AFRICA AND THE ORIENT
Bound for Cape Town--A pleasant voyage--Ships’ games--A
contrast in voyages--“Cock-fighting” at sea--“Chalking the
Pig’s Eye”--“Swinging the Monkey”--Marine cricket--A new
kind of golf--Cycling at sea--Sweepstakes on the vessel’s run
--Races on the ocean wave--Mock breach-of-promise trials--
By bullock waggon to Kimberley--I perform before Cecil Rhodes
--Get shot in a street row--Contrast on my second visit--
The great strike riots in Johannesburg--Fire and dynamite--
A night of horror--A gay but expensive city--Dear drinks--
Performing in the back veldt--Eggs for throwing--At Pretoria
--Kruger’s house--Where Winston Churchill swam the river--A
disappointing stream--My prize giant--A Jo’burg sensation--
Buying a forty-shilling suit to measure--A disgusted tailor--
Special railway travelling--My giant proves his agility--In
Colombo--Indian fakirs--Their conjuring skill overrated--The
boy and rope trick--Two versions of a similar story--The whole
thing a fake--The evidence of H.H. the Maharajah of Jodhpur--I
offer £100 to any native who can do it--No takers--The mango
seed trick--Outwitting a fakir--“Let me plant the seed”--The
camera in action--The Tree of Life--Cobra and mongoose fight.
The voyage out to South Africa is an exceedingly pleasant one. The
passengers invariably settle down soon after leaving Madeira into a
sort of happy family party, and all kinds of games and sports peculiar
to ship-board are entered into with zest.
To a certain degree, of course, this is true of all ocean voyages.
Going out to America on the _Mauretania_, for instance, we played all
the usual ships’ games, and I recollect that I won everything, with
the exception of the pillow fight. Indeed, as regards the blindfold
games, such as, for example, “Chalking the Pig’s Eye,” I was bound to
win; for a reason I shall explain later. But then, of course, I never
claimed the prize for these, but always let it go to the second best,
or put it up for competition over again.
But the Atlantic passage is too short, and often, alas! too stormy
to lend itself readily to a set programme of games. The P. & O. and
the Orient liners make, it is true, longer voyages in quieter seas.
But the trip is broken into chapters, as it were, by a succession
of stopping-places--Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said, and so forth--at
which passengers arrive and depart, destroying the continuity of
the excursion and usually rendering futile any attempt at organised
recreation.
The moment, however, a Union or a Castle liner lifts anchor at Madeira,
her passengers know that there lies before them a clear fourteen days’
run, and--they make the most of it. Spasmodic attempts may, indeed,
have been made by some few athletic enthusiasts to get up a scratch
match at cricket or golf ere the ship was well clear of the English
Channel, but these are more often than not foredoomed to failure. It is
the fashion of old South African voyagers to protest that the pleasures
of a Cape trip do not really commence until Madeira is left behind, and
there is a certain amount of truth in this. The crossing of the Bay
is usually provocative of more or less seasickness, and, as a natural
consequence, both saloons and decks are practically deserted. Besides,
the passengers do not usually begin to really know one another in the
three days and a half which are occupied in the run to this island.
All this is changed with the disappearance, on the northern horizon, of
the white roofs of Funchal. It is felt by all that the real business of
the voyage has begun, and the “sports season” is promptly inaugurated
by, we will say, a “cock-fight.” A ring twelve feet or thereabouts
in diameter is chalked out upon the deck, and the “birds” fight with
their bare feet, their arms having been previously “trussed” with stout
broomsticks, the relinquishing of which entails instant and final
disqualification.
After several rounds have been brought to a conclusion, either
“Swinging the Monkey” or “Chalking the Pig’s Eye” is likely enough to
be started. In the first-named game, a man is slung, by a rope attached
to his feet, to a boom overhead, with his hands resting on the deck
and partly supporting his body. In his right hand is a piece of chalk,
and his object is to make with it a line on deck which shall reach
further than that drawn by any of his competitors. Considerable skill
and judgment are called into play, as, should he prove too venturesome
at the wrong time, the rolling of the ship is apt to cause him to lose
his balance, and come swinging ignominiously against the bulwarks.
