Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: Map showing the author's itinerary]
HARRY A. FRANCK
FOUR MONTHS AFOOT
IN SPAIN
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC,
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1911, BY THE CENTURY CO. ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
A FOREWORD
Yet another story of travels in western Europe, especially one having
for its basis the mere random wanderings of a four-months' absence from
home, may seem almost to call for apology. If so, it is hereby duly
tendered. What befell me on this vacation jaunt is no story of
harrowing adventure, nor yet a record of the acquisition of new facts.
But as I covered a thousand miles of the Iberian peninsula on foot,
twice that distance by third-class rail, and am given to mingling with
"the masses," it may be that there have filtered into the following
pages some facts and impressions that will be new to the reader. Yet it
is less to record these that I have written, than to answer a question
that has often been put to me since my return:
"How can a man make such a journey on $172?"
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A 'Tweendecks Journey
II. Footpaths of Andalusia
III. The Last Foothold of the Moor
IV. The Banks of the Guadalquivir
V. The Torero at Home
VI. Tramping Northward
VII. Spanish Roads and Roadsters
VIII. On the Road in La Mancha
IX. The Trail of the Priest
X. Shadows of the Philips
XI. Crumbling Cities
XII. Wildest Spain
XIII. The Land of the Basque
XIV. A Descent into Aragon
XV. Emigrating Homeward
FOUR MONTHS AFOOT IN SPAIN
CHAPTER I
A 'TWEENDECKS JOURNEY
Not the least of the virtues of the private schools of New York City is
the length of their summer vacations. It was an evening late in May
that I mounted to my lodgings in Hartley Hall, rollicksome with the
information that I should soon be free from professional duties a full
four months. Where I preferred to spend that term of freedom was easily
decided. Except for one migratory "year off," I had not been so long
outside a classroom since my fifth birthday; and it seemed fully as far
back that I had begun to dream of tramping through Spain. If the desire
had in earlier days battened on mere curiosity, it found more rational
nourishment now in my hope of acquiring greater fluency in the Spanish
tongue, the teaching of which, with other European languages, was the
source of my livelihood.
There was one potent obstacle, however, to my jubilant planning. When I
had set aside the smallest portion of my savings that could tide me over
the first month of autumn, there was left a stark one hundred and
seventy-two dollars. The briefest of mathematical calculations
demonstrated that such a sum could cover but scantily one hundred and
twenty days. Yet the blithesome project would not be put to rout by
mere figures. I had been well schooled at least in the art of spending
sparingly; with a long summer before me I was not averse to a bit of
adventure, even the adventure of falling penniless in foreign lands. A
permanent stranding was easily averted--I had but to leave in trust a
sum sufficient for repatriation, to be forwarded to whatever corner of
the globe insolvency might overhaul me. Which, being done, I pocketed
in express checks and cash the remainder of my resources--to-wit, one
hundred and thirty-two dollars--tossed into a battered suit-case a
summer's supply of small clothes and a thread-bare costume for ship
wear, and set out to discover what portion of the Iberian peninsula
might be surveyed with such equipment.
Thus it was that on the morning of June first I boarded the "L" as usual
at One Hundred and Sixteenth street; but took this time the west side
express instead of the local that screeches off at Fifty-third into the
heart of the city. A serge suit of an earlier vintage and double-soled
oxfords were the chief articles of my attire, reduced already to Spanish
simplicity except for the fleckless collar and the cracked derby I had
donned for the flight through exacting Manhattan. As for the suitcase
that rocked against the platform gate as we roared southward, it was
still far from a pedestrian's scrip. For with the ambitious resolution
to rectify during the long sea voyage before me some of the sins of
omission, I had stuffed into it at the last moment a dozen classic
volumes in Sixth-avenue bindings.
"Christ'fer!" croaked the guard.
I descended to the street and threaded my way to the ferry. Across the
river Hoboken was thronged with luggage-laden mankind, swarthy sons and
daughters of toil for the most part; an eddying stream of which the
general trend was toward a group of steamship docks. With it I was
borne into a vast two-story pier, strewn below with everything that
ships transport across the seas and resounding above with the voice of
an excited multitude. Near the center of the upper wharf stood an
isolated booth bearing a transient sign-board:
"SCHNELLDAMPFER.
