A Yankee in the Far East Part 20

He wanted to get home as bad as any man could, but he was going to retrace his steps and go home via j.a.pan.

Our Consul advised me if I really wanted to get home that I had better go that way too. On the other hand, he advised, if I really enjoyed the sensation of momentarily living in expectation of being sunk, shot to pieces, or blown up, that this P. & O. liner was an ideal ship to sail on.

As I had just come from j.a.pan, as my contract is to write travel stuff around the world--not two-thirds around and back over the same ground--and as I had picked up numerous cases of stuff coming across India, all of which were under consular invoice, said invoice reciting the fact that the goods it described were to leave India on this same ship, for entry at New York (it being a requirement of our tariff laws to name the ship, port of departure, and port of arrival of goods for entry into United States), I told our Consul and my Calcutta friend that I was going to take a chance and sail on this ship.

To write that invoice all over again for another ship, for entry into San Francisco en route from j.a.pan--to get out of that was the determining factor.

Anyone who knows anything about the details of a consular invoice will understand.

So I boarded this ship with a handful of pa.s.sengers booked for London.

The tender steamed away and left us in Bombay Harbor, ready to weigh anchor and sail at 3 P. M. Sat.u.r.day, the advertised hour for sailing.

But we didn't weigh--not at 3 P. M. that day, or the next. The next day, Sunday, all first and second-cabin pa.s.sengers--the P. & O. carry no steerage--were shoved up forward, and British troops, homeward bound, were taken on aft--and I wondered if the Consul knew.

This changed the situation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: To write that invoice all over again * * * to get out of that was the determining factor]

Sailing on a British ship with British troops, to say nothing of twenty million dollars in gold, with England and Germany at War, was no good place for a man of my peaceful proclivities.

I wasn't alone in these sentiments.

The purser, on that peaceful Sabbath day, put this question to the pa.s.sengers: "Do you want to sail on this ship or go ash.o.r.e?"

We might sail at our own risk. Anyone sailing was a belligerent. That question thinned the pa.s.senger list down to about a score. The most timid ones stampeded to leave the ship. I won first place at the ladder, but remembered that consular invoice and turned back, and one of our preacher pa.s.sengers beat me to it and was the first one down the ladder.

He had spent his life preaching that Heaven was a desirable place, but he proposed to go there in G.o.d's good time. The purser, thinking he had missed me, put the question to me the second time.

With my teeth chattering with valor and my face blanched with the war spirit, to hide my real feelings I made reply: "P-p-please start your tank. I want to go home--I want to get there as soon as possible--I want to go home, I tell you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: With my teeth chattering with valor]

But I don't like this war game, and I decided right then and there if they sprung another one, if they added another war risk to the ship for this voyage, I _would_ shake it and go home via j.a.pan.

We stayed in Bombay Harbor until next day at noon, to throw the Germans off her schedule, and she sailed out of her regular course to throw them off her route.

Nights we sail in darkness--her lights out and her wireless out of commission; sailing phantom-like, with no lights to betray her to lurking German cruisers, and by the same token, no lights to warn a ship sailing north and south from ramming her.

I had fully intended to write some travel stuff coming across from Bombay, but shucks! I haven't felt like writing travel stuff--couldn't seem to get down to it.

A speck on the horizon would knock any travel stuff out of my mind--that speck might grow into a German cruiser, and England at war with Germany, and no guns aboard to shoot with! Just a merchant mail ship with twenty million dollars in gold and British troops aboard.

From all the accounts we had been getting of German atrocities, if a 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 pa.s.sengers 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' pa.s.sage 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

x.x.xII

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.