“Chalking the Pig’s Eye” can be played by both ladies and gentlemen. A
pig, minus an eye, is chalked out upon the deck, and the competitors,
after being blindfolded and turned round three times, try to fit in the
missing optic. The result is usually ludicrous enough.
Marine cricket is played on a cocoanut-matting pitch with a ball of
twisted rope-yarn. Nets are stretched along the side of the ship
nearest the ocean, and the stumps fit into a specially made block of
wood weighted with lead. Owing to the lurching of the vessel, both
bowling and batting are apt to be extremely erratic; indeed, nowhere
save on shipboard is the proverbial “glorious uncertainty” of the game
so clearly apparent. Three matches are usually brought off during a
trip--Passengers _v._ Officers, Married _v._ Single, and Ladies _v._
Gentlemen. Golf is a comparatively modern addition to the list of sea
games, but is rapidly growing in favour. The “balls” are flat discs of
wood, four or five inches in diameter, and a fairly heavy walking-stick
takes the place of a club. The “holes” are in some ships represented by
spots of chalk, which have to be covered by the discs; and in others
by circles about half as large again as the disc, into which they have
to be played. Hitting is entirely superseded by pushing, whether for
a long drive or a short one. The great thing is not to allow the wind
to get underneath your “ball,” as it will then almost assuredly rise
on its edge and roll away, either into the sea or among the unexplored
tangle of ropes “for’ard.” Board-ship golf, it may be remarked,
naturally produces its own distinctive and peculiar terminology. A
“ball,” for instance, is said to be “scuppered,” “coal bunkered,” and
so on.
A fancy-dress ball caused a lot of fun, but this was changed to
something very like consternation when, right in the middle of it, one
of the stokers, nude to the waist, a swab over his arm, and grimed all
over with oil and coal-dust, came blundering up on to the upper deck
right into the midst of the dancers.
The general opinion was that the intruder was drunk, and there was a
wild stampede to get out of his way, the many delicately attired ladies
especially fairly racing for safety.
A couple of the ship’s officers came hurrying up, and roughly ordered
him below, and as he showed no disposition to go, they made as if to
compel him; whereupon he cried out exultingly:
“Here, hold hard! I’m Harry Cardoe, Mr. Carlton’s contortionist. This
is a fancy-dress ball, isn’t it? Well, this is my fancy dress.”
At this there were shrieks of laughter, and he was the recipient of
many congratulations--at a safe distance--from the other passengers. Of
course he and I had engineered the joke between us.
It took poor Harry about an hour, however, to get the oil and dirt off
his skin, and he grumbled a lot during the operation. But next morning,
when he found, greatly to his surprise, that he had been awarded the
prize for the most realistic make-up, he was completely mollified.
I have already mentioned golf as being in the nature of a novelty.
Bicycle races, six laps to the mile, constitute another innovation,
but the machines and riders are almost too apt to come to grief.
Obstacle races are, perhaps, among the most generally popular of “open
events,” the entries being usually out of all proportion to the number
of prizes. Nearly every obstacle usually encountered on land has to be
negotiated, together with a number of others peculiar to ship-board.
Among these latter may be mentioned sets of lifebelts, each swinging
loosely and tantalisingly at the end of a solitary rope; funnel-shaped
sails, the insides liberally daubed with greasy soot and sprinkled with
flour; and rope entanglements of fearful and wonderful construction.
Sack races, flat races, and wheelbarrow races are also organised,
the two latter being not infrequently participated in by the ladies
on board. The favourite contest with the fair sex, however, is
the egg-and-spoon race, varied occasionally by a needle-threading
competition. In the former the competitors have to run a certain
distance, each carrying at arm’s length a very large egg in an
exceedingly small spoon. The various dodges adopted by the runners are
well worth studying.
At 11.30 the daily sweepstakes on the vessel’s run is drawn, the
numbers being afterwards put up for auction. This always causes a deal
of excitement, and it is an understood thing that a certain percentage
of the winnings is handed over to some charity. It is also usual to
hold, during each voyage, at least one mock breach-of-promise trial.
