interfere with our sight-seeing. It would in America, but it doesn't in
Malta. There was chanting around the altar, and there were worshippers
kneeling all about, but our guide led us among them and over them as if
they had not existed. It seemed curious to us that he could do this,
that we could follow him unmolested. We tried to get up some feeling of
delicacy in the matter, and to make some show of reluctance, but he led
us and drove us along relentlessly, and did not seem to fear the
consequences.
We got outside at last and were nailed by a frowsy man who wanted to
sell one grimy postal card of the Chapel of Bones. We didn't want the
card, but we said he might take us to the chapel if he knew the way.
Nothing so good as that ever came into his life before. From a mendicant
seller of one wretched card, worth a penny at most, he had suddenly
blossomed into the guide of two American tourists. The card disappeared.
With head erect he led the way as one having received knighthood.
Our crowd was waiting admission outside the chapel and we did not need
our guide any more. But that didn't matter--he needed us. He accepted
his salary to date, but he did not accept his discharge. We went into
the Chapel of Bones, which is a rather grewsome place, with a lot of
decorations made out of bleached human remnants--not a pleasant spot in
which to linger--and when we came out again there was our guide, ready
to take us in hand. We resisted feebly, but surrendered. We didn't care
for the regular programme and wanted to wander away, anyhow. He
suggested that we go to the Governor's palace and armory, so we went
there.
The armory was worth while. It was full of armor of the departed knights
and of old arms of every sort. We think breech-loading guns are modern,
but we saw them there from the sixteenth century--long, deadly-looking
weapons--and there were rope guns; also little mortars not more than
three or four inches deep--mere toys--a stout man with a pile of rocks
would be more effective, I should think.
We saw the trumpet, too, that led La Valette to victory in 1565, and
some precious documents--among them the Grant of Malta made by Charles
V. to the knights, 1530. These were interesting things and we lingered
there until within a minute of noon, when we went out into the grounds
to see the great bronze clock on the Governor's palace strike twelve.
And all the rest of our party had collected in the grounds of the
Governor's palace, and pretty soon the Governor came out and made us a
little speech of welcome and invited us to luncheon on the lawn, with
cold chicken and ices and nice fizzy drinks. No, that was not what
happened--not exactly. Our crowd was not there, and we did not see the
Governor and we were not invited to picnic on the lawn. Otherwise the
statement is correct. We did go out into the grounds, and we did see the
clock strike. The other things are what we thought should happen, and
they would have happened if we had received our just deserts.
Well, then, those things did not materialize, but our guide did. He
would always materialize, so long as we stayed in Malta. So we
re-engaged him and signified that we wanted food. He led us away to what
seemed to be a hotel, but the clerk, who did not speak English, regarded
us doubtfully. Then the landlord came. He had a supply of English but no
food. No one is fed at a hotel in Malta who has not ordered in advance.
At least, that is what he said, and we went away, sorrowing.
We were not alone. A crowd had collected while we were inside--a crowd
of the would-be guides and already beggars, with sellers and torments of
various kinds. We were assailed as soon as we touched the street, and
our guide, who was not very robust, was not entirely able to protect us
from them. He did steer us to a restaurant, however, a decent enough
little place, and on the steps outside they disputed for us and wrangled
over us and divided us up while we ate. It was like the powers getting
ready to dismember China.
We laid out our programme for the afternoon. We wanted to get some
Maltese lace, and to make a little side trip by rail to Citta Vecchia
(the old city) which two native gentlemen at our table told us would
give us a good idea of the country. Then we paid our bill, had a battle
with a bootblack who had surreptitiously been polishing my shoes, fought
our way through the barbarians without, and finally escaped by sheer
flight, our guide at our heels.
We told him that we wanted lace. Ah, a smile that was like morning
overspread his face. He took us to a large shop, where we found some of
our friends already negotiating, but we did not linger. We said we
wanted to find a little shop--a place where it was made. He led us to
another bazaar. Again we said, "No, a little shop--a _very_ little shop,
on a back street."
