[Illustration]
There is a frightful crush on board. It would take years to consider all
the faces. Numbers of ladies are going out to join their husbands after
having taken their children home in spring. By the afternoon all the new
comers look much refreshed; they have washed off the travel stains of
that dusty journey across France, have tidied up, eaten, and slept a
little, and have perhaps met friends of the road. You hear,
"Hillo--hillo--you here again! met in Simla last, didn't we--wasn't it
cold last night?" "By Jingo it was--rummy spell of cold--coming over all
western Europe so suddenly," and they talk of "Cold weathers," and
"Rains," and "Monsoons," and places you think you heard about in school
days and have forgotten; and you realise something of what there is
ahead to learn.
Meantime I watch the lascars taking off the effect of the coaling last
night; how blue and sharp the reflections of the sky are on the wet deck
and their dark feet. It is my business to paint things, not to write,
about them, still, both occupations dissipate the time wonderfully. They
are scrubbing down the waist, washing the decks with brushes and
squeejees and lashins of blue Mediterranean; they wear dungaree tunics,
and trousers of dark blue and faded pale blues, with red cloth round
their straw skull-caps, and are all in shadow--that colourful, melting,
warm shade you have in the South in the afternoon.
27th Evening.--To what shall I liken this evening on deck? You know a
railway carriage on Bank Holiday, and you have heard perhaps of a
Newfoundland sealing ship, the crew head and tail and three deep in the
bunks, and all about the deck and along the bulwarks for want of
room--well, it's worse here, at the price! In the smoking-room there is
not an inch to sit on; men lean against the pillars, others against the
side of the bar or against each other. A few have got seats for bridge,
others sit on sofas round the side, the rest have to stand. There were
more passengers when we left Tilbury than allowed any free movement on
deck; we made light of that. Now, people are jammed beside each other
all the way up the side of the deck that is sheltered from the sweep of
the wind, others sit on the rail; those who want to move have to pick a
devious and careful course between the lines of chairs. And this is to
be to-night, and to-morrow, till we get to India! And it will yet be
worse than it is just now, for many passengers from Marseilles are still
below, waiting for baths and arranging their crowded cabins.
I have to write letters and sketch on a dining-saloon table amongst
waiters clearing dishes. There are four small tables on deck in what I
think is called the music room, and they are fully occupied with ladies
writing and bridge players, and round them every seat in the room is
occupied. It is a crowd of people of the most gentle manners and
breeding, or it would be horrible beyond words.
[Illustration]
28th.--I suppose there were not more than fifty men in the smoking-room
late last night when it became sufficiently empty to allow me to see
separate faces. There were civilians, judges, and one or two men of
business, but the majority were soldiers of middle age. I confess I am
much impressed by the general type and the expression of quiet strength
and capability of these men of the Indian Services. They have finely
modelled heads on powerful figures, better, I think, than any type of
the ancients. Their manners are cheery and kindly, but always in repose
the lines show strongly across the brow; faces and lines seem to me to
spell D-U-T-Y emphatically. For a _nouveau_ it is difficult to follow
their talk, it changes so quickly from the man to his horse, to his seat
and powers as cavalry leader or the like, perhaps to his family, his
marriage, or his death, and whenever the family interest comes in, there
is a note of genuine kindness as if brothers were telling or asking
about other brothers and their wives and belongings. They speak rather
quickly and cheerily, and then in repose the lines come again, not that
they look over-worn; on the contrary they look fit, tremendously and are
very abstemious. One speaks near me--"You knew so and so? Good
horseman--wasn't he? Curious seat--do you remember the way he rode with
his toes out?" "Yes, yes--ha, ha!--it was funny! He led a column with me
at Abu Lassin. Very sad his death, poor fellow--never got over the last
war--heart always suffered--nice wife." "Yes, yes--gave him pretty bad
time though--oughtn't to have married. Where is his boy--Sandhurst? No,
he's left--he's coming out next month in a troop ship, I hear." These
are the older soldiers, and there are also many young officers, and two
judges of the High Courts, one with nimble tongue and expression, the
other the reverse. And there are business men with concentrated and
perhaps rather narrower expressions than the others--Irish, Scots, and
English. As they are all in the same black and white kit in the evening
it is easier then to compare the various faces; in the daytime the
variety of costume, flannels, and coloured ties and tweeds prevent one
doing it so easily; I'd like to make a sketch of each, and superimpose
these, and get the average, the type of the thousands who follow this
road year after year.