The “counsel” on either side are arrayed in sailcloth gowns and wigs
made of cotton-waste, and the proceedings are carried out strictly in
accordance with legal etiquette. The cross-examination of the fair
plaintiff--who is, more often than not, some pretty little soubrette
bound for South Africa’s “City of Gold”--is generally the cause of
roars of laughter.
I have made two professional trips to South Africa. The first time
I trekked in a bullock waggon from Cape Town to Kimberley, and had
the satisfaction of giving a performance before Cecil Rhodes at the
Sanatorium there. Those were rough times. Street fights were of
frequent occurrence, and on one occasion two miners started firing at
each other in close proximity to where I was standing.
I promptly took cover, as did the rest of the bystanders, and was
unaware of anything wrong until, feeling my foot wet and heavy, I
stooped down, and with my finger and thumb pulled a bullet out of my
leg from just under the skin near the ankle-joint. It had been nearly
spent when it struck me; fortunately for me.
This was before the war. On my second visit, in 1913, I had the
ill luck to arrive in Johannesburg while the great strikes were in
progress. Luckily they were soon over, but it was a very terrible
business indeed while it lasted.
The affair began over a small matter, that might, one would have
imagined, have been easily settled. Five white mechanics working
underground at the New Kleinfontein mine were asked to assent to an
alteration of hours that would involve their working for the future on
Saturday afternoons. They refused, and were dismissed. Whereupon all
the white men working at that particular mine went on strike.
The trouble spread. Mine after mine was thrown idle. The mine-owners
replied by importing strike-breakers, or blacklegs as the miners called
them. This infuriated the workers, and for two or three days over the
week-end Johannesburg was given up to something very like civil war.
To venture into the streets was to gamble with death. The theatres and
music-halls were closed; the newspapers suspended publication. The
railway station and the offices of the _Star_ newspaper were set on
fire by the rioters, and burned to the ground, and many other buildings
were either partially or wholly destroyed. Eventually the soldiers
got the upper hand, but not before about a score of rioters had been
killed, and some two hundred wounded.
Jo’burg, as the inhabitants affectionately term it, is a gay place,
but expensive. When I opened at the Empire Music-hall there, I asked
half a dozen or so men down to the bar for drinks round. I put down a
sovereign to pay for them.
Barman: “Another twelve shillings, please.”
I should have taken no notice in these days, for they would now cost
almost as much at home.
I gave my show at a great many small towns, and back-veldt settlements
where one would hardly have imagined that an audience could be scraped
together; but the returns were invariably satisfactory, the reason
being that prices rule high out there. The cheapest seat at most of the
halls and theatres cost four shillings; a stall is a guinea.
One little mining town we were warned against quite solemnly.
“Don’t go there,” I was told. “They’re a rough crowd. They’ll throw
eggs at you.”
“I don’t care,” I replied. “It won’t be the first time I’ve had eggs
thrown at me.”
“Ah! But these are ostrich eggs.”
At Pretoria we were shown Kruger’s tomb; and we were also conducted
over his house. It is quite an unpretentious building, and plainly
furnished. Everything in it is supposed to have been left exactly as it
was during his life, and the visitor is invited by the caretaker to sit
in the late president’s favourite chair. The tomb was decorated with
many faded wreaths, some of them from English Socialist and Trade Union
leaders.
We were also shown the spot where Winston Churchill was supposed to
have swum the river when he escaped from Pretoria during the Boer
War. I expected to see a broad stream, or at least a raging torrent;
something representing some sort of a difficulty at all events.
Instead, I was confronted with what was in effect little more than a
placidly flowing brook, deep perhaps, but so narrow that I could easily
have jumped across it had I been so minded; and which, as a matter of
fact, I did do later on.
It reminded me of another disappointment in connection with a river,
that befell me while I was travelling in the United States of America.
I was shown a muddy, sluggish, malodorous little stream, meandering
through a swamp in Florida.
