German gunboat met with us, she would snitch that twenty million
first, help herself to our coal second, and, third, sink us.
That was the consensus of opinion of the handful of English and French
passengers aboard. The Arabian Sea is full of sharks, terrible,
ferocious, man-eating sharks; and what with anxiously watching specks
on the horizon, speculating as to whether those specks would develop
into German cruisers, and wondering how salt water tasted, and whether
a shark would get me on the way down, with these pleasant thoughts a
man of my peculiar temperament couldn't write travel stuff.
I tried, I honestly tried, but only one measly little poem was all I
could accomplish on this five days' passage coming across from Bombay
to Aden.
I never attempt poetry unless my soul is stirred with deep emotions.
Eight verses were wrenched out of me, when a smudge of smoke was
visible on the horizon, and the bets were ninety to one that a German
cruiser had sighted us.
The first two verses of that poem went:
Your scribe he is a soldier nit,
Nor used to war's alarms;
He never died, or bled, or fit,
Save bugs upon his farms.
And when at last he went to war
On a big P. & O.,
He went to war, just only for
To get home quick, you know.
[Illustration: Anxiously watching specks on the horizon]
And the next six verses were even worse than those two.
The smudge turned out to be an English merchantman, eastbound, as
scared of the Germans as we were. There isn't a speck on the horizon
in any direction, and with Aden almost in sight, in exuberance of
spirit I wrote one more verse:
So whoop, hurrah, don't look askance,
He's sailing o'er the sea;
Doggone a man who'll take no chance,
"A chance for me," quoth he.
XXXII
BEATING THE GAME WITH ONE SHIRT
We will land at Tilbury (London) in an hour, and I have beaten the
game with one shirt.
The English are great in many respects, but in nothing do they excel
more thoroughly than in dressing for dinner. Now we, of the great
American "proletariat," are not strangers to the dress-suit. We do, on
occasions, don it.
At evening weddings we put it on.
When a town magnate gives an evening reception, those of us who are
counted among the elect and get an invitation, put on a dress-suit.
Occasions of this kind may happen three or four times a year, and, to
make sure that everything is in order, after the invitations are out
and we have received ours, our wives, who are more solicitous about
this thing than we men, dig up hubby's dress suit and give it an
airing.
[Illustration: We do, on occasions, don it]
Our dress shirt is sent to the laundry so as to have it fresh for the
occasion, and a day or two before the event hubby gets into the spirit
of the game, and at the earnest solicitation of the female portion of
the house, submits to a dress rehearsal to make sure that shirt,
studs, special collar, tie and all the toggery appertaining to the
deal will be in order at the last moment prior to the final plunge.
Now our English cousin's familiarity with the dress-suit breeds
contempt--that is, contempt for any exhilaration incident to getting
into the thing on state occasions.
While it is not a criminal offense not to dress for dinner, it is
something in the nature of a misdemeanor, and a rigid rule prescribes
the dress-suit for dinner.
Nowhere on earth is this rigid rule more thoroughly observed than on
the P. & O.
I was not a stranger to this rule--the P. & O. and I are not
strangers. Nor am I a stranger to the customs of the Far East.
As the years have gone by I have added to the dress shirt a sufficient
number to take care of the situations one meets with on world tours.
When I got to Bombay I found that the strenuous dobes had practically
annihilated all but one of my dress shirts, so I presented those
wrecked shirts to Lal, along with my bedding purchased in Calcutta,
for which I had no further use, to take back to Calcutta with him.
If Mark Twain were alive today I'd be willing to bet him dollars to
doughnuts that the dobes had succeeded in breaking stones clear
across India with my dress shirts.
I had many things to do to get ready to sail on this ship, and one
would have been enough--that consular invoice.
To lay in a bale of dress shirts was one of the items that should have
been attended to, as I knew I was in for a twenty-two days' sail on a
P. & O. to London; if all went well after boarding her.
But somehow, other things pressed more heavily.
I thought of the dress shirts several times, but I seemed to have a
vague sort of an idea that dress-suits wouldn't cut much ice this
trip, so I dismissed dress shirts with the idea that I had one, and
the gloomy outlook was such that I must have decided that one shirt
would last two days--three on a pinch--and that we were due to be sunk
by that time, and if we were, a dress-suit would be of secondary
importance to me--anyway I got aboard with only one dress shirt.
