THE STEERAGE.
As soon as I tried to go down the stairway there was trouble, trouble of
the worst kind. I could get down all right, but when I got down a few
steps an odor came up that made me pause. The odor was not of stale
onions, a rotting steer or anything like that, but an indefinable one. I
never smelt anything like it before and it conquered me at once. It
caught me right in the throat and though I tried to swallow I couldn't
do so to save my life. I began to chew as if I were chewing tobacco, and
the lump rose in my throat and wouldn't go up nor down. I hadn't drunk a
drop that morning excepting a cup of coffee, so it couldn't have been
liquor that upset me. It must have been the smell and nothing else. I
stood on a step holding to the side rope to steady myself and hesitated
about going down. I grew dizzy and thought I was going to fall but held
on like grim death.
"Come Windy," says I to myself, "your bunk is below, and you'll have to
go down to it or someone else will get it. This won't do."
I went down slowly and the further down I got the stronger the smell
became. Suddenly I got very sick. I felt like giving up the enterprise
right then and there but as my friends would have had the laugh on me if
I did so, I concluded to see the thing out.
I had to go down the stairway, though, there was no getting around that;
I had to select a berth, and to do that I had to go below. I kind of
fooled around and hesitated to make the plunge but finally I mustered
courage and made the attempt once more. I went down very slowly, holding
my hand over my nose and mouth. I got down a few steps and then I
stopped again. I just couldn't. I just laid down where I was and fired
away like a good fellow. I was more than willing to die.
As I lay there a jacky suddenly came down, airy-fairy fashion, as if he
were dancing on eggs, and in his hands he carried a long, black tin pan
in which was his mate's breakfast, consisting of meat, gravy and
potatoes.
I caught a whiff of the mess and oh mercy! When jacky got down to the
bottom and saw me sitting there and the muss I had made he became very
indignant and wanted to know what I meant by mussing up the ship like
that.
"Why don't you go on deck if you want to be sick?" said he.
Had I been well I would have swiped the heartless cuss one just for
luck, but I was too weak to speak, even. I fired away again and seeing
this, Jacky flew away as if the devil was after him.
After a good long time I got down in the steerage and saw the steerage
steward who was a Scotchman with a broad accent, and he gave me a berth.
He noticed that I had been sick and advised me to go upstairs and get
all the fresh air I could.
I acted on his advice and made my way up the stairway again as quickly
as I could, but that wasn't very quick.
When I got on deck the fresh air revived me somewhat, but it seemed to
me as if my stomach were all gone. There was an "all gone" feeling
there, sure enough.
The ship was getting ready to start by this time. An officer mounted a
raised deck over the forecastle and gave orders to heave the hawsers
off. The captain, who stood on the bridge, signalled to the engineer
below to let her go, and off we were.
Slowly we moved out from the pier, to the farewells of the multitudes on
shore and on deck. Some blubbered, but ne'er a blubber from me. I wasn't
caring whether school kept or not.
The vessel's prow after she got out of her dock was turned down the
Hudson toward the Battery, and she went well out into the middle of the
stream.
This afforded us a good view of the river. On one side was the New York
shore, and on the other, the Jersey. Panoramas of houses and docks on
either side swept by us as we moved along, and sky-scrapers loomed up
prominently.
We passed pretty close to the Goddess of Liberty, and saw plainly
Governor's Island, Ellis Island, Fort Hamilton, Fort Wordsworth, Bath
Beach, Staten Island and Coney Island. Quickly enough we were abreast of
Sandy Hook, which was the last point of land we would see until we
reached Europe. Straight ahead of us was nothing but sky and water.
It was now nearly noon. I had eaten nothing that morning and what I had
eaten yesterday was mostly downstairs in the hallway. The fresh
sea-breeze had revived me a little and now I felt that I could eat
something. None of the passengers had eaten anything since they came on
board, and probably they, too, must have been hungry, for when the
dinner bell rang there was a mighty stampede. Some of them didn't take
time to rush downstairs, they just dropped down.
The dinner was good. There was plenty of nourishing soup on hand, a
liberal allowance of meat, vegetables, bread, butter and coffee. No one
need have gone hungry. All the other meals were satisfactory, though an
occasional one was punky. Of course there were kickers, but those kind
of people will be found everywhere.