PRINZESSIN ----."
Within, sat a coatless, broad-gauge Teuton, puffing at a stogie.
"Third-class to Gibraltar," I requested, stooping to peer through the
wicket.
The German reached mechanically for a pen and began to fill in a leaf of
what looked like a large check-book. Then he paused and squinted out
upon me:
Ah--er--you mean _steerage_?"
"Steerage, mein Herr; to Gibraltar."
He signed the blue check and pushed it toward me, still holding it
firmly by one corner.
"Thirty dollars and fifty cents," he rumbled.
I paid it and, ticket in hand, wormed my way to the nearer of two
gangways. Here I was repulsed; but at the second, an officer of
immaculate exterior but for two very bleary eyes, tore off a corner of
the blue check and jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the steamer
behind him. As I set foot on her deck a seaman sprang up suddenly from
the scuppers and hurled at my chest a tightly rolled blanket. I caught
it without a fumble, having once dabbled in football, and, spreading it
out on a hatch, disclosed to view a deep tin plate, a huge cup, a knife,
fork and spoon of leaden hue, and a red card announcing itself as "Buono
per una razione."
A hasty inspection of the _Prinzessen_ ---- confirmed a suspicion that
she would not offer the advantages of the steamers plying the northern
route. She was a princess indeed, a sailor's princess, such as he may
find who has the stomach to search in the dives along West street or
down on the lower Bowery. At her launching she had, perhaps, justified
her christening; but long years have passed since she was degraded to
the unfastidious southern service.
The steerage section, congested now with disheveled Latins and cumbrous
bundles, comprised the forward main deck, bounded on the bow by the
forecastlehead and aft by an iron wall that rose a sheer eight feet to
the first-class promenade, above which opened the hurricane deck and
higher still the wheelhouse and bridge. This space was further limited
by two large hatchways, covered with tarpaulins, of which a corner of
each was thrown back to disclose two dark holes like the mouths of a
mine. By these one entered the third-class quarters, of which the
forward was assigned to "single men" and the other to any species of the
human race that does not fall into that category. I descended the first
by a perpendicular ladder to a dungeon where all but utter darkness
reigned. As my eyes accustomed themselves to this condition, there grew
up about me row after row of double-decked bunks, heaped with indistinct
shapes. I approached the nearest and was confronted by two wolfish
eyes, then another pair and another flashed up about me on every side.
My foresighted fellow-passengers, having preempted sleeping-space, were
prepared to hold their claims by force of arms--and baggage.
Every berth seemed to be taken. I meandered in and out among them until
in a far corner I found one empty; but as I laid a hand upon its edge, a
cadaverous youth sprang at me with a plaintive whine, "E mio! e mio!" I
returned to the central space. A sweater-clad sailor whom I had not
made out before was standing at the edge of an opening in the deck
similar to that above.
"Qui non ch' e piu," he said; "Giu!"
I descended accordingly to a second bridewell below the water-line and
lighted only by a feeble electric bulb in the ceiling. Here half the
bunks were unoccupied. I chose one athwartships against the forward
bulkhead--a wooden bin containing a burlap sack of straw--tossed into it
blanket and baggage, and climbed again to daylight and fresh air.
At eleven the sepulchral bass of the steamer sounded, the vast pier,
banked with straining faces and fluttering handkerchiefs, began slowly
to recede, sweeping with it the adjoining city, until all Hoboken had
joined in the flight to the neighboring hills. We were off. I pitched
overboard the cracked derby and crowded with a half-thousand others to
the rail, eager for the long-anticipated pleasure of watching the
inimitable panorama of New York grow smaller and smaller and melt away
on the horizon. But we were barely abreast the Battery when three
officers, alleging the impossibility of checking their human cargo on
the open deck, ordered the entire steerage community below. When, long
after, it came my turn to be released, my native land was utterly
effaced, and the deck was spattering with a chilling rain before which
we retreated and frittered away the remnant of the day with amical
advances and bachelor banter.