“See that river?” asked my guide.
“I see a dirty little ditch,” I replied; “and I can smell it too.”
“That _river_, sir,” corrected my guide, “is famous. Its name is known
wherever the English language is spoken.”
“Oh!” I said. “What’s it called?”
“The Swanee River!” answered the guide.
And to-day, and ever since, whenever an orchestra anywhere strikes up
the well-known air of “Way down upon the Swanee River,” like a flash
memory calls up unbidden the image of that slimy, alligator-infested
creek in the Florida Everglades.
I took a prize giant out to South Africa with me; “Scotty,” the King’s
biggest and heaviest subject. He measured seven feet in height, and
weighed considerably over thirty stone.
On the liner, going out, his huge bulk was accommodated in a double
cabin; two ordinary cabins knocked into one. Of course it was all done
for advertisement; a rather costly advertisement, by the way; but as
the company I was travelling with paid all fares this didn’t trouble me.
At Cape Town we arranged to have an observation-car attached to the
train for his special convenience as far as Johannesburg, and thence to
Pretoria. This too, of course, was in the nature of an advertisement;
to make people talk, and attract attention, it being pretended that his
immense size precluded his passing through the door of an ordinary car,
or along the corridor.
[Illustration: ARRIVAL IN JOHANNESBURG OF CARLTON, HIS GIANT, AND HIS
DWARF]
From Pretoria we went to Durban, and the stationmaster at the former
place informed us that no observation-car was available for this
part of the journey. By this time “Scotty” had begun to believe that he
really couldn’t get into an ordinary car, or squeeze himself along an
ordinary corridor, and he was quite upset and angry at being denied his
usual roomy and luxurious special car.
“I can’t possibly do it,” he wailed, when the station officials urged
him to at least try to enter the train in the usual way.
“Well,” exclaimed the stationmaster at last, “you will have to get in
here then.”
The “here” was an open “Kaffir truck,” used only by the natives, and
half full at the time with about as malodorous a collection of niggers
as anyone would wish to see.
“Come on,” said the stationmaster, “the train is just going to start.
In you go.”
But “Scotty” wasn’t having any. One look, one sniff, sufficed. He
ran like a deer along the platform, and jumped into the ordinary
compartment where we were with remarkable agility, and without the
least difficulty.
We had another good joke with “Scotty” in Johannesburg. An enterprising
Jew tailor advertised forty-shilling suits for sale, and a day or two
after we arrived I called at his shop and selected the cloth for a
“made-to-measure” suit “for a friend.” “He’s a big chap, you know,” I
said. “No difference at all, sir,” answered the tailor, “big men, or
small men, the price is just the same--forty shillings.”
You should have seen that Israelite’s face, however, when “Scotty”
came round to be measured next day; and when he found that a five-foot
long tape wouldn’t meet round his new customer’s waistcoat he nearly
had a fit. However, he made the suit (but not for forty shillings)
and exhibited it in his window afterwards: a good advertisement for
him--and for us.
I was greatly struck by the number of Indians in South Africa. They
seem to be everywhere, and amongst them were some fairly clever
conjurors; but nothing very much out of the common. Indeed, I am
personally of opinion that the cleverness of the Indian conjurors has
been very much overrated.
In saying this I do not speak without knowledge, for when I was in
Colombo, Ceylon, where some of the cleverest conjuring fakirs are
supposed to be, I made it my business to investigate the claims of
quite a number of them.
Some of the more marvellous tricks attributed to them I have no
hesitation in saying are mere inventions, or hoaxes, bred of the
credulity of too-easily-impressed Europeans. To this latter class
belongs the famous boy and rope trick, of which everybody has heard,
but which nobody, in my opinion, has ever seen.
There are two versions of this alleged conjuring trick. One story makes
the fakir throw a rope into the air, where it remains suspended; if one
may use the term, when there is presumably nothing up aloft for it to
remain suspended from. The fakir then orders a small boy to climb the
rope, which he does, afterwards drawing it up after him and vanishing
with it into space, to presently reappear from somewhere behind the
audience at the bidding of his master.