After clearing from Bombay for Aden, along about ten o'clock in the
forenoon, the day slipped by without my realizing that I had started
on a twenty-two days' voyage on a crack P. & O. liner with only one
dress shirt.
The careful reader who has followed me in these travel letters will
have gathered in my last that dress shirts were not weighing as
heavily on my mind as some other things.
It was a doughty lot of Englishmen, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen,
that made up the passenger list, about a score of men. You might say
it was a picked lot--sifted, as it were--English colonials going home
to England for a holiday. Judges seemed to predominate--an especially
good lot of fellows--and brave.
After tea that day (by the way, I've attended twenty-two "he" tea
parties on this voyage, the Englishman's tea and his dress-suit are
twin brothers), shortly after tea the bell rang to dress for dinner.
I had a hazy idea that the ceremony might be waived on this voyage.
I couldn't see any occasion to put on the glad rags--a handful of men,
probably sailing to their doom--to get into gala attire seemed almost
sacrilegious.
But every last man ducked for his cabin to get into his dress-suit.
Under the circumstances the Frenchmen wouldn't kick, no matter how
they felt about it--they all ducked too.
I had no enthusiasm to dress for dinner.
Couldn't see the use.
[Illustration: I've attended twenty-two "he" tea parties on this
voyage]
I felt, unless we were sunk, I couldn't play the game right more than
three or four days with one shirt.
But I decided to be game and not cross a bridge till I came to it. I
could hold out with my one shirt for three or four days and not be
thrown overboard, and by that time we would all go down together.
After four days that shirt looked _passe_, not to say soiled.
No German gunboat had come to the rescue up to the time of the gong
sounding to dress for dinner on the fifth day.
When the bell rang to dress that day I ducked with the rest of the
boys.
I sadly looked at that dress shirt, shook my head, and took a turn up
and down the deck.
No use, there wasn't a speck on the horizon; no hope of being sunk
before dinner.
I went back to my cabin and turned that shirt around, and blossomed
out with it hind side fore.
I was a little nervous at first, until after soup, but it went. Didn't
occasion any remark or flutter, and I felt that I was good for four
days more.
At the end of the second four days, eight days out from Bombay, we had
passed Aden.
[Illustration: No hope of being sunk before dinner]
[Illustration: I turned that shirt around]
We stopped there a few hours of a Saturday afternoon.
Everything was shut up--couldn't buy a shirt for love or money.
We were now in the Red Sea and no German gunboats had found us, as
yet. By this time it wasn't the fear of German gunboats that was
causing me anxiety. To dress for dinner with that bunch of Englishmen
had gotten to be a mania with me, and there were five days more to
Port Said before I could buy some dress shirts. My shirt would go one
more time hind side to, but after that something would have to be
done.
On the ninth day for dinner I turned that shirt inside out--and got
by.
A mighty load was lifted from my soul. On a pinch she would last eight
more days that way, four days inside out front to, four days inside
out back to.
Safe for eight days more and we'd make Port Said in five!
We made Port Said all right--slipped past in the night; not so much as
a fire-cracker to wake me up.
We were now in the Mediterranean, and Gibraltar our next stop--six
days away.
Italy was still neutral. But I had got where I didn't give a tinker's
dam about the neutrality of Italy--what I wanted was some clean dress
shirts.
I'm ashamed to chronicle it, but all interest in the war seemed to
dwindle with me. I was obsessed with one idea, one ambition--to make
that shirt stand me until we could make Gibraltar.
Eighteen days from Bombay to Gibraltar, and I'd got by with sixteen of
them. Two days more and we would be at Gibraltar, where I could get
some dress shirts. There was no hope of being sunk, and getting out of
it that way. The Mediterranean was as quiet as a duck pond.
I had found out by this time that the English would stand for anything
in the shirt front, if the conventional dress-suit was on for dinner.
So I contemplated that shirt fore and aft, inside and out, and used
the best sides.
I was a good fellow and one of the boys. I had managed to dress every
day for dinner, and while I felt like a thief in that shirt, it went,
and I was accepted, and we got to Gibraltar.
But just before we anchored in the harbor at Gibraltar this notice was
posted: "Only British subjects allowed ashore," and there were four
more days to London!