In the morning the scene was transformed. Almost without exception my
fellow-voyagers had changed from the somber garb of America to the
picturesque comfort of their first landing in the Western world. The
steerage deck, flooded with sunshine, resembled the _piazza_ of some
Calabrian city on a day of festival. Women in many-hued vesture and
brilliant _fazzoletti_ sat in groups on the hatches, suckling their
babes or mirthful over their knitting. Along the rail lounged men in
bag-like trousers and tight-fitting jackets of velveteen, with broad
scarlet sashes. Jaunty, deep-chested youths strolled fore and aft
angling for glances from winsome eyes. Unromantic elders squatted in
circles about the deck, screaming over games of mora; in and out among
them all raced sportive bambini. High up on a winch sat a slender fellow
Turkish fashion, thumbing a zither.
Though there was not one beside myself to whom that tongue was native,
English was still the dominating language. Except for a handful of
Greeks, the entire 'tweendecks company hailed from southern Italy or her
islands. But force of habit or linguistic pride still gave full sway to
the slang-strewn speech of east New York or the labor camp. There were
not a few who might have expressed themselves far more clearly in some
other medium, yet when I addressed them in Italian silence was
frequently the response. The new world was still too close astern to
give way to the spell of the old.
But it was in their mother tongue that I exchanged the first confidences
with three young men with whom I passed many an hour during the journey.
The mightiest was Antonio Massarone, a vociferous giant of twenty, whose
scorn was unbounded for those of his race who had pursued fortune no
further than the over-peopled cities of our eastern coast. Emigration
had carried him to the mines of Nevada, and it was seldom that he
refrained from patting his garnished waistband when tales of experience
were exchanging. But the time had come when he must give up his
princely wage of three dollars a day and return for years of drudgery
and drill at as many cents, or forever forfeit the right to dwell in his
native land. When his term was ended he would again turn westward;
before that glad day comes what a stalwart task confronts certain
officers of the Italian army!
Nicolo, too, expected to return. In fact, of all the steerage community
a very few had resolved to remain at home, and for each of these there
were a score who had emigrated a half-dozen times in the face of similar
resolutions. Nicolo was a bootblack, proud of his calling and envious
of no other. Already there hovered in his day dreams a three-chair
"parlor" in which his station should be nearest the door and bordering
on the cash-register. Conscription called him also, but he approached
the day of recruiting light of heart, knowing a man of four feet nine
would be quickly rejected.
As for Pietro Scerbo, the last of our quartet, his home-coming was
voluntary, for the family obligation to the army had already been
fulfilled by two older brothers. Pietro had spent his eighteen months
kneading spaghetti dough in the Bronx at seven dollars a week; and he
physically quaked at the sarcasm of 'Tonio on the subject of wages.
Still he was by no means returning empty-handed. "To be sure, I am not
rich with gold, like 'Tonio," he confessed one day, when the miner was
out of earshot, "but I have spent only what I must--two dollars in the
boarding-house, sometimes some clothes, and in the winter each week six
lire to hear Caruso."
Thirty dollars a month and the peerless-voiced a necessity of life! I,
too, had been a frequent "standee" at the Metropolitan, yet had as often
charged myself with being an extravagant young rascal.
The steerage rations on the _Prinzessin_ were in no way out of keeping
with her general unattractiveness. Those who kept to their bunks until
expelled by the seaman whose duties included the daily fumigation of the
dungeons, were in no way the losers for being deprived of the infantile
roll and the strange imitation of coffee that made up the European
breakfast. Sea breezes bring appetite, however, especially on a faintly
rippling ocean, and it was not strange that, though the dinner-hour came
early, even racial lethargy fled at its announcement. Long before noon
a single jangle of the steward's bell cut short all morning pastimes and
instantly choked the passages to the lower regions with a clamorous,
jocose struggle of humanity as those on deck dived below for their
meal-hour implements and collided with the foresighted, fighting their
way up the ladders. Once disentangled, we filed by the mouth of the
culinary cavern under the forecastlehead, to receive each a ladleful of
the particular piece de resistance of the day, a half-grown loaf of
bread, and a brimming cupful of red wine. Thus laden, each squirmed his
way through the multitude and made table of whatever space offered,--on
the edge of a hatch, the drum of a winch, or on the deck itself.
