London to Denmark Across the North Sea.
ESBJERG, DENMARK, _August 25, 1902_.
We came down from London to Harwich toward the end of the day. Our
train was a "Special" running to catch the steamer for Denmark. We
were delayed a couple of hours in the dingy, dirty London station by
reason of a great fog which had crept in over Harwich from the North
Sea, and then, the boat had to wait upon the tide.
The instant the train backed in alongside the station platform--only
ten minutes before it would pull out--there was the usual scramble and
grab to seize a seat in the first-carriage-you-can and pandemonium
reigned. H is well trained by this time, however, and I quickly had
her comfortably ensconced in a seat by a window with bags and shawls
pyramided by her side the better to hold a place for me. Meantime, I
hurried to a truck where stood awaiting me a well-tipped porter and
together we safely stowed two "boxes" into a certain particular
"luggage van," the number of which I was careful to note so that I
might be sure quickly to find the "luggage" again, when we should
arrive at Harwich, else a stranger might walk off with it as aptly as
with his own.
Our "carriage" was packed "full-up" with several men and women, who
looked dourly at us and at each other as they sat glumly squeezed
together, elbows in each other's ribs. So forbidding was the prospect
confronting me that I did not presume to attempt a conversation. These
comrades, however, soon dropped out at the way-stations, until only
one lone man was left, when I took heart and made bold to accost him.
I found him very civil and, recognizing me to be a foreign visitor, he
spoke with freedom. One Englishman never forgives another for sitting
beside him, unintroduced, and squeezing him up in a railway carriage;
but he harbors no such grudge against his American cousin, equally the
victim of British methods.
Our _vis-à-vis_ had been a volunteer-trooper in South Africa, and had
just come back to England, after two years' hardship and exposure. He
had given up a good position in order to serve his country, and had
been promised that the place would be kept open for him against his
return. He tells me he now finds a stay-at-home holds his job. He has
"a wife and two little lads to keep," and so far he has had "no luck
in finding work." There are thousands of others in as bad a fix as he,
he says, returned patriots who are starving for lack of work. He
denounced the entire Boer-smashing business most savagely and declared
that as for South Africa, he "would not take the whole of it for a
gift." We hear this sort of talk everywhere among the people we
casually meet. The average Englishman takes small pride in his Army.
"It gives fat jobs to the aristocracy, it is death to us," is what I
have heard a dozen times remarked. Our new acquaintance seemed to feel
the better for having thus spoken out his mind, and when we parted,
wished us a "prosperous voyage."
[Illustration: THE NORTH SEA.]
The ship was in motion within twenty minutes after our train reached
the Harwich pier. To my landsman's thinking the air was yet murky with
the fog. Big sirens were booming all about us. The melancholy clang of
tidal bells sounded in sombre muffled tones from many anchored buoys.
It was a drear, dank night to leave the land. We moved slowly,
sounding our own hoarse whistle all the while. I stood upon the upper
deck peering into the mists till we had come well out to sea. There
were few boats moving, no big ones. Multitudes of small schooners and
sloops rode at anchor, their danger lights faintly gleaming. I
wondered we did not run down and crush them, but the pilot seemed to
apprehend the presence of another boat even before the smallest ray of
light shone through the fog. One or two great ships we came shockingly
close upon. At least, I was jarred more than once when their huge
black hulks and reaching masts suddenly grew up before me out of the
dead white curtain of the mists. The estuary which leads from Harwich
to the sea is long and tortuous. Only a pilot who has been born upon
it, and from boyhood learned its currents and its tides, its shallows
and its shoals, may dare to guide a boat along it, even in broad day.
How much greater the skill and knowledge required thus to steer a ship
through these labyrinthine channels amidst the fogs and blackness of
such a night! The Captain told me he was always uneasy when coming
out, no matter when, and never felt safe until far out upon the sea.
Even in open water he must keep the sharpest kind of a watch lest some
one of the myriad fishing craft which haunt these waters, should lie
athwart the way.
The sea was quiet, rolling with a long slow swell. The rising wind
soughed softly through the rigging when, toward midnight, I at last
turned in.
All day Sunday the North Sea lay smooth and glassy as a pond; no hint
of the turmoil and tempest which so often rage upon its shallow
depths. We did not see many vessels; far to the north I made out the
smoke of a steamer which the captain said was bound for Kristiansand,
in Norway; and south of us were a few sail, which I took to be fishing
luggers from Holland. Nor were there many seabirds flying. The sky
hung low and in the gray air was the feel of a storm in the offing.
Toward dark, about eight o'clock, a misty rain settled down upon us,
and the rising wind began swashing the dripping waters along the
decks. Toward half past nine we descried a dim glimmer in the east,--a
beacon light flickering through the night,--and then another with
different intervals of flash, a mile or two out upon the left, and
then our ears caught the deep bellow of a fog horn across the sea.
We were nearing the west coast of the Province of Jutland, in Denmark.
Our port lay dead ahead between the lights. Another hour of cautious
navigating, for there are many sand bars and shifting shoals along
this coast, and we came steaming slowly, very slowly, among trembling
lights--fishing smacks at anchor with their night signals burning--and
then we crept up to a big black wharf. We were arrived at Esbjerg.
[Illustration: THE DOCKS, ESBJERG.]
The train for Copenhagen (Kjoebenhavn) would leave at midnight, an
eight-hours' ride and no sleeping car attached.
We decided to stay aboard the ship, sleep peacefully in our
wide-berthed stateroom and take a train at eleven o'clock of the
morning, which would give us a daylight ride.
We were entering Denmark by the back door. The sea-loving traveler
generally approaches by one of the ocean liners which sail direct from
New York to Copenhagen; those who find terror in the sea enter by way
of Kiel, and an all-rail ride through Holland and Germany, crossing
the channel to Ostend, Dieppe, or the Hook. Only the few voyage across
the North Sea with its frequent storms--the few who, like ourselves,
are good sailors and do not fear the stress of tide and tempest. We
were now at Esbjerg, and must cross the entire peninsula of Denmark,
its Little Belt, its Big Belt and the large islands of Funen and
Zealand to reach our journey's end.
I am already beginning to pick up the Danish speech, a mixture of
English, German, Dutch and new strange throat gutturals, the latter
difficult for an American larynx to make. And yet so similar is this
mother tongue of Scandinavia to the modern English, that I can often
tell what a Dane is saying by the very similarity of the sounds: "Go
Morn"--(good morning), "Farvel"--(farewell).
Our fellow passengers were mostly Danes. This is their favorite route
for coming home. They are a quiet, rather pensive people. The men,
much of the time, were smoking, and drinking beer and a white brandy.
The women were often sitting in the smoking room with them, enjoying,
I presume, the perfume of tobacco, as every right-minded woman should,
and it may be, also finding solace in the scent of the strong brown
beer, which they are not themselves indisposed to quaff.
The cooking on this Danish boat has been good. We have keenly
appreciated the improvement upon the diet of roast beef, boiled
mutton, boiled ham, boiled potatoes, and boiled peas steeped in mint,
which we have been compelled to exist upon during the past few weeks
in Britain.
[Illustration: OUR DANISH RAILWAY CARRIAGE.]