had the stateroom next to mine
and I had heard what I had heard. She was from near Boston and she had
the near-Boston accent; and she was the only person I ever met who was
seasick with the broad A.
Personally I abhor those evasions, which deceive no one. If I had been
seasick I should not deny it here or elsewhere. For a time I thought
I was seasick. I know now I was wrong--but I thought so. There was
something about the sardels served at lunch--their look or their smell
or something--which seemed to make them distasteful to me; and I excused
myself from the company at the table and went up and out into the
open air. But the deck was unpleasantly congested with great burly
brutes--beefy, carnivorous, overfed creatures, gorged with victuals and
smoking disgustingly strong black cigars, and grinning in an annoying
and meaning sort of way every time they passed a body who preferred to
lie quiet.
The rail was also moving up and down in a manner that was annoying and
wearisome for the eye to watch--first tipping up and up and up until
half the sky was hidden, then dipping down and down and down until the
gray and heaving sea seemed ready to leap over the side and engulf us.
So I decided to go below and jot down a few notes. On arriving at my
quarters I changed my mind again. I decided to let the notes wait a
while and turn in.
It is my usual custom when turning in to remove the left shoe as well as
the right one and to put on my pajamas; but the pajamas were hanging
on a hook away over on the opposite side of the stateroom, which had
suddenly grown large and wide and full of great distances; and besides,
I thought it was just as well to have the left shoe where I could put
my hand on it when I needed it again. So I retired practically just as
I was and endeavored, as per the admonitions of certain friends, to lie
perfectly flat. No doubt this thing of lying flat is all very well for
some people--but suppose a fellow has not that kind of a figure?
Nevertheless, I tried. I lay as flat as I could, but the indisposition
persisted; in fact, it increased materially. The manner in which my
pajamas, limp and pendent from that hook, swayed and swung back and
forth became extremely distasteful to me; and if by mental treatment I
could have removed them from there I should assuredly have done so. But
that was impossible.
Along toward evening I began to think of food. I thought of it not from
its gastronomic aspect, but rather in the capacity of ballast. I did
not so much desire the taste of it as the feel of it. So I summoned
Lubly--he, at least, did not smile at me in that patronizing,
significant way--and ordered a dinner that included nearly everything
on the dinner card except Lubly's thumb. The dinner was brought to me in
relays and I ate it--ate it all! This step I know now was ill-advised.
It is true that for a short time I felt as I imagine a python in a zoo
feels when he is full of guinea-pigs--sort of gorged, you know, and
sluggish, and only tolerably uncomfortable.
Then ensued the frightful denouement. It ensued almost without warning.
At the time I felt absolutely positive that I was seasick. I would have
sworn to it. If somebody had put a Bible on my chest and held it there
I would cheerfully have laid my right hand on it and taken a solemn
oath that I was seasick. Indeed, I believed I was so seasick that I
feared--hoped, rather--I might never recover from it. All I desired at
the moment was to get it over with as quickly and as neatly as possible.
As in the case of drowning persons, there passed in review before my
eyes several of the more recent events of my past life--meals mostly.
I shall, however, pass hastily over these distressing details, merely
stating in parentheses, so to speak, that I did not remember those
string-beans at all. I was positive then, and am yet, that I had not
eaten string-beans for nearly a week. But enough of this!
I was sure I was seasick; and I am convinced any inexperienced
bystander, had there been one there, would have been misled by my
demeanor into regarding me as a seasick person--but it was a wrong
diagnosis. The steward told me so himself when he called the next
morning. He came and found me stretched prone on the bed of affliction;
and he asked me how I felt, to which I replied with a low and hollow
groan--tolerably low and exceedingly hollow. It could not have been any
hollower if I had been a megaphone.
So he looked me over and told me that I had climate fever. We were
passing through the Gulf Stream, where the water was warmer than
elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and I had a touch of climate fever. It
was a very common complaint in that latitude; many persons suffered
from it. The symptoms were akin to seasickness, it was true; yet the two
maladies were in no way to be confused. As soon as we passed out of the
Gulf Stream he felt sure I would be perfectly well. Meantime he would
recommend that I get Lubly to take the rest of my things off and then
remain perfectly quiet. He was right about it too.
Regardless of what one may think oneself, one is bound to accept the
statement of an authority on this subject; and if a steward on a big
liner, who has traveled back and forth across the ocean for years, is
not an authority on climate fever, who is? I looked at it in that light.
And sure enough, when we had passed out of the Gulf Stream and the sea
had smoothed itself out, I made a speedy and satisfactory recovery; but
if it had been seasickness I should have confessed it in a minute. I
have no patience with those who quibble and equivocate in regard to
their having been seasick.