Unvaryingly day by day boiled beef alternated with pork and beans. Then
there was macaroni, not alternately, nor yet moderately, but
ubiquitously, fourteen days a week; for supper was in no way different
from dinner even in the unearthly hour of its serving. It was tolerably
coarse macaroni, but otherwise no worse than omnipresent macaroni must
be when boiled by the barrel under the watchful eye of a rotund,
torpescent, bath-fearing, tobacco-loving, Neapolitan ship's cook. For
the wine we were supremely grateful; not that it was particularly good
wine, but such as it was not even the pirates in the galley could make
it worse.
The ensembled climax of this daily extravaganza, however, had for its
setting the steerage "washroom," an iron cell furnished with two
asthmatic salt-water faucets. To it dashed first the long experienced
in the quick-lunch world, and on their heels the competing multitude.
The 'tweendecks strongholds housed six hundred, the "wash-room" six,
whence it goes without saying that the minority was always in power and
the majority howling for admittance and a division of the spoils. Yet
dissension, as is wont, was rampant even among the sovereign. From
within sounded the splashing of water, the tittering of jostled damsels,
or the shouting for passage of one who had resigned his post and must
run the gauntlet to freedom through a vociferous raillery. In due time
complete rotation in office was accomplished, but it was ever a late
hour when the last gourmand emerged from the alleyway and carried his
dripping utensils below.
The _Prinzessin_ plowed steadily eastward. Gradually, as the scent of
the old world came stronger to our nostrils, the tongue of the West fell
into disuse. Had I been innocent of Italian I must soon have lost all
share in the general activities. As it was, I had the entree to each
group; even the solemn socialists, seated together behind the winch
planning the details of the portending reversal of society, did not
lower their voices as I passed.
How little akin are anticipation and realization! Ever before on the
high seas it had been my part to labor unceasingly among cattle pens or
to bear the moil of watch and watch; and the unlimited leisure of the
ticketed had seemed always fit object for envy. Yet here was I myself
at last crossing the Atlantic as a passenger, and weary already of this
forced inactivity before the voyage was well begun. The first full day,
to be sure, had passed delightfully, dozing care-free in the sun or
striding through the top-most volume in my luggage. But before the
second was ended reading became a bore; idling more fatiguing than the
wielding of a coal-shovel. On the third, I sauntered down into the
forecastle more than half inclined to suggest to one of its inmates a
reversal of roles; but the watch below greeted me with that chill
disdain accorded mere passengers, never once lapsing into the masculine
banter that would have marked my acceptance as an equal. As a last
resort I set off on long pedestrian tours of the deck, to the
astonishment of the lounging Latins, though now and then some youth
inoculated with the restlessness of the West, notably 'Tonio, fell in
with me for a mile or two.
It was the miner, too, who first accepted my challenge to a bout of
hand-wrestling and quickly brought me undeserved fame by sprawling prone
on his back, when, had he employed a tithe of science, he might have
tossed me into the scuppers. From the moment of its introduction this
exotic pastime won great popularity. Preliminary jousts filled the
morning hours; toward evening the hatches were transformed into
grandstands from which the assembled third-class populace cheered on the
panting contestants and greeted each downfall with a cannonade of
laughter, in which even the vanquished joined.
More constant and universal than all else, however, was the demand for
music. The most diffident possessor of a mouth-organ or a jew's-harp
knew no peace during his waking hours. Great was the joy when, as dusk
was falling on the second day out, a Calabrian who had won fortune and
corpulence as a grocer in Harlem, clambered on deck, straining
affectionately to his bosom a black box with megaphone attachment.
"E un fonografo," he announced proudly; "a present I take to the old
madre at home." He warded off with his elbows the exultant uprising and
deposited the instrument tenderly on a handkerchief spread by his wife
on a corner of the hatch. "For a hundred dollars, signori!" he cried;
"Madre di Dio! How she will wonder if there is a little man in the box!
For on the first day, signori, I do not tell her how the music is put in
the fonografo, ha! ha! ha! not for a whole day!"--and the joke came
perilously near to choking him into apoplexy long before its
perpetration.
A turn of the key and the apparatus struck up "La donna e mobile," the
strikingly clear tones floating away on the evening air to blend with
the wash of the sea on our bow. A hush fell over the forward deck; into
the circle of faces illumed by the swinging ship's lantern crept the
mirage of dreams; a sigh sounded in the black night of the outskirts.
"E Bonci, amici," whispered the Calabrian as the last note died away.
The announcement was superfluous; no one else could have sung the
sprightly little lyric with such perfection.
