A Yankee in the Far East Part 22

I "dressed" for dinner the last day on board!

[Ill.u.s.tration: With my jack-knife to rip and some puckering strings I went at it]

[Ill.u.s.tration: I turned that shirt upside down]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

x.x.xIII

THROUGH h.e.l.l 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-cla.s.s pa.s.senger, and winding up my joy-ride around the world by coming through h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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-cla.s.s pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sengers aboard the tender. No effort was made to separate them. The great majority being Americans with pa.s.sports 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 pa.s.sports 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble, 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 n.o.ble, 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 n.o.ble 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-cla.s.s pa.s.senger, 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 doc.u.ment to prove to him that I had paid for a first-cla.s.s pa.s.sage.

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-cla.s.s pa.s.senger on this ship."

"Yes, purser," I said, "but this"--handing him my doc.u.ment--"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 pa.s.sage."

There is no doubt but what that fellow could read, but he seemed so horrified at a steerage pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.senger.

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-cla.s.s pa.s.senger on this ship, and you'll have to eat third-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sengers--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.