I had one relapse--a short one, but painful. In an incautious moment,
when I wist not wot I wotted, I accepted an invitation from the chief
engineer to go below. We went below--miles and miles, I think--to where,
standing on metal runways that were hot to the foot, overalled Scots
ministered to the heart and the lungs and the bowels of that ship.
Electricity spat cracklingly in our faces, and at our sides steel shafts
as big as the pillars of a temple spun in coatings of spumy grease; and
through the double skin of her we could hear, over our heads, a mighty
Niagaralike churning as the slew-footed screws kicked us forward
twenty-odd knots an hour. Someone raised the cover of a vat, and peering
down into the opening we saw a small, vicious engine hard at work,
entirely enveloped in twisty, coily, stewy depths of black oil, like a
devil-fish writhing in sea-ooze and cuttle-juice.
So then we descended another mile or two to an inferno, full of naked,
sooty devils forever feeding sulphurous pitfires in the nethermost
parlors of the damned; but they said this was the stokehole; and I was
in no condition to argue with them, for I had suddenly begun to realize
that I was far from being a well person. As one peering through a glass
darkly, I saw one of the attendant demons sluice his blistered bare
breast with cold water, so that the sweat and grime ran from him in
streams like ink; and peering in at a furnace door I saw a great angry
sore of coals all scabbed and crusted over. Then another demon, wielding
a nine-foot bar daintily as a surgeon wields a scalpel, reached in and
stabbed it in the center, so that the fire burst through and gushed up
red and rich, like blood from a wound newly lanced.
I had seen enough and to spare; but my guide brought me back by way of
the steerage, in order that I might know how the other half lives.
There was nothing here, either of smell or sight, to upset the human
stomach--third class is better fed and better quartered now on those big
ships than first class was in those good old early days--but I had
held in as long as I could and now I relapsed. I relapsed in a vigorous
manner--a whole-souled, boisterous manner. People halfway up the
deck heard me relapsing, and I will warrant some of them were fooled
too--they thought I was seasick.
It was due to my attack of climate fever that I missed the most exciting
thing which happened on the voyage. I refer to the incident of the
professional gamblers and the youth from Jersey City. From the very
first there was one passenger who had been picked out by all the knowing
passengers as a professional gambler; for he was the very spit-and-image
of a professional gambler as we have learned to know him in story books.
Did he not dress in plain black, without any jewelry? He certainly did.
Did he not have those long, slender, flexible fingers? Such was,
indeed, the correct description of those fingers. Was not his eye a keen
steely-blue eye that seemed to have the power of looking right through
you? Steely-blue was the right word, all right. Well, then, what more
could you ask?
Behind his back sinister yet fascinating rumors circulated. He was the
brilliant but unscrupulous scion of a haughty house in England. He had
taken a first degree at Oxford, over there, and the third one at police
headquarters, over here. Women simply could not resist him. Let him make
up his mind to win a woman and she was a gone gosling. His picture
was to be found in rogues' galleries and ladies' lockets. And sh-h-h!
Listen! Everybody knew he was the identical crook who, disguised in
woman's clothes, escaped in the last lifeboat that left the sinking
Titanic. Who said so? Why--er--everybody said so!
It came as a grievous disappointment to all when we found out the truth,
which was that he was the booking agent for a lyceum bureau, going
abroad to sign up some foreign talent for next season's Chautauquas;
and the only gambling he had ever done was on the chance of whether
the Tyrolian Yodelers would draw better than our esteemed secretary of
state--or vice versa.
Meantime the real professionals had established themselves cozily and
comfortably aboard, had rigged the trap and cheese-baited it, and were
waiting for the coming of one of the class that is born so numerously in
this country. If you should be traveling this year on one of the
large trans-Atlantic ships, and there should come aboard two young
well-dressed men and shortly afterward a middle-aged well-dressed man
with a flat nose, who was apparently a stranger to the first two; and if
on the second night out in the smoking room, while the pool on the next
day's run was being auctioned, one of the younger men, whom we will call
Mr. Y, should appear to be slightly under the influence of malt, vinous
or spirituous liquors--or all three of them at once--and should, without
seeming provocation, insist on picking a quarrel with the middle-aged
stranger, whom we will call Mr. Z; and if further along in the voyage
Mr. Z should introduce himself to you and suggest a little game of
auction bridge for small stakes in order to while away the tedium of
travel; and if it should so fall out that Mr. Y and his friend Mr.