[Illustration: TWO BENT, WRINKLED WOMEN WEAVING LACE OUTSIDE THE DOOR]
Clearly he was disappointed. He did find one for us, however, a tiny
place in an alley, with two bent, wrinkled women weaving lace outside
the door.
How their deft fingers made those little bobbins fly, and what beautiful
stuff it was, creamy white silk in the most wonderful patterns and
stitches. They showed us their stock eagerly, and they had masses of it.
Then we bargained and cheapened and haggled, in the approved fashion we
have picked up along the way, and went off at last with our purchases,
everybody happy--they because they would have taken less, we because we
would have given more. Only our guide was a bit solemn. I suppose his
commission was modest enough in a place like that.
He took us to the railway-station--the only railway in Malta. Then I
made a discovery: we had no current coin of the realm and the railway
would take only English money. No matter. We had discharged our guide
three times and paid him each separate time. He was a capitalist now,
and he promptly advanced the needed funds. We were grateful, and invited
him to go along. But he said "No," that he would remain at the station
until our return.
He was faithful, you see, and he trusted us. Besides, we couldn't
escape. There was only that one road and train. We took our seats in an
open car, on account of the scenery. We didn't know it was third-class
till later, but we didn't mind that. What we did mind was plunging into
a thick, black, choking tunnel as soon as we started; then another and
another. This was scenery with a vengeance.
We were out at last, and in a different world. Whatever was modern in
Malta had been left behind. This was wholly Eastern--Syrian--a piece out
of the Holy Land, if the pictures tell us the truth. Everywhere were the
one-story, flat-topped architecture and the olive-trees of the Holy Land
pictures; everywhere stony fields and myriads of stone walls.
At a bound we had come from what was only a few hundred years ago,
mingled with to-day, to what was a few thousand years ago, mingled with
nothing modern whatever. There is no touch of English dominion here, or
French, or Italian. This might be Syrian or Moorish; it might be, and
_is_ Maltese.
We saw men ploughing with a single cow and a crooked stick in a manner
that has prevailed here always. We mentioned the matter to our
railway-conductor, who was a sociable person and had not much to do.
"You are from America," he said.
"Yes, we are from America."
"And do they use different ploughs there?"
He spoke the English of the colonies, and it seemed incredible that he
should not know about these things. We broke it to him as gently as
possible that we did not plough with a crooked stick in America, but
with such ploughs as were used in England. However, that meant nothing
to him, as he had never been off the island of Malta in his life. His
name was Carina, he told us, and his parents and grandparents before him
had been born on the island. Still, I think he must have had English or
Irish pigment in that red hair of his. His English was perfect, though
he spoke the Maltese, too, of course.
He became our guide as we went along, willing and generous with his
information, though more interested, I thought, in the questions he
modestly asked us, now and then. His whole environment--all his
traditions--had been confined to that little sea-encircled space of old,
old town, and older, much older country.
He would like to come to America, he confessed, and I wondered, if some
day he should steam up New York harbor and look upon that piled
architecture, and then should step ashore and find himself amidst its
whirl of traffic, he would not be even more impressed by it than we were
with his tiny forgotten island here to the south of Sicily.
We passed little stations, now and then, with pretty stone and marble
station-houses, but with no villages of any consequence, and came to
Citta Vecchia, which the Arabs called Medina, formerly the capital of
the island. It is a very ancient place, set upon a hill and bastioned
round with walls that are too high to scale, and were once impregnable.
It has stood many an assault--many a long-protracted siege. To-day it is
a place of crumbling ruins and deserted streets--a mediaeval dream.
It was raining when we got back to Valetta, and our faithful guide
hurried us toward the boat-landing by a short way, for we were anxious
to get home now. Every few yards we were assailed by hackmen and
beggars, and by boatmen as soon as we reached the pier. He kept us
intact, however, and got us into our own boat, received the rest of his
fortune--enough to set him up for life, by Maltese standards--waved us
good-bye, and we were being navigated across the wide, rainy waste
toward our steamer, which seemed to fill one side of that little harbor.
What a joy to be on deck again and in the cosey cabin, drinking hot tea
and talking over our adventures and purchases with our fellow-wanderers.