[Illustration: I felt like a thief in that shirt]
I entreated the commander, I entreated the purser to give me a pass to
go ashore.
They were adamant. The rules of war couldn't be broken. Only British
subjects would be allowed ashore at Gibraltar.
I didn't wait for the gong to sound for dinner after leaving Gibraltar
that day. Immediately after lunch I repaired to my cabin to consider
my dress shirt.
Positively I didn't dare to risk it again. I was absolutely certain it
wouldn't go another time on any of the four sides, and I was also just
as absolutely certain that I was going to play the game right up to
London.
Not dress for dinner the next four days on the P. & O. with my English
friends? The spirit of Bunker Hill, Lexington, Cambridge, Ticonderoga,
and the battle of the Oriskany fired my soul. With my jack-knife to
rip, and some puckering strings, I went at it, right after lunch. I
turned that shirt upside down--don't ask me how I managed. You can't
stump a resolute man. I worked it--I won out.
We got up the Thames without striking a mine--I had no thought of
mines.
I "dressed" for dinner the last day on board!
[Illustration: With my jack-knife to rip and some puckering strings I
went at it]
[Illustration: I turned that shirt upside down]
[Illustration: Also, _I_ finally accepted his apology]
A judge, an elderly Englishman who had sat opposite me all the way
from Bombay, and who wasn't in rugged health, neglected to dress for
that last dinner. He apologized profusely for coming to dinner "not
dressed." Owing to it being the last day, his age and indisposition,
his apology was accepted by the Englishmen at table.
Also _I_ finally accepted his apology, but _I_ never want to have an
apology accepted in just quite the frigid manner in which I overlooked
the judge's lapse.
XXXIII
THROUGH HELL GATE STEERAGE
Here, then, is the final travel letter I shall write on this
world-girdling tour.
It is a woeful ending for the "sparkling gems" of travel stuff which
have gone before.
It will record the sad contrast between my start from my native land,
gaily sailing out of the Golden Gate, a _de luxe_ first-class
passenger, and winding up my joy-ride around the world by coming
through Hell Gate steerage, barely escaping being condemned as a
criminal and executed on the high seas, chucked overboard and fed to
the sharks.
The lights and shadows of this wicked world are something fierce.
I am glad I made good my promise to try to write a little poetry
before I came to this letter. I would surely never try to put it over
in this one--it would be too great a strain.
Coming through Hell Gate steerage--
The next line might have to end with "peerage," and steerage and
peerage don't mix worth a cent.
My first errand upon arrival in London was to lay in a stock of dress
shirts.
But I didn't need any dress shirts coming across the Atlantic.
Indeed I didn't. What I needed was a good stout hickory shirt--a pair
of overalls and double-bitted axe.
I don't suppose a writer of travel stuff on a _debonair_ trip around
the world ever had so much trouble as I have had the last eight days.
As I have already explained in letter XXVII, I held an order for a
first-class passage on any American or British ship I might choose
from England to New York.
With two dozen dress shirts, latest approved "Lunnon" style, safely
cinched--I didn't propose to take any chances the balance of my trip,
so I bought two dozen--I went to get that order changed for passage
home.
"Why," the man told me, "we can't book you first cabin on anything
sailing for America for six weeks. We can send you to New York
steerage, on a ship sailing the day after tomorrow, if you speak
quick. There are a couple of vacancies left. But you need not be
afraid of steerage at this time. Owing to the war, the flower of
America are going home steerage. The truly refined, the
got-rich-quick, high-brows of the deepest dye, prize-fighters,
captains of industry, and card-sharps are all traveling steerage
these days.
"Why, Mr. Allen," he said, "traveling steerage is a picnic now. Owing
to the class of people who are patronizing it, everything is done by
the ship's management to make the steerage journey home a pleasurable
experience."
As I have never been able to get enough picnics--I am a fiend for
picnics--I spoke quick. I said: "Book me now."
"And," the man told me, "there will be a rebate coming to you. The
fare, steerage, is only seven pounds. You hold a twenty pound order."
"Sure," I said, "thirteen pounds coming my way."
"Oh, no, not thirteen pounds; but there will be something. Come around
this evening and I will tell you how much of a rebate you will be
allowed."
