[Illustration: Sunday parade of Lascars.]
Our first day with a blue sky at sea--my word it is blue, impossibly
blue, and the sun is beaming! We have had a quiet night, so everyone is
very contented. On our left the Spanish coast is very mountainous, and
little cloudlets are throwing shadows over the mountain sides. G. and I
study our Spanish grammar; but perhaps "study" is hardly the word, dream
over it would be more exact, and wonder at the blueness of the sea and
the blue reflected lights on the hurricane deck above us. We have
managed to get our chairs into a patch of sun; we rather court its rays
just now, by the time we come home again I daresay we will take the
shady side of the street. So close are we to the coast that, looking
through the glasses, we can see into the glens and make out cottages
where we know the people are speaking Spanish; and we plan a voyage
through these hills some day; therefore our Spanish exercises. What a
country it is both for castles and voyages, and how many ways there are
to travel in it. In the train or on horseback, or with mules or a
donkey, or a coach and four, as did Theophile Gautier. But not on foot
for choice, that would be so undignified as to be barely safe in Spain.
We arrange to have mules--for there is such a distinguished and
aristocratic appearance about a train of mules, and an air of romance
about them and their gay caparisons. We will trek over these mountains,
and through the cork woods and brackens in the glens, live on figs and
Vino Riojo carried in black skins on our sumpter mules, and camp at
night on the dry ground under the brown trunks of the cork
trees--another book, _mes amis_, and pictures, I vow! It will be in the
South of Spain, this voyage of ours, amongst the elegant, fiery
Andalusians, and we might combine the treking with a little coasting to
Cadiz and Malaga, then inland by the Rhonda Valley, where travelling on
mules would be almost rapid compared with the train. There are such
lovely villages there, embowered in foliage and flowers at the bottom of
rocky glens, and such pleasant peasants, with quiet, gentle manners.
Just this last word before we lose sight of Spain. Why do women at home
not adopt Spanish dancing? I am quite sure it is the secret of the
Andalusian's poise and walk.
[Illustration]
There is a very distinct swell, and people say it will blow in the Gulf
of Lyons, and think they had better have gone overland to Marseilles. We
pass the Balearic Isles, and at the distance they much resemble other
islands.
Before lunch we saw an extraordinary marine effect. Along the coast the
blue sea appeared to be covered with a veil or mist of grass green
colour, the green of a duck pond; beyond it the coast was distinct,
distant I should say about eighteen miles. We could see upper-top-sails
and the peaks of lateen sails beyond the flat bank of green, which
seemed to begin a few miles from the shore and spread over the sea's
surface several miles west and east. What made me think it was an effect
of colour above water, not in it, was that with glasses I could
distinctly see the blue backs of the swell coming through it. No one I
have met has ever seen the like, but one of the officers was asked what
it was, and he said "Water."
In the afternoon we had two interesting shows on board. A bell rang, and
a waiter who was bringing us tea turned tail and fled--it was a fire
alarm! It was pretty the way every man in the ship's company jumped to
fire-stations; hose pipes were down and connected, and pumps manned very
quickly, and bar a little talk amongst the lascars, which was
immediately stopped, everything was done in silence--bravo, British
discipline! All the iron doors were shut and bolted, the inspection
followed, and that done, away went everyone, quickly and silently, to
boat-stations. All this rehearsal only took about half-an-hour or less,
then the tea came.
Another entertainment followed--a dummy dinner. Fifty waiters, all young
men, about half white and half Indian, took their posts at the tables up
the side of the saloon and down the middle. A tap on a gong and away
they all streamed to the entrances to the saloon, to port and starboard
service tables at the kitchen, where they pretended to get courses of
dinner, and then went and stood at their tables whilst the two pursers
and head steward went round the whole of them, patiently asking each
separately his duties: "What have you to do?" and each man answered as
well as he could, and corrections were made. This inspection took fully
an hour, then they went through the coffee, cream, and sugar and tea
drill. All this dinner and fire drill is very thorough, I must admit,
and the management of a big crowd of people on a ship begins to impress
me--but the tea--is horrid!
[Illustration]
We are now going north-east towards Marseilles. The sun shines, and it
blows a gentle half gale. The sea is blue where it isn't white, and the
wind is strong enough to keep us lying steadily over to starboard decks
of course all wet, with rainbows at the bow, and bursting spray over all
occasionally--people rather subdued, only a small muster at breakfast.