The ship is home, rest, comfort--a world apart. We are weighing anchor
now, and working our course out of the bottle-neck, to sea. It is a
narrow opening--a native pilot directs us through it and leaves the ship
only at the gateway. Then we sail through and out into the darkening sky
where a storm is gathering--the green billows catching the dusk purple
on their tips, the gulls white as they breast the rising wind.
We gather on the after deck to say good-bye to Malta. Wall upon wall,
terrace upon terrace it rises from the sea--heaped and piled back
against the hills--as old, as quaint, as unchanged as it was a thousand
years ago. Viewed in this spectral half-light it might be any one of the
ancient cities. Ephesus, Antioch, Tyre--it suggests all those names, and
we speak of these things in low voices, awed by the spectacle of
gathering night and storm.
Then, as the picture fades, we return to the lighted cabins, where it is
gay and cheerful and modern, while there in the dark behind, that old
curious island life still goes on; those curious shut-in people are
gathering in their houses; the day, with its cares, its worries, and its
hopes is closing in on that tiny speck, set in that dark and lonely
sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] There would seem to have been some sort of confusion of Malta with
the city of Muscat. Perhaps the reader can figure out just what it was.
It had something to do with domestic pets, I believe.
XIV
A SUNDAY AT SEA
We are in classic waters now. All this bleak Sunday we have been
steaming over the Ionian Sea, crossed so long ago by Ulysses when he
went exploring; crossed and recrossed a hundred times by the galleyed
fleets of Rome. We have followed the exact course, perhaps, of those old
triremes with their piled-up banks of oars, when they sailed away to
conquer the East, also when they returned loaded down with captives and
piled high with treasure.
A little while ago Cythera was on our port bow, the island where
Aphrodite was born of wind and wave, and presently set out to make
trouble among the human family. She and her son Cupid, who has always
been too busy to grow up, have a good deal to answer for, and they are
still at their mischief, and will be, no doubt, so long as men are brave
and women fair.
However, they seemed to have overlooked this ship. There is only one
love-affair discoverable, and even that is of such a mild academic
variety that it is doubtful whether that tricksy jade Venus and her
dimpled son had any concern in the matter. It is rather a case of
Diana's hunting, I suspect, and not a love-affair at all.
I have mentioned that this is Sunday, but I acquired this knowledge
from the calendar. One would never guess it from the aspect of this ship
and its company. We made a pretty good attempt at Sabbath observance the
first Sunday out, and we did something in that line a week later. But
then we struck Genoa, where we lost the Promoter and took on this
European influx of languages, and now Sunday is the same as Friday or
Tuesday or any other day, and it would take an expert to tell the
difference.
I do not blame it all to the Europeans. They are a good lot, I believe,
some of them I am sure are, and we have taken to them amazingly. They
did teach us a few new diversions, but we were ready for instruction and
the Reprobates would have corrupted us anyhow, so it is no matter. The
new-comers only stimulated our education and added variety to our
progress. But they did make it bad for Sunday--the old-fashioned Sunday,
such as we had the first week out.
Not that our "pilgrims" are a bad lot--not by any means. They do whoop
it up pretty lively in the booze-bazaar now and then, and even a number
of our American ladies have developed a weakness for that congenial
corner of the ship. But everything is p. p., which is _Kurfuerst_ for
perfectly proper, and on this particular Sunday you could not scrape up
enough real sin on this ship to interest Satan five minutes.
Even the Reprobates are not entirely abandoned, and only three different
parties have been removed from their table in the dining-saloon by
request--request of the parties, that is--said parties being accustomed
to the simpler life--pleasant diversions of the home circle, as it
were--and not to the sparkle and the flow of good-fellowship on the high
seas, with the _bon mot_ of the Horse-Doctor, the repartee of the
Colonel, and the placid expletive of the Apostle which the rest of us
are depraved enough to adore.
The Apostle, by-the-way, is going to Jerusalem. He has been there
before, which he does not offer as a reason for going again, for he
found no comfort there, and he is unable to furnish the Doctor with a
sane reason why any one should ever want to go there, even once. I
suspect that when the sale of tickets for the side trips began the
Apostle, in his innocence, feared that there might not be enough to go
around, and thought that he had better secure one in case of accident. I
suspect this from his manner of urging the Doctor to secure one for
himself.