Bits of other operas followed, plantation melodies, and the monologues
of witty Irishmen; but always the catholic instrument came back to "La
donna e mobile," and one could lean back on one's elbows and fancy the
dapper little tenor standing in person on the corner of the hatch,
pouring out his voice to his own appreciative people.
Thereafter as regularly as the twilight appeared the Calabrian with his
"fonografo." The forward deck took to sleeping by day that the evening
musicale might be prolonged into the small hours. Whatever its
imperfections, the little black box did much to charm away the monotony
of the voyage, in its early stages.
But good fortune is rarely perennial. One night in mid-Atlantic a
first-class passenger of the type that adds, by contrast, to the
attractiveness of the steerage, his arms about the waists of two damsels
old enough to have known better, paused to hang over the rail. Bonci
was singing. The promenader surveyed the oblivious multitude below in
silence until the aria ended, then turned on his heel with a snort of
contempt. The maidens giggled, the affectionate trio strolled aft, and
a moment later the cabin piano was jangling a Broadway favorite. When I
turned my head the Calabrian was closing his instrument.
"No, amici, no more," he said as protest rose; "We must not annoy the
rich signori up there."
Nor could he be moved to open the apparatus again as long as the voyage
lasted.
Amid the general merriment of home-coming was here and there a note of
sadness in the caverns of the _Prinzessin_. On a hatch huddled day by
day, when, the sun was high, a family of three, doomed to early
extinction by the white-faced scourge of the north. Below, it was
whispered, lay an actress once famous in the Italian quarter, matched in
a race with death to her native village. A toil-worn Athenian, on
life's down grade, who had been robbed on the very eve of sailing of
seven years' earnings of pick and shovel, tramped the deck from dawn to
midnight with sunken head, refusing either food or drink. Now and again
he stepped to the rail to shake his knotted fist at the western horizon,
stretched his arms on high, and took up again his endless march.
Then there were the deported--seven men whose berths were not far from
my own. One had shown symptoms of trachoma; another bore the mark of a
bullet through one hand; a third was a very Hercules, whom the port
doctors had pronounced flawless, but who had landed with four dollars
less than the twenty-five required. With this single exception,
however, one could not but praise the judgment of Ellis Island. The
remaining four were dwarfish Neapolitans, little more than wharf rats;
and the best of Naples bring little that is desirable. Yet one could
not but pity the unpleasing little wretches, who had risen so far above
their environment as to save money in a place where money is bought
dearly, and whose only reward for years of repression of every appetite
had been a month of misery and frustration.
"Porca di Madonna!" cursed the nearest, pointing to three small blue
scars on his neck; "For nothing but these your infernal doctors have
made me a beggar!"
"On the sea, when it was too late," whined his companion, "they told me
we with red eyes should not go to New York, but to a city named Canada.
Madre di Dio! Why did I not take my ticket to this Canada?"
"You will next time?" I hinted.
"Next time!" he shrieked, dropping from his bunk as noiselessly as a
cat. "Is there a next time with a book like that?" He shook in my face
the libretto containing a record of his activities since birth, lacking
which no Italian of the proletariat may live in peace in his own land
nor embark for another. Across every page was stamped indelibly the
word "deported."
"They ruined it, curse them! It's something in your maledetta American
language that tells the police not to let me go and the agenzia not to
sell me a ticket. My book is destroyed! Sono scomunicato! And where
shall I get the money for this next time, diceme? To come to America I
have worked nine, ten, sangue della Vergine! how do I know how many
years! Why did I not take the ticket to this Canada?"
On the morning of June seventh we raised the Azores; at first the
dimmest blot on the horizon, a point or two off the starboard bow, as if
the edge of heaven had been salt-splashed by a turbulent wave. Excited
dispute arose in the throng that quickly mustered at the rail. All but
the nautical-eyed saw only a cloud, which in a twinkling the hysterical
had pronounced the forerunner of a howling tempest that was soon to
bring to the _Prinzessin_ the dreaded _mal di mare_, perhaps even
ununctioned destruction. One quaking father drove his family below and
barricaded his corner against the tornado-lashed night to come.