The second day out was Sunday, and it was a fine spring day, but on
Monday morning clouds began to gather and tried to work up a storm. They
succeeded all too speedily. The sky became black, the wind roared up
aloft, the masts hummed, timbers creaked, the ship rolled from side to
side and then rose and fell; the cordage whipped against the masts and
everything looked lovely for a first-class storm. I got scared. I hated
to die so young, but what's the odds? The waves were high as mountains
and to me seemed about as mean looking as anything I ever saw. They were
white on top and made straight for us. We could not run away from them.
I was on deck waiting to see the storm out, for what was the use going
below and being drowned there? If I was to die I would die game and at
the front. It didn't seem to me that anything built by human hands could
withstand the buffeting of those waves. The force of the sky-scraping
billows was awful. They kind of made me wilt when I looked at them.
I survived that storm or I wouldn't be writing this. If you catch me on
the sea again though, you'll have to be a fast runner.
I was told that we would see land again by the following Sunday and I
was sort of pining to see it. It was a wait of several long days, but I
didn't have much else to do than wait. There was nothing to do on board
except to eat, sleep and wait. I got pretty badly drenched during the
storm. A huge comber made a leap for me and broke right over me,
spilling a few tons of water on top of me. It was a soaker, sure enough,
and I didn't dry out until several days afterward. I had only one suit
of clothes with me and they were on my back so they had no chance to
dry. I slept in them to keep them warm.
A life on the ocean wave is a gay thing. It is awful nice to be spun
around like a cork and then see-sawed up and down with a possibility of
touching bottom. The heel over from side to side is also very funny,
for there is a good chance of being shot overboard when the ship jams
suddenly away over. You hold on wondering whether the ship is going to
right herself or not. If she does, you're in luck, and if she don't it's
good-bye Lisa Jane. How many ships do tip over? Several thousand of them
every year. Luckily, the Furnessia wasn't one of the unlucky ones this
trip. The worst that happened to me was a bad scare and a shower-bath.
Maybe the water wasn't cold when that wave struck me! Ugh! It knocked
the wind out of me for a moment and I didn't know where I was at. I
dripped like a drowned rat and when my fellow passengers saw me they
roared.
On Tuesday morning of the second week we saw the shores of Europe. We
had now been out about ten days. I have read that Columbus and his crew
felt pretty good when they saw land again after their eventful voyage
but I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut they didn't feel half as good as I
felt when I saw land again. I was more than pining to see it. Ten days
of sloppiness was a whole lot for me. If there is any fun wandering
around with one's clothing sticking to one's back I fail to see it. I
was feeling all right and my general health was good, but the lack of
sleep and the fetid odors down below helped to daze me. I was in a sort
of pipe dream and hardly knew whether I was afoot or on horseback.
There was land ahead, though, and I felt like shouting.
The land ahead of us was the coast of Ireland and it looked good to me.
The name of Ireland was familiar to me since my boyhood days, and I had
seen Irishmen on the stage and off it, had heard songs sung about it and
had heard it spoken of a million times. Here was the real thing right
before me. I became mightily interested in it as did almost everyone
else. The Irish passengers aboard, and there were plenty of them, became
frantic with joy. Ireland surely is a beautiful country. Rocky headlands
we saw, capes, bays, towering mountains in the background, green trees
and farms. An air of romance seemed to hang over the place and the blue
skies of the spring above looked down on it kindly. We steered straight
in for the shore and then sailed northward along the coast. We kept off
shore only a few miles. When we got to Tory Island we steamed between it
and the mainland, and had a close view of this little islet. It was only
a mile or two long with a quaint looking light-house at one end of it
and a vegetable garden in bloom near by. Those green things growing, how
they did entrance me!
At the other end of the isle were rocks that towered up higher than the
masts of our ship, and they were scarred, seamed and causewayed by the
elements. They had taken the strangest shapes imaginable.
We steamed through the strait between the island and the mainland
swiftly, for though the strait was narrow the channel was deep; then we
skirted southward along the east coast of Ireland until we came to a
broad bay, where we anchored. This bay was shallow close in to the
shore, so we anchored far out. On the shore was the town of Moville,
where the Irish passengers were to disembark for points in Ireland. A
little tender came steaming up and when she was loaded with baggage and
passengers, there was hardly room enough to swing a cat in but as the
Irish passengers were happy, we had no kick coming. The warm-hearted
Irish bade us farewell with many a thrown kiss and handkerchief flutter.