Place aux dames! I forgot to mention that a very beautiful French lady
came on board at Gibraltar; she looked like one of Van Beers' pictures
as she came down the quay steps in a most exquisite dress, dreamlike
petticoats, and open-work stockings on Diana's extremities, and she had
a little parasol, and held her skirts high--a Frenchwoman hates mud--and
the rain poured, in sheets! She gave a brave farewell to her friends and
fiance, and came on board with an air, notwithstanding the drenching
rain. She was beautiful--hair like night, eyes brown, and features most
perfectly Greek, and white as marble with a rose reflected on it! A
doctor beside me whispered "anaemic," the red-haired ass! She leaves us
at Marseilles, and will never travel by sea again. G. befriended her and
interpreted for her; she was so helpless and alone in a cabin meant for
three, with a pile of boxes miles bigger than the regulation size. With
feminine courage she fought sea-sickness, fainted in the barber's chair,
but appeared at dinner in another most exquisite toilet, and then--even
in the paroxysm of sickness, preserved perfect grace of movement of hand
and eye and draperies! What heroic courage! But enough of the tea rose
in our bean field; let us get to more material things, and to
Marseilles, and the coals rattling down the iron shoot beneath our heads
as we try to sleep in air thick with coal dust.
[Illustration]
This morning the racket is like nothing else in the world. It is a
combination of the babel of the East and West, of Europe and Africa.
There are four groups of musicians alongside, harpists, singers and
fiddlers, all within the ship's length on the quay, and others in boats
alongside.
We have two gangways reaching to the wharf, where are hundreds of
porters, ship waiters and stewards bringing vegetables on board, and
ships officers and hundreds of newly arrived passengers, all talking
more or less over the music, and passing to and fro across the gangways
in the sun. The ship feels too full to move in now. The new arrivals
look a little pale and tired after their overland journey by Paris, but
we weather-worn people with The Bay behind us, enjoy the whole scene
with the calm of experienced mariners! Behind the sunlit groups of
passengers with their baggage, the dock labourers in the sheds pile
grain sacks on to waggons, and strings of stout horses stand resting
beside them. On the edge of the quay are flower girls in black, selling
big bunches of violets, and a Strong-man in pink tights and sky-blue
knickerbockers--a festive piece of colour taken with his two white
chairs and bright carpet. He plays with silver balls and does balancing
feats with his little girl, and puts his arms round her and strokes her
hair after each turn, in a delicate appeal to the sympathies of
passengers who lean over the rail and take it all in somewhat sleepily.
... The post has brought me an Orient-Pacific guide-book which I wish I
had had coming down channel and along the Portuguese coast. I would
recommend it to anyone going this journey. It has a most interesting
collection of facts both about sea and land on the route.
... We met the beautiful French lady again last night at the Hotel de
Louvre, where everyone meets everyone else up town. I think she is
Gascon, and the very opposite of the fair Saxon type we ought to admire
at home. You hardly expect a perfectly beautiful woman to talk well, but
this perfection could both talk and dress; her personality was not "sunk
in her hat." She knew Scottish history, all about the good Lord James,
and about Mary Stuart, and what pleased us greatly was that she told us
words and hummed the airs of children's songs reputed to have been
written by Queen Mary, and which she said are sung to-day by French
children. The Hotel de Louvre soon filled, so we got away from the crowd
in a victoria and drove along the town to a cafe for supper, and it was
cold and dark too!
The cafe, Basso and Bregaillon, has a "vue splendide" (in the daytime),
so the bill says. What you see at night is a well lit quay with the cafe
lights shining out across the dark water in the dock on to some white
steam yachts. After getting rid of a uniformed interpreter, whose one
idea was to give us an "Engleesh dinner, very good, very sheep," we made
up our own order. Of course bouillabaisse et soupe de poissons was the
first item. I am not sure how to eat this, with a spoon or fork--two
dishes are set down at once, one with half an inch of saffron-coloured
soup, made of, I think, shell-fish, and with great slices of bread in
it--certainly a spoon is not very suitable; the other dish has a perfect
aquarium of little fish and bits of bigger fish beautifully arranged in
a pyramid with similar soup round it--there are bits of red mullet,
crab, green fish, and white fish, and all sorts of odds and ends. Why do
we not make dishes like this at home? I get just such oddities any time
I lift my trammel net, but they are thrown away as "trash." But the
French are artists in every line of life, in cooking, in dress, and I
believe they put art into the way they heave the coal on board. We feel
much inclined to stay here a little and see more of these Southern
French. I love their jolly abandon of manner, their kindness and
"honesty," and their gasconade. So here's to you Cyrano and Daudet,
D'Artagnan and Tartarin, not forgetting M. le President.
Who do you think sat beside us within arm's length but Rejane! There
were only six or seven people in the cafe and none of them were aware of
the presence of their distinguished compatriot till we whispered her
name to the waiter, and he whispered it to them and their eyes opened! I
came to G.'s side of the table so that I might see the great actress in
mufti, and I would have liked to have made a sketch of her as she talked
to her companion, but it would have been too obvious--you know the way
she speaks, a little out of the corner of her eye and mouth, with hand
on hip. She is great! We saw her only a year ago with Coquelin in "La
Mantansier."
This is the head of the Serang; I took it when he was not looking. He
runs the lascars on board; acts pretty much as bo'sun. This face is
brown and beard died rusty red, and he wears a lovely boatswains silver
whistle on a silver chain, and has an air of command and the appearance
of deepest intelligence.
[Illustration]