An hour brought reassurance, however, and with it jubilation as the
outpost of the eastern world took on corporate form. Before sunset we
were abreast the island. An oblong hillside sloped upward to a
cloud-cowled peak. Villages rambled away up tortuous valleys; here and
there the green was dotted with chalk-white houses and whiter churches.
Higher still the island was mottled with duodecimo fields of grain, each
maturing in its own season; while far and near brilliant red windmills,
less stolid and thick-set than those of Holland, toiled in the breeze,
not hurriedly but with a deliberate vivacity befitting the Latin south.
Most striking of all was a scent of profoundest peace that came even to
the passing ship, and a suggestion of eternal summer, not of burning
days and sultry nights, but of early June in some fairy realm utterly
undisturbed by the clamorous rumble of the outer world.
Two smaller islands appeared before the day was done, one to port so
near that we could count the cottage windows and all but make out the
features of skirt-blown peasant women standing firm-footed in deep green
meadows against a background of dimming hills. As the night descended,
the houses faded to twinkling lights, now in clusters, now a
stone's-throw one from another, but not once failing as long as we
remained on deck.
For two days following the horizon was unbroken. Then through the
morning mists of June tenth rose Cabo San Vicente, the scowling granite
corner-stone of Europe, every line of its time-scarred features a
defiance to the sea and a menace to the passerby. Beyond stretched a
wrinkled, verdureless plateau, to all appearances unpeopled, and falling
into the Atlantic in grim, oxide-stained cliffs that here advanced
within hailing distance, there retreated to the hazy horizon. All
through the day the world's commerce filed past,--water-logged tramps
crawling along the face of the land, whale-like oil tanks showing only a
dorsal fin of funnel and deck-house, East Indiamen straining Biscayward,
and all the smaller fry of fishermen and coasters. A rumor, rising no
one knew where, promised that early morning should find us entering the
Mediterranean. I subsidized the services of a fellow-voyager dexterous
with shears and razor and, reduced to a tuft of forelock, descended once
more to the lower dungeon.
Long before daylight I was awakened by the _commissario_, or steerage
steward, tugging at a leg of my trousers and screeching in his boyish
falsetto, "Gibilterra! Make ready! Gibilterra!" It was no part of the
commissario's duties to call third-class passengers. But ever since the
day he had examined my ticket, the little whisp of a man who never
ceased to regard me with suspicion, as if he doubted the sanity of a
traveler who was bound for a land that was neither Italy nor America.
Of late he seemed convinced that my professed plan was merely a ruse to
reach Naples without paying full fare, and he eyed me askance now as I
clambered from my bunk, in his pigwidgeon face a stern determination
that my knavery should not succeed.
Supplied with a bucket by a sailor, I climbed on deck and approached the
galley. The cook was snoring in a corner of his domain; his understudy
was nowhere to be seen. I tip-toed to the hot-water faucet and was soon
below again stripping off my "ship's clothes," which the obliging
seaman, having bespoken this reward, caught up one by one as they fell.
The splashing of water aroused the encircling sleepers. Gradually they
slid to the deck and gathered around me, inquiring the details of my
eccentric plan. By the time I was dressed in the best my suitcase
offered, every mortal in the "single" quarters had come at least once to
bid me a dubious farewell.
The commissario returned and led the way in silence along the deserted
promenade to the deck abaft the cabins. The _Prinzessin_ lay at anchor.
A half-mile away, across a placid lagoon, towered the haggard Rock of
Gibraltar, a stone-faced city strewn along its base. About the harbor,
glinting in the slanting sunlight, prowled rowboats, sloops, and yawls,
and sharp-nosed launches. One of the latter soon swung in against the
starboard ladder and there stepped on deck two men in white uniforms,
who seated themselves without a word at a table which the commissario
produced by some magic of his own, and fell to spreading out impressive
documents. A glance sufficed to recognize them Englishmen. At length
the older raised his head with an interrogatory jerk, and the
commissario, with the air of a man taken red-handed in some rascality,
minced forward and laid on the table a great legal blank with one line
scrawled across it.
"T 'ird classy maneefesto, signori," he apologized.
"Eh!" cried the Englishman. "A steerage passenger for Gibraltar?"
The steward jerked his head backward toward me.
"Humph!" said the spokesman, inspecting me from crown to toe. "Where do
you hail from?"