... As usual, these Bayards, in dressing gowns of various cuts and
colours, stood outside the bathrooms this morning and waited their turn,
and if the atmosphere was not murky with swear words, it was not to the
P. & O.'s credit. To most men tub time is the jolliest in the day; here
it is one of evil temper, for after you have waited say twenty minutes
in a passage for your chance, you get into a little wet steamy place
over the engines, with possibly no port and poorly ventilated, and have
your tub in a hurry for you know other fellows are waiting outside, and
instead of gaily carolling your morning song you feel angry and cuss
cusses, not loud, but profound as Tuscarora Deep. "Oh! Mummie, do come
and see all the men waiting for their baths," said a little angel this
morning, as she pointed at the solemn row of bare-footed men holding on
to their towels and sponge-bags and tempers--we actually grinned. Like
some others I give up the attempt to get a morning tub, and trust to
sneak one in during the day; better to have no bath than to start the
day cross--"better to smash your damned clubs than to lose your damned
temper," as the golfer in a bunker was overheard muttering as he broke
each club across his knee. The ladies, some hundreds, have I think five
baths between them, and they wait for these a great part of the day. If
you pass their waiting-room you get a glimpse of wonderful morning
toilettes of every tint, muslins, laces, a black boy with red turbash
bustling about to get the bath ready makes rather a good note of colour.
... Notwithstanding all the above grievance we hadn't such a bad day
yesterday; it was calm and not too cold, with a soft pigeon grey sea and
sky.... Put in a long day's painting in the corner of the after-well,
and overhauling sketches done so far on the road--they are mounting up
now, and I feel fortunate in having my apology for existence in such a
handy shape as a paint box.
But how dull this log-writing becomes! How on earth can I find an
incident to pad up this journal; what is there to write about in a route
so monotonously first class! Here is absolutely the most risque exciting
story I have heard for days; I must say the lady who told it has such an
infectious laugh, that at the time I really thought it was very amusing.
You know the cabins on the P. & O. steamers are all exactly like each
other, except the number above each door. So once upon a time she
related, a certain lady tripped along to her cabin as she thought, to
hurry up her husband for dinner and found him pulling on a shirt; she
plumped into a seat, saying, "John, John, you are always too late for
dinner, and there's no use trying to struggle into your shirt with the
studs fastened?" Whereon the neck stud flew and revealed an astonished
face--and it was not "John's." After lunch I told this to my barrister
acquaintance; he smiled gently and said he had always thought it such an
amusing story.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How I wish I was back at sea again on a whaler, with a swinging hammock,
a tow net, and microscope, and opportunities any day to study the fairy
beauties in drops of sea water, and with human interest too, so much
more varied than on this P. & O. Hotel; there, would be all kinds of
men, jolly, devil-may-care fellows, and even disreputable characters,
mixed with canny, pawky, canting Scotties, and talk of all the corners
of the world; ranting rollicking Balzacian yarns, rich in language, in
poetry, and tenderness; any minute in the day amongst such people you
might strike a yarn that would bear publication; the picturesque
interest of life does not seem to be on the high plains, or low levels,
but as it were between wind and water, where plain meets mountain, the
poor the rich, between happiness and sorrow, and light and shade; and
the fun of painting between one colour and the next. It is all very
respectably drab here, and we talk of intellectual and proper things.