They were off.
So we were soon, for Scotland. The scenes along the east coast of
Ireland were no whit inferior to those on the west coast.
It did not take us long to reach Scotland, where the scenery was
enchanting. Words are entirely inadequate to give one a proper idea of
it. To be appreciated it must be seen and _felt_, for reading about it
don't do much good.
Here, right before us, were the Highlands of Scotland and many a place
famous in song and story.
In due course of time we reached the Firth of Clyde and anchored off
Greenock. This was the disembarking point for all the passengers. A
little steamer shot out from Greenock and landed us, bag and baggage, at
the Princess Pier, which reminded me somewhat of a Mississippi levee,
for it was stone paved and sloping. On the pier cabbies stood about,
touching their hats respectfully, but saying never a word. They were
seeking "fares," and giving us the tip noiselessly. Newsboys were there,
too, yelling in strange accents, "Morning Nip!" "Daily Bladder," etc.,
and some of them when they got on to my presence and saw that I was a
greenhorn, made loud uncomplimentary remarks about me in language that I
couldn't understand. This rather embarrassed me, for I didn't like to be
made a show of. Them kids ought to have got a kick in the pants for
their freshness but the more you fool with some kids the worse they get,
so I just walked on minding my business and said nothing.
All we third-raters were steered into the custom house where the baggage
was to be examined. It didn't take the authorities long to examine mine.
A quiet, lynx-eyed official asked me where my baggage was and when I
told him I hadn't any, he jerked his head upward and backward, giving me
a quiet hint to skip. I waited a few moments and then followed some of
the other passengers to the railroad station, which was close by. Our
destination was Glasgow, and Greenock was twenty-five miles distant, so
we were compelled to make the rest of the journey by rail.
When I entered the railroad station I stood stock still for a moment and
stared. On one side of the station was a blank wall and on the other a
"buffet," waiting-room, ticket office, "luggage" room and telegraph
office. What stumped me was the cars and locomotive. The cars were
stage-coaches strung on wheels with no bumpers to speak of; no blind
baggage, no brake-beams, no nothing. Where was a fellow to ride when he
was beating his way? One couldn't beat it in any shape, form or manner.
To say that I was disappointed won't express my feelings. I was totally
discouraged. I felt like going back home again on the return trip of the
Furnessia but I didn't have the price. I had less than fifteen dollars
in my possession and was up against it. I had no idea how big a country
Scotland was or how the walking would be, so I did some pretty lively
thinking. I now remembered what Little Billy had told me and found out
that he had told me the truth. No, there was no way of "beating it" on
those kind of cars.
I mixed in with the push on the platform and began looking for a
comfortable seat in a car. There were only two seats in a car, facing
each other, and each seat was capable of holding four persons. Thus when
there were eight persons in a coach it was full. I made a rush for a
seat where I could view the scenery comfortably, and after the coaches
were all filled and "all set," the doors were slammed shut, somebody
outside blew a tin-horn and with a ratlike squeak from the engine we
were off. The engine had seemed like a toy to me but she was speedy and
powerful and could go like a streak. Away we clattered through tunnels,
past fields and meadows, villages and towns. The scenery looked mighty
foreign-looking to me and I was uneasy. I sure felt that I wasn't at
home. On our right hand side as we sped up to Glasgow were the fields
and meadows I just spoke of, and on the other side was a bare prairie
through which wound the river Clyde. Along the banks of the Clyde were
shipyards which are famous the world over. I believe these shipyards are
so famous because ships can be built cheaper and better there than
anywhere else. To be a Clyde-built ship is usually a recommendation. The
scenery was interesting and would have been more so had I been happier.
I was still half-dazed from the want of sleep during ten nights on board
ship, my clothes didn't feel right on me from the soaking they had got
and then the disappointment of not being able to "beat it," affected me,
too. But it was all in the game, so I had no kick coming. After
journeying about an hour we came upon the town of Paisley, which has
been famous for centuries for the manufacture of "Paisley shawls." Large
spool-cotton factories we could see in the place too, and it seemed to
be a city of some size and consequence.
In a little while after that we rushed into St. Enoch's station,
Glasgow. This was our jumping-off place. The station was a very large
and fine one, almost as much so as the Grand Central Station in New
York. To judge from the station, Glasgow must be a sizeable place, for
it was first-class in every respect and right up to date.