X chanced to be the only available candidates for a foursome at this
fascinating pursuit; and if Mr. Z, being still hostile toward the
sobered and repentant Mr. Y, should decline to take on either Mr. Y or
his friend X as a partner, but chose you instead; and if on the second
or third deal you picked up your cards and found you had an apparently
unbeatable hand and should bid accordingly; and Mr. X should double you;
and Mr. Z, sitting across from you should come gallantly right back and
redouble it; and Mr. Y, catching the spirit of the moment, should double
again--and so on and so forth until each point, instead of being worth
only a paltry cent or two, had accumulated a value of a good many
cents--if all these things or most of them should befall in the order
enumerated--why, then, if I were you, gentle reader, I would have a
care. And I should leave that game and go somewhere else to have it
too--lest a worse thing befall you as it befell the guileless young
Jerseyman on our ship. After he had paid out a considerable sum on being
beaten--by just one card--upon the playing of his seemingly unbeatable
hand and after the haunting and elusive odor of eau de rodent had become
plainly perceptible all over the ship, he began, as the saying goes, to
smell a rat himself, and straightway declined to make good his remaining
losses, amounting to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high
words, meaning by that low ones, and accusations and recriminations, and
at eventide when the sunset was a welter of purple and gold, there was
a sudden smashing of glassware in the smoking room and a flurry of arms
and legs in a far corner, and a couple of pained stewards scurrying
about saying, "Ow, now, don't do that, sir, if you please, sir, thank
you, sir!" And one of the belligerents came forth from the melee wearing
a lavender eye with saffron trimmings, as though to match the sunset,
and the other with a set of skinned knuckles, emblematic of the skinning
operations previously undertaken. And through all the ship ran the
hissing tongues of scandal and gossip.
Out of wild rumor and cross-rumor, certain salient facts were eventually
precipitated like sediment from a clouded solution. It seemed that the
engaging Messrs. X, Y and Z had been induced, practically under false
pretenses to book passage, they having read in the public prints that
the prodigal and card-foolish son of a cheese-paring millionaire father
meant to take the ship too; but he had grievously disappointed them
by not coming aboard at all. Then, when in an effort to make their
traveling expenses back, they uncorked their newest trick and device
for inspiring confidence in gudgeons, the particular gudgeon of their
choosing had refused to pay up. Naturally they were fretful and peevish
in the extreme. It spoiled the whole trip for them.
Except for this one small affair it was, on the whole, a pleasant
voyage. We had only one storm and one ship's concert, and at the finish
most of us were strong enough to have stood another storm. And the trip
had been worth a lot to us--at least it had been worth a lot to me,
for I had crossed the ocean on one of the biggest hotels afloat. I had
amassed quite a lot of nautical terms that would come in very handy for
stunning the folks at home when I got back. I had had my first thrill at
the sight of foreign shores. And just by casual contact with members
of the British aristocracy, I had acquired such a heavy load of true
British hauteur that in parting on the landing dock I merely bowed
distantly toward those of my fellow Americans to whom I had not been
introduced; and they, having contracted the same disease, bowed back in
the same haughty and distant manner.
When some of us met again, however, in Vienna, the insulation had been
entirely rubbed off and we rushed madly into one another's arms and
exchanged names and addresses; and, babbling feverishly the while, we
told one another what our favorite flower was, and our birthstone and
our grandmother's maiden name, and what we thought of a race of
people who regarded a cup of ostensible coffee and a dab of honey
as constituting a man's-size breakfast. And, being pretty tolerably
homesick by that time, we leaned in toward a common center and gave
three loud, vehement cheers for the land of the country sausage and the
home of the buckwheat cake--and, as giants refreshed, went on our ways
rejoicing.
That, though, was to come later. At present we are concerned with the
trip over and what we had severally learned from it. I personally had
learned, among other things, that the Atlantic Ocean, considered as
such, is a considerably overrated body. Having been across it, even on
so big and fine and well-ordered a ship as this ship was, the ocean, it
seemed to me, was not at all what it had been cracked up to be.
During the first day out it is a novelty and after that a
monotony--except when it is rough; and then it is a doggoned nuisance.
Poets without end have written of the sea, but I take it they stayed at
home to do their writing. They were not on the bounding billow when they
praised it; if they had been they might have decorated the billow, but
they would never have praised it.
As the old song so happily put it: My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean! And a
lot of others have lied over it too; but I will not--at least not just
yet. Perhaps later on I may feel moved to do so; but at this moment I
am but newly landed from it and my heart is full of rankling resentment
toward the ocean and all its works.
I speak but a sober conviction when I say that the chief advantage to
be derived from taking an ocean voyage is not that you took it, but that
you have it to talk about afterward. And, to my mind, the most
inspiring sight to be witnessed on a trip across the Atlantic is the
Battery--viewed from the ocean side, coming back.
Do I hear any seconds to that motion?