For an hour to-day--no, two hours I am sure--I laboured at Indian
sociology and history and Vedas and things, with the barrister, and I
was tired! The barrister knows many books on these subjects, and
recommends me to read Sir W. W. Hunter's "History of India" in its
abridged form of only 700 pages; I suppose I must!--told my cousin I'd
been trying to talk Indian sociology and he shouted: said he knew a man
who had lived in India and studied the native life for twenty-eight
years, and confessed he knew as little about it at the end as at the
beginning; but R. admitted that whenever he had a knotty question of
native affairs to settle he always went to this man, and the decision
was invariably right. R. has qualified admiration for the Indians
honesty. Once, he said, he had to leave his house at a moment's notice,
to take home a sick relation, and left all standing, and on coming back
months after found every single stick of furniture just as he left it,
and not a single article stolen, except one door-mat; his night watchman
had taken it with him to another situation, leaving a humble message to
the effect that he had got so accustomed to it that he couldn't sleep
without it! Their honesty must run in grooves for R. gave a heavy
overcoat to one of his men in a cold station, and when he and his
servants went to a very hot station, he noticed this man still wearing
the thick coat and sweating like anything, so he asked him why he did
so, and the man replied that he dared not put it off for a minute or it
would be stolen.
[Illustration]
We had quite an audience for the fiddles this Saturday--there are two
lady violinists now, both very good players--but we had only a short
spell of music in the music room on account of a choir practise, for
to-morrow; the parson came and took our musicians down to the
dining-room to sing over hymns and psalms, verse by verse. I heard the
wheeze of the harmonium, and got back to my own chest-lid (sailor term
for my own business)--"Every man to his own chest-lid and the cook to
the foresheet," is it not a suggestive saying? To every man his
prerogative, his chest-lid, and his duties, and the same for the cook
and the least bit more! It is now getting passably mild, and we can sit
out on deck at night. It was supposed to be hot enough for the punkahs
in the saloon; one is hung over the length of each of the five tables,
to port and starboard, and there are others the whole length of the
table that runs up the middle of the saloon. I have long wished to see a
punkah, now I wish I may never see another! On this ship they are narrow
velvet rugs hung on edge from horizontal bars, this is swung by two
ropes from the roof, and they are all guyed together with cords, so that
one pull, from a lascar outside the cabin, sets them all into violent
commotion. They hit your face when you stand, and sitting, their lowest
edge stirs up your hair. These velvet rugs have white cotton covers on
them now that they are being used, so the general effect at dinner-time
is of a huge laundry in a gale, with beautiful laundresses in low
dresses sitting at table under a world of wildly flapping linen; with
the lamps lit, and our black coats for a foil, the colours are really
extremely pretty, though the discomfort is great. Men and women are all
getting a little brown with the sea air, and the ladies have a little of
the blush of spring now, instead of the pallor of winter with which they
came on board.
[Illustration]
Egypt in sight, and this morning we tubbed in the water of the river
that floated Moses, and that has been bathed in and drunk since by such
a number of people we know, or have read about. Sea and Nile are
meeting in blue, and green, and brownish stripes, blending to a general
absinthe colour as we get closer to the flat delta; little level rows of
cloud throw purple shadows across the crisp small waves, and over the
horizon there's a flight of white lateen sails.
What a bustle there is on board to-day; people running up and down
stairs with letters hurriedly finished, addressed and stamped to the
children at home. No use writing to the man who waits out there, for we
carry the mail. It is touching, the wife looking forward and back at the
same time--the bull must pass--and the young girl too, leaving the old
life for the new married life in a new country; it must take courage.
My notes at Port Said seem to have disappeared, possibly I did not write
any. I remember that there was so much to see in the morning; and the
change of colour in the water, the absinthe colour of the Nile with pale
blue reflections winding in currents in distinct streams into the sea,
would, with the blue ocean, need very subtile painting. I remember the
fearful jabber, which I suppose has gone on and always will, since Port
Said was invented. I got a glimpse of Lesseps's statue at lunch through
the port-hole; he points with right hand twice life size up the harbour
with a heroic expression, and seems to say to the steamers that come in
from the sea, "Higher up there S.V.P.--try a little higher up." We
watched the often described black men coaling in black dust, singing and
working, the sun's rays making shafts of light stream through the clouds
of black coal dust; and the same pandemonium at night in the flare of
lights, when the scene is generally admitted to be like the nether
regions.