"Why not thirteen pounds?" I asked. "Over on our side the difference
between seven and twenty is thirteen."
"Oh, yes," he said, "but the P. & O. won't stand for such an
adjustment; but I'll do the best I can for you."
When I went to get my rebate I was offered one pound eleven shillings.
I told them to keep it; that nothing but a rebate of thirteen pounds
looked good to me. "Furthermore," I said, "if the line slips a cog
this trip across and forgets to make steerage passage home one
continual round of pleasure, if, perchance, I should feel like shaking
steerage before we get across, I'll try to work the purser to let me
eat first and sleep in the steerage. Coming home from Naples in the
rush season, holding a first cabin ticket, I once had to accept second
cabin berth, but was allowed to eat in first cabin."
I was willing to shake steerage at Liverpool before ever boarding the
ship. A madder lot of Americans I never met, of whom there were about
seven hundred, mixed in with about three hundred immigrants. Hours
were consumed to get that thousand steerage passengers aboard the
tender. No effort was made to separate them. The great majority being
Americans with passports to be examined, immigrants and Americans were
all held standing for hours in a hot, broiling sun, a congested herd
of humanity, while the tedious task of examining the passports was
carried on at the gang-plank--a task that could have been done in
comfort in a large and commodious room on the wharf, where there were
the accommodations for at least our women and children to be seated
while immigrants and Americans were separated; after which both bodies
could have passed on board in comfort and with dispatch.
But when we reached the ship, wow! a howl went up. We had consumed the
biggest part of the day in getting from the wharf to the ship via
tender, and we struck it at supper-time. Seven hundred Americans who
had been told that steerage home would be a picnic!
Gur-r-r--"_picnic!_"
Filth! Stench! Vermin! Our illusion was dispelled.
Now there is a streak of yellow in almost everyone. Once in a while a
noble, self-sacrificing character is born who had rather suffer with
his kind than be delivered, like Daniel, and Joseph, and Moses, and
who, by persistently sticking to exalted ideals, win out, so that all
ages ring with extolling their characters.
But most of that kind die young.
There are moments when _I_ feel that I'd like to be grand, and good,
and noble, like Daniel, and Joseph, and Moses. Then the temptations of
the world, the flesh, and the devil get in between and I slip back.
Every time after slipping back from those noble aspirations and high
aims a particular and special brand of hard luck strikes me. My heart
beat in sympathy with that crowd of seven hundred Americans traveling
steerage with whom I had cast my lot; but after the first meal I
decided that I'd try to shake them. So I went up first to ask the
purser to let me at least eat first cabin.
"Purser," I said, "I am booked to travel home steerage--"--that
haughty individual interrupted me with: "You're a third-class
passenger, then, on this ship," and he looked at me as if I were an
angleworm.
"Even so," I said; "but----" and I was reaching into my pocket to get
at the document to prove to him that I had paid for a first-class
passage.
He evidently thought that I was reaching to get my card, because he
snapped out, "I don't care who you are, you're a third-class passenger
on this ship."
"Yes, purser," I said, "but this"--handing him my document--"will show
you that while I am booked steerage, I paid for first; and couldn't
arrangements be made for me to sleep in the steerage and eat at the
first table? You know, purser, it's just a little rocky back there in
the steerage--and you see I paid for first-cabin passage."
There is no doubt but what that fellow could read, but he seemed so
horrified at a steerage passenger invading the holy precincts of first
cabin that he wouldn't attempt to read anything that had been
contaminated by being in the possession of a steerage passenger.
Anyway, he handed it back to me without reading it, with the remark:
"I've only got your word for that."
"Um huh, purser," I said, "and when it comes to a plain statement of
facts, my word is good for even more than that."
"You're a third-class passenger on this ship, and you'll have to eat
third-class where you belong," and further conversation with me seemed
to give him a pain.
After that unsatisfactory interview with the purser, the high and holy
self-sacrificing sentiments that I had had just prior to my desire to
try and shake that bunch of steerage passengers--that part of my
better nature that made me feel for the misfortunes of my kind
returned, and I went back to the steerage, "where I belonged," to
share their lot--it was either that or jump overboard.