Such a trick, performed after this fashion, would be quite wonderful
enough, in fact seemingly unexplainable. But there is another, and in
a sense even more wonderful version of the same trick, which has been
frequently described in print by people who say they have seen it done.
According to this story the fakir uses, not a rope, which presumably
might be climbed supposing the upper free end were attached to anything
strong enough to hold it, but a ball of thin twine, such as grocers
use. This the conjuror throws up into the air, retaining the free end
of the twine between his thumb and forefinger. The ball mounts higher
and higher, growing gradually smaller and smaller as it mounts upwards
and unravels, until it becomes a mere speck in the upper air, and
ultimately vanishes altogether. Lastly the fakir releases the lower
free end, and the string remains vertically suspended in the air as far
as the eye can follow it.
The fakir next begins to tug violently at the string as if to try
and recover the vanished ball, but it refuses to yield an inch, and
in affected rage he speaks a few words to a boy he has with him. The
little fellow approaches in feigned reluctance, his eyes dilated with
terror; but, being urged on by curses and blows, he presently seizes
the twine with both hands, and begins to climb up it.
Up and up he ascends, growing gradually smaller until he is a scarcely
discernible speck, apparently hundreds of feet from the ground. Then
he too vanishes as completely as the ball has done. The fakir waits a
few minutes, as if expecting the boy to return. Then he begins calling
to him to come down. There is no answer, and the fakir flies into a
pretended rage, takes a knife between his teeth, and himself climbs the
string, vanishing in his turn as the boy had previously done.
While the spectators are waiting in dumb amazement, wondering what is
going to happen next, a distant shriek of pain and horror is wafted
down from above. The next moment something round and red comes
hurtling downward from the sky. It is the head of the boy severed from
the body, with quivering muscles and flowing blood, to prove that it is
no figment of the fancy.
Next one severed bleeding arm falls from the sky, and then another; and
these are followed by two legs, as neatly dismembered as if cut off by
the knife of a skilful surgeon. Lastly, the fakir himself reappears
climbing down the string and holding the dripping knife between his
teeth.
Calmly collecting the head and limbs he places them in his bag, throws
it over his shoulder, and begins to walk away; but before he has gone
many paces the spectators notice a movement in the bag. The fakir
thereupon places it on the ground, salaams, makes a few mystic passes
with his hands and utters a few cabalistic words, and the boy emerges
from it, smiling and as sound in body as ever.
I have been at the trouble to recount these two versions of one and
the same trick, because they are a source of perennial discussion
amongst conjurors, professionals as well as amateurs. Personally, as
I have already intimated, I utterly discredit the whole story. Yet I
have, I am bound to say, met many people who hold the opposite view. I
have even come across four or five people who profess to have seen the
trick performed. While in India, and the East generally, the number of
Europeans who know other Europeans who have seen the trick is legion.
The best answer to these credulous ones is that the thing is
impossible. Consequently no such trick has ever been performed. This, I
may add, was the opinion of H.H. the Maharajah of Jodhpur, with whom I
had a long conversation relative to the subject. And he ought to know,
for His Highness is an authority on Indian conjurors, and Oriental
magic generally, having, as he himself assured me, seen practically
every native conjuror of note at one time or another. His opinion is
that it is just a traveller’s yarn, invented by Europeans for European
consumption in the dim, far-off days when India was more or less a land
of mystery, and handed down ever since as a sort of tradition from
generation to generation. “I have yet to meet the educated native who
believes the story,” were his concluding words.
I myself have asked scores of native fakirs to perform the trick for
me, but they all professed themselves unable to do so, although they
assured me that it could and had been done. Acting on this information
I once caused it to be proclaimed in Colombo that I would pay £100--a
fortune for a native--to anybody who would show me the trick. But the
money was not claimed. The only even remotely plausible explanation I
have ever heard of the mystery is that hypnotism is the agent. In other
words, the spectator is mesmerised by the fakir into believing that he
sees things which actually he does not see. But this, to my mind at all
events, is the veriest nonsense imaginable.