I know we went ashore somehow or other, and that we could hardly see for
the shouting and yelling! We felt fortunate in having a Mrs
Deputy-Commissioner for a companion, for she was bubbling over with
humour and anecdote. She and G. promptly began shopping, and certainly
succeeded in getting two rather becoming topees, flatter and prettier
than any I have yet seen--you might call them Romney topees; one may
appear in sketches further on. I sketched of course--always keep
"screeb, screeb, screebling all day long," as an irate German lady once
put it to me, "screebled" a cafe scene; on the left you see a native,
who calls himself Jock Furgusson, trying to pass off a "Genuine Egyptian
Scarab" to a tourist. Jock Furgusson is infinitely more wonderful and
artistic to me than the pyramids, for he can imitate accents so as to
make you gasp; he spots anyone's nationality instantaneously--before you
have opened your lips he knows your county! I believe he can distinguish
between the English of a Lowland Scot and a Highlander, which is more
than '_Punch_' does after all these years of practice. "Ah'm, Jock
Furgusson frae Auchtermurrchty and Achterlony, longest maun in the forty
twa," he begins--but somebody help me--I've forgotten how he goes on, a
long rigmarole in broadest Doric; the words and intonation so perfect,
you can so little believe your eyes that you are landed with a scarab or
a string of beads before you have recovered, and he is off to another
passenger, clippin' 'is g's and r's and puttin' in h's to some
Englishmen.
The inhabitants of Port Said, we are told, represent the scourings of
the Levant; too bad for Cairo, and black-balled for Hell. All the same
G. and I went ashore by ourselves after dinner, rather proud of our
courage, for several passengers said it wasn't safe. It used not to be
safe, I know, but I asked the Chief-Engineer what he thought, and he
took his right hand in his left, all but the very tip of the little
finger which he measured off with his left thumb nail, and said, "a
black maun's heart's no as big as that." So we went ashore and had no
adventures at all, but sat in a balcony and listened to pretty good
music, and noted the few drowsy figures in the side streets, the glow of
lamp or brazier on their heavy draperies, contrasting with the starlight
and the deep velvety shadows--moth-like colouring, and intense
repose, after the glittering, howling day.
[Illustration: A Cafe, Port Said]
Looking back over these notes, and the Orient and Pacific Guide Book,
and the Acts of the Apostles, I observe that I have made no note about
Corsica and Sardinia, Lipari Islands, and Stromboli, or of the Straits
of Messina and Etna--have barely mentioned Crete! In the Lipari Islands
we saw lights ashore, and down the Straits of Messina; and Stromboli we
discovered easily enough by the glow of hot red up in the sky, and a
sloping line of red that went glittering downwards. It was too dark to
distinguish anything more.
We saw Crete, enough to swear by, the white top of Mount Ida, and
realized where Fair Haven and Phenice and Clauda must lie, and that we
were actually in the seas where the Apostle Paul was caught in the
Euroclydon. By the way what is a Euroclydon; is it a Levanter?
Was there ever a voyage so vividly described, in more concentrated and
pithy words? In eight verses you have a complete dramatic account of a
tragedy at sea, from a passenger's point of view. It would be curious
and interesting to learn what the owner thought, and said, when the
prisoner suggested that he, and his sailing master, and the Centurion,
were all wrong in a question of navigation; and how it came about that
shortly after this difference of opinion the prisoner was master of the
commissariat, and how, after heavy weather and fasting fourteen days on
a rocky coast, 276 souls were saved on bits of wreckage without the loss
of one life! The Board of Trade and Life Saving Societies might enquire
into this, and report.