There was just one topic of conversation back in steerage--the rotten
treatment we were getting; and it was the voice of our little
democracy that we ought to try and do something. I told you in letter
II that one can make better time getting acquainted on shipboard than
anywhere else, but you may have missed that wheat grain of information
in the surrounding chaff. But it is there, and already there were
those aboard who had learned that I was doing newspaper work, so
they wished the job of trying onto me.
[Illustration: "You're a third-class passenger on this ship"--and
further conversation with me seemed to give him a pain]
If a protest and a petition for an effort to try and make things
better, signed by a goodly number of us from the underworld who were
American citizens, were sent up to the captain, it might mend matters,
and wouldn't I draft it?
After my encounter with that purser--the purser standing high in the
management of a passenger ship at sea--I had a fear that any petition
we might make wouldn't be received with favor by the management, but
my election for the job was so unanimous, spontaneous and hearty that
I buckled to it and wrote a petition, in which I told the management
what we American steerage passengers thought of what was being handed
to us on our passage home. I told them we were steerage passengers not
from choice, but owing to the fortunes of war, and instead of trying
to emphasize the fact that we were steerage passengers, wouldn't they
see what they could do to make us forget it? Furthermore, I asked in
the petition if they wouldn't at least see that the stewards who
served us our food put on clean clothes: that the white suits they
wore were filthy when we left Liverpool, and that they were still
wearing the same filthy suits. And also wouldn't they see that the
dishes were given an occasional bath--that the knives and forks they
were handing us turned our stomachs. And couldn't we have ice water to
drink? Even had the temerity to suggest that they give us
napkins--qualified the suggestion of napkins by telling them paper
ones would be counted a boon.
I read my petition to the crowd and it was loudly acclaimed a choice
bit of literature, right to the point, and exactly fitted the case;
and they crowded around to sign it, and wanted me to get it into the
captain's hands as quick as I could. I went up to first cabin to hunt
for the captain and ran into the purser. When he saw me coming he
looked even more aggrieved than when he told me to stay where I
belonged. But I told him this time I came with a petition, signed by
several hundred American citizens, and that I wanted to give it to the
captain.
"We're in a fog now and captain is on the bridge; I'll give your
petition to him when he comes off the bridge," the purser said.
"All right, purser," I said; "and you needn't return the petition to
me. I've got a copy of it and a copy of all the names of the signers."
And I went back to steerage, from choice now. I fear that I've always
set too great a store on ease and luxury--asceticism has never
appealed to me as a personal practice; but it would have taken a roll
of money to have hired me to shake steerage now. My better nature, or
something, had triumphed, and my lot was cast with that down-trodden,
forsaken, and hopeless crowd of steerage travelers. A revulsion of
feeling for first-class on that ship had filled my soul. They couldn't
have hired me to travel first-class now. When I got back "amongst my
own people" I was the recipient of so many tales of woe--I was so
filled up with steerage passengers' grievances, that if my interior
had been analyzed it would have looked just like the bureau for the
amelioration of troubles at San Francisco after the earthquake.
Shake that bunch? Nay, nay. In my contrition of spirit I concluded
that what I was getting was just retribution for ever trying to do
such a thing; and I feared if I should let go and make another attempt
to do it, something worse might come to me--although I couldn't figure
out just what it could be. Besides, after that petition reached the
throne, I'd be in bad with the ship's management, and another attempt
to get away from steerage would be futile.
My-o! but that was a forlorn lot of passengers traveling steerage.
Our chief aversion was "Beef," chief steward of steerage (he was
dubbed "Beef" by the sufferers an hour after we got aboard). He was
big, beefy, brass-buttoned and shoulder-strapped, evidently hired by
the line for his ability to drive over-worked stewards and handle
immigrant passengers.
Almost immediately after boarding the ship he had earned the
indignation of the Americans by insulting one of our country-women, a
woman of refinement and culture, who was traveling alone--the wife of
a banker. When she protested at the deplorable condition of the
dishes, he stormed up to her and asked her what was wrong. "Why," she
said, "you don't expect us to eat our meals off such dirty dishes, do
you?"
"You're no better than immigrants, and you'll be handled as such,"
"Beef" said. And when she told him she would report him to the captain
he bellowed out most insultingly: "Go ahead and report; we aren't
afraid."
Subsequent events proved that "Beef" had no cause to fear the captain.