Another Indian conjuring trick round which a good deal of mystery has
been made to centre is that in which a mango plant is produced by the
fakir in the course of a few minutes from an ordinary dried mango seed.
There is really, however, nothing mysterious about this illusion; to
the professional conjuror, at all events. It is a sleight-of-hand trick
pure and simple, and one which any of us could easily imitate, if we
were so minded.
The way it is worked is as follows. The fakir, with whom usually are
two or three assistants, takes an ordinary mango seed inclosed in the
dried husk, and hands it round for inspection. It is quite a fair-sized
object, measuring some three inches in length by one and a half inches
across. This he places in the ground in full view of the spectators,
covering it with a little heaped-up pile of dry earth, which he scrapes
together with his hands.
Then he waves his loin cloth over it for a minute or so, to the
accompaniment of weird incantations by himself and the beating of
tom-toms by his assistants, and when he takes it away a couple of
inches of green growing plant is seen to have burst its way out of the
earth. Again the performance is repeated, and when the cloth is removed
the green shoot is seen to have increased in height to fully six
inches. A third time, and it is now nine inches. Whereupon the fakir
calls a temporary halt, pulls the plant out of the ground and passes it
round for inspection, showing the tendrils of the root, and the seed
bursted in growing. Afterwards he replaces the mango plant into the
ground, and continues his incantations and cloth waving until--assuming
a sufficiency of annas and pice are forthcoming--it attains to the
dimensions of a small tree, four feet or more in height.
Now I came to the conclusion, after having seen this performance
repeated once or twice, that it was just an ordinary conjuring trick,
dependent for success on ordinary sleight-of-hand, and quick, clever
palming, and I determined to prove it to my own satisfaction. So one
day in Colombo, while I and some friends were idling away the time
outside our hotel, and a fakir came along and offered to perform the
trick for us, I put into execution a plan I had formed.
The fakir asked two rupees as his fee for the performance.
“I’ll give you five rupees,” I said, “if you will let me plant the
seed.”
The man at once agreed, and handed me the seed, which I pretended to
plant in the ordinary way and cover with earth. Then I told him to go
ahead with his show, and took up my position immediately behind him.
Prior to this I had arranged with one of my friends who possessed a
camera to take a snapshot of me directly I raised my hand, and this I
presently did, choosing a moment when the mango plant had “grown” to
about a foot high. In my open hand was the mango seed the fakir had
given me, and which I had palmed, unbeknown to him, while pretending to
plant it.
Consequently he had by his incantations persuaded his mango tree to
grow up from a seed which was not there. This, I think, effectually
disposes of the arguments of those who hold that these fakirs do
actually cause the seed to sprout and grow by the use of some secret
chemical, or other fructifying agent, known only to themselves.
The real truth is that they have concealed about their persons, or
their belongings--sacks, etc.--several mango trees in different stages
of growth, the leaves folded up very small and tied together with
cotton. The rest, of course, is merely a matter of clever palming, and
of diverting the attention of their audiences at the critical moment;
at both of which arts, I am bound to say, they are exceedingly clever.
I may add that I kept the mango seed I palmed, and I have it now. The
fakir never missed it when he came to gather up the earth and stuff
and put it back in his bag. Or at all events if he did he judged it
best to say nothing of his loss.
Before quitting Colombo I may say that one of the things that most
interested and impressed me there was the curious Tree of Life, so
called, exhibited in the arboricultural museum attached to the Mount
Lavinia Gardens, and the leaves of which seem to be endowed with the
faculty of locomotion, in that they crawl about like insects. I was
also struck with my first view of a cobra and mongoose fight, arranged
for our delectation by one of the many showmen fakirs who abound
there. I never saw anything like the rapidity of the movements of the
combatants. Greased lightning, as our American friends would say,
was not in it. Of course the fangs of the snake had been previously
extracted, and presumably the teeth of the mongoose had been similarly
dealt with. Anyway neither seemed any the worse for the encounter,
which indeed they seemed rather to enjoy, just as a couple of trained
boxers might enjoy a friendly bout with each other.