"You'll be too late, if you're not careful," he said. "You'd better go
right up and get your ticket now."
The Doctor was not alarmed. "Don't worry, Joe," he said. "You're booked
for Jerusalem, all right enough. I'll get mine when I decide to go."
"But suppose you decide to go after the party is made up?"
The Doctor stroked his chin. "Hell-of-a-note if I can't go ashore and
buy a ticket for Jerusalem," he said, which had not occurred to the
Apostle, who immediately remembered that he didn't want to go to
Jerusalem anyway, had never wanted to go, and had vowed, before, he
would never go again.
However, he will go, because the Colonel is going; and the Colonel is
going because, as the Doctor still insists, he made his money by
publishing Bibles without reading them, which I think doubtful--not
doubtful that he did not read them, but that he is going to the Holy
Land in consequence. I think he is going because he knows the Apostle is
going--and the Doctor, and the game of piquet. Those are reasons enough
for the Colonel. He is ready at a moment's notice to follow that
combination around the world.
But if we no longer have services on these sea Sundays we have other
features. The Music-Master plays for us, if encouraged, and he gave us a
lecture this afternoon. It was on ancient music, or art, or archaeology,
I am not sure which. I listened attentively and I am pretty sure it was
one of those things. He is a delightful old soul and his German is the
best I ever heard. If I could have about ten years' steady practice,
twelve hours a day, I think I could understand some of it.
The "Widow" entertains us too. She belongs to the Genoa contingent, and
is one of those European polyglots who speak every continental language
and make a fair attempt at English. It is her naivete and unfailing
good-nature that divert us. She approached one of our American ladies
who wears black.
"You a widow, not?" she said.
"Oh no, I am not a widow."
"Ah, then mebbe you yus' divorce, like me."
We get along well with the Europeans. Our captain tells us he has never
seen the nations mix more harmoniously, which means that we are a good
lot, altogether, which is fortunate enough.
But I am prone to run on about the ship and our travellers and forget
graver things; I ought to be writing about Greece, I suppose, and of the
wonders we are going to see, to-morrow, in Athens. I would do it, only I
haven't read the guide-book yet, and then I have a notion that Greece
has been done before. The old _Quaker City_ was quarantined and did not
land her people in Greece (except two parties who went by night), and
the "Innocents" furnishes only that fine description of the Acropolis by
moonlight.
But a good many other excursionists have landed there, and most of them
have told about it, in one way and another. Now it is my turn, but I
shall wait. I have already waited a long time for Athens-- I do not need
to begin the story just yet. Instead I have come out here on deck to
look across to Peloponnesus, which has risen out of the sea, a long gray
shore, our first sight of the mainland where heroes battled and
mythology was born.
I expected the shores of Greece would look like that--bleak, barren, and
forbidding. I don't know why, but that was my thought--perhaps because
the nation itself has lost the glory of its ancient days. The
Music-Master is looking at it too. It means more to him than to most of
us, I imagine. As he looks over to that gray shore he is seeing in his
vision a land where there was once a Golden Age, when the groves sang
with Orpheus and the reeds with Pan, while nymphs sported in hidden
pools or tripped lightly in the dappled shade.
To-morrow he will go mad, I think, for we shall anchor at Athens, in the
Bay of Phaleron.
XV
A PORT OF MISSING DREAMS
There were low voices on the deck, just outside my port-hole. I realized
that it was morning then; also that the light was coming in and that we
were lying at anchor. I was up by that time. It was just at the first
sunrising, and the stretch of water between the ship and the shore had
turned a pinkish hue. Beyond it were some buildings, and above the
buildings, catching the first glint of day on its structured heights,
rose a stately hill.
The Amiable Girl (I have mentioned her before, I believe) and a
companion were leaning over the ship's rail, trying to distinguish
outlines, blended in the vague morning light. The Amiable Girl was
peering through a binocular, and I caught the words "Parthenon" and
"Caryatides"; then to her companion, "Take the glass."