Before I could reply there swarmed down the companionway a host of cabin
passengers, in port-of-call array, whom the Englishman greeted with
bared head and his broadest welcome-to-our-city smile; then bowed to the
launch ladder. As he resumed his chair I laid my passport before him.
"For what purpose do you desire to land in Gibraltar?" he demanded.
"I am bound for Spain--" I began.
"Spain!" shouted the Briton, with such emphasis as if that land lay at
the far ends of the earth. "Indeed! Where are you going from Gibraltar,
and how soon?"
"Until I get ashore I can hardly say; in a day or so, at least; to
Granada, perhaps, or Malaga."
"Out of respect for the American passport," replied the Englishman
grandiloquently, "I am going to let you land. But see you stick to this
story."
I descended to the launch and ten minutes later landed with my haughty
fellow-tourists at a bawling, tout-lined wharf. An officer peeped into
my handbag, and I sauntered on through a fortress gate under which a
sun-scorched Tommy Atkins marched unremittingly to and fro. Beyond,
opened a narrow street, paralleling the harbor front and peopled even at
this early hour with a mingling of races that gave to the scene the
aspect of a temperate India, or a scoured and rebuilt Egypt. Sturdy
British troopers in snug khaki and roof-like tropical helmets strode
past; bare-legged Moors in flowing _bournous_ stalked by in the widening
streak of sunshine along the western walls; the tinkle of goat-bells
mingled with the rhythmic cries of their drivers, offering a cup
fresh-drawn to whomever possessed a copper; now an orange woman hobbled
by, chanting her wares; everywhere flitted swarthy little men in misfit
rags, with small baskets of immense strawberries which sold for a song
to all but the tourists who tailed out behind me.
Suddenly, a furlong beyond the gate, a signboard flashed down upon me,
and I turned instinctively in at the open door of the "Seaman's
Institute." I found myself in a sort of restaurant, with here and there
a pair of England's soldiers at table, and a towsled youth of darker
tint hanging over the bar. I commanded ham and eggs; when they were
served the youth dropped into the chair opposite and, leaning on his
elbows, smiled speechlessly upon me, as if the sight of an unfamiliar
face brought him extraordinary pleasure.
"Room to put me up?" I asked.
"Nothin' much else but room," sighed the youth, in the slurring speech
of the Anglo-Spanish half-cast, "but the super 's not up yet, an' I 'm
only the skittles."
I left my baggage in his keeping and, roaming on through the rapidly
warming city to the Alameda Gardens, clambered away the day on the
blistered face of the great Rock above.
The "super," a flabby-muscled tank of an Englishman, was lolling out the
evening among his clients when I reentered the Institute. My request
for lodging roused him but momentarily from his lethargy.
"Sign off here?" he drawled.
"Left the _Prinzessin_ this morning," I answered, suddenly reminded that
I was no longer a seaman prepared to produce my discharge-book on
demand.
"A.B., eh?"
"Been before the mast on the _Warwickshire_, _Glen_--"
"All right. A bob a night is our tax. But no smoking aloft," he added,
as I dropped a coin on the table before him.
"'Ow ye like Gib?" asked the half-cast, leading the way up a narrow
stairway.
"Like it," I replied.
"Yes, they all does," he mourned, "for one day. But 'ow if you 'ad
always to bask on the stewin' old Rock, like a bally lizard? Saint
Patrick! If only some toff 'ud pay me a ticket to America!"
He entered a great room, divided by thin wooden partitions into a score
of small ones, and, tramping down a hallway, lighted me into the last
chamber. Opposite the cot was a tall window with heavy wooden blinds. I
flung them open and leaned out over the _reja_; and all at once,
unheralded, the Spain of my dreams leaped into reality. Below, to one
side, flowed the murmuring stream of Gibraltar's main thoroughfare;
further away the flat-roofed city descended in moonlit indistinctness
into the Mediterranean. From a high-walled garden a pebble-toss away
and canopied with fragrant fruit-trees, rose the twang of a guitar and a
man's clear voice singing a languorous air of Andalusia. Now and again
a peal of laughter broke on the night and drifted away on the wings of
the indolent sea-breeze. I rolled a cigarette and lighted it pensively,
not in contempt for the "super's" orders, but because some transgression
of established law seemed the only fitting celebration of the
untrammeled summer that was opening before me.