Which the other girl did, and, after gazing steadily for a moment, said:
"Yes! Oh yes, indeed-- I can see them now, quite distinctly!"
And then, even with my naked eye, I could make out certain details of
that historic summit we have travelled so far to see. Three miles away,
perhaps, the Acropolis arose directly in front of us--its columned crown
beginning to glow and burn in answer to the old, old friend that has
awakened it to glory, morning after morning, century after century, for
a full twenty-three hundred years.
The light came fast now, and with my glass I could bring the hill-top
near. I could make out the Parthenon--also the Temple of Victory, I
thought, and those marble women who have seen races pass and nations
crumble, and religions fade back into fable and the realm of shades. It
was all aglow, presently--a vision! So many wonderful mornings, we have
had, but none like this. Nor can there be so many lives that hold in
them a sunrise on the Acropolis from the Bay of Phaleron.
I lost no time in getting on deck, but it seemed that everybody was
there ahead of me. They were strung along the rail, and each one had his
glass, or his neighbor's, and was pointing and discoursing and argufying
and having a beautiful time. The Diplomat was holding forth on the
similarity of modern and ancient Greek, and was threatening to use the
latter on the first victim that came within range. The Patriarch, who is
religious when he happens to think about it, was trying to find Mars
Hill, where St. Paul preached; the Credulous One was pointing out to
everybody Lykabettos Hill as Mt. Ararat (information obtained from the
Horse-Doctor), while the Apostle and the Colonel were quarrelling
fiercely over a subject which neither of them knew anything about--the
rise of Christianity in Greece.
I got into a row myself, presently, with one of the boys, just because I
happened to make some little classical allusion-- I have forgotten what
it was now, and I didn't seem to know much about it then, from what he
said. We were all stirred up with knowledge, brought face to face with
history, as we were, and bound to unload it on somebody. Only the
Music-Master wasn't. A little apart from any group, he stood clutching
the rail, his face shining with a light that was not all of the morning,
gazing in silence at his hill of dreams.
We went ashore in boats that had pretty Greek rugs in them, and took a
little train on which all the cars were smoking-cars (there are no other
kind in Greece), and we looked out the windows trying to imagine we were
really in Greece where once the gods dwelt; where Homer sang and
Achilles fought; where the first Argonauts set sail for the Golden
Fleece. I wish we could have met those voyagers before they started.
They wouldn't have needed to go then. They could have taken the Golden
Fleece off of this crowd if they had anything to sell in that Argosy of
theirs, and their descendants are going to do it yet. I know from the
conversation that is going on behind me. The Mill and a lot of her boon
companions are doing the talking, and it is not of the classic ruins we
are about to see, but of the lace they bought in Malta and Gibraltar,
and of the embroidery they are going to buy in Greece.
Our chariots were waiting at the station--carriages, I mean, nice modern
ones--and we were started in a minute, and suddenly there was the
Theseum, the best preserved of Greek ruins, I believe, right in front of
us, though we did not stop for it then. But it was startling--that old,
discolored temple standing there unenclosed, unprotected, unregarded in
the busy midst of modern surroundings.
We went swinging away down a fine street, staring at Greek signs and new
types of faces; the occasional native costume; the little panniered
donkeys lost in their loads of fruit. I was in a carriage with Laura and
the Diplomat, and the Diplomat translated Greek signs, rejoicing to find
that he could make out some of the words; also that he could get a rise
out of the driver when he spoke to him, though it wasn't certain whether
the driver, who was a very large person in a big blue coat (we
christened him the Blue Elephant), was talking to him of the horse, and
we were all equally pleased, whichever it was.
The Acropolis was in sight from points here and there, but we did not
visit it yet. Instead, we turned into a fine boulevard, anchored for a
time at the corner of a park, waiting for guides, perhaps, then went
swinging down by the royal gardens and the white marble palace of the
king.
It is King George First now, a worthy successor to the rulers of that
elder day when Greek art and poetry and national prosperity set a
standard for the world. Athens was a pretty poor place when King George
came to the throne in 1863. He was only eighteen years old, then--the
country was bankrupt, the throne had gone begging. In _Innocents Abroad_
Mark Twain says: