Tramping on Life Part 35

At Tien Tsin they had behaved rather badly, I was told by one of them,--had gone on a Samshu jag ... a Chinese drink, worse than the worst American "rot-gut." ...

"Wisht I c'd git off the dock an' rustle up another drink somewheres."

"They wouldn't let us off this dock fer love nor money," spoke up a lithe, blue-shaven marine to me--the company's barber, I afterward learned him to be....

"Yah, we got ter stay here all afternoon, an' me t'roat's es dry es san'paper."

"Where are they taking you to, from here?"

"Manila!... the _Indiana's_ waitin' out in th' bay fer us."

"--Wish I could get off with you!" I remarked.

"Wot's the matter? On th' b.u.m here?"

"Yes."

Immediately the barber and two others, his pals, became intensely, suspiciously so, interested in my desire to sail with them....

"--Tell you wot," and the company barber reached into his pocket with a surrept.i.tious glance about, "if you'll take these bills an' sneak past to that coaster lyin' along the next dock, the Chinese steward 'ull sell you three bottles o' whiskey fer these," and he handed me a bunch of bills ... "an' w'en you come back with th' booze, we'll see to it that you get took out to the transport with us, all right ... won't we, boys?"

"--betcher boots we will."

"G.o.d, but this is like heaven to me," exclaimed the barber, as he tilted up his bottle, while the two others stood about him, to keep him from being seen. The three of them drank their bottles of whiskey as if it was water.

"That saved me life...."

"An' mine, too. You go to Manila wit' us, all right,--kid!"

Toward dusk came the sharp command for the men to march aboard the coaster that had drawn up for them. The boys kept their word. They loaded me down with their accoutrements to carry. I marched up the gangway with them, and we were off to the _Indiana_.

I was the first, almost, to scamper aboard the waiting transport in the gathering dusk ... and, to make sure of staying aboard, I hurried down one ladder after the other, till I reached the heavy darkness of the lowermost hold. Having nothing to do but sleep, I stumbled over some oblong boxes, climbed onto one, and composed myself for the night, using a coil of rope for a pillow.

I woke to find a grey patch of day streaming down the ladder-way. My eyes soon adjusted themselves to the obscurity.

And then it was that I gave a great, scared leap. And with difficulty I held myself back from crying out.

Those curious oblong boxes among which I had pa.s.sed the night--they were hermetically sealed coffins, and there were dead soldiers in them.

Ridges of terror crept along my flesh. Stifling a panic in me, I forced myself to go slow as I climbed the iron rungs to the hold above ...

where living soldiers lay sleeping in long rows....

Still undetected, I scrambled along an aisle between them and put myself away in a sort of life-preserver closet. Not till I had heard the familiar throb of the propeller in motion for a long time, did I come forth.

During the voyage of, I believe, eight days, I loafed about, lining up for rations with the boys ... no one questioned me. My engineer's clothes that I had taken, in lieu of part of my wages, from the slop-chest of _The South Sea King_, caused the officers of the marines to think I belonged to the ship's crew ... and the ship-officers must have thought I was in some way connected with the marines ... anyhow, I was not molested, and I led a life much to my liking ... an easy-going and loafing and tale-telling one ... mixing about and talking and listening ... and reading back-number magazines.

One day my friend the barber called me aside:

"Say, kid, I've been delegated to tell you that you've got lice." I flamed indignant.

"That's a G.o.d-d.a.m.ned lie! and whoever told you so is a G.o.d-d.a.m.ned liar, too! I never had a louse in my life."

"Easy! Easy!... no use gittin' huffy ... if it ain't lice you got, wot you scratchin' all the time fer? Look in the crotch of yer pants and the seams of your shirt, an' see!"

I _had_ been scratching a lot ... and wondering what was wrong ... my breast was all red ... but I had explained it to myself that I was wearing a coa.r.s.e woolen undershirt next my skin ... that I had picked up from the slop-chest, also.

The barber walked jauntily away, leaving me standing sullenly alone.

I sneaked into the toilet, looking to see if anyone was about. I turned my shirt back. To my horror, my loathing,--the soldier's accusation was true!... they were so thick, thanks to my ignorant neglect, that I could see them moving in battalions ... if I had been the victim of some filthy disease, I could scarcely have felt more beyond the pale, more a pariah. I had not detected them before, because I was ignorant of the thought of having them, and because their grey colour was exactly that of the inside of my woolen shirt.

I threw the shirt away, content to shiver for a few days till we had steamed to warmer weather ... I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed myself.... I had, up to now, had experience with head-lice only ... as a child, in school....

I look back with a shudder even yet to that experience. During my subsequent tramp-career I never could grow callous to vermin, as a few others that I met, did. Once I met a tramp who advised me not to bother about 'em ... and you would soon get used to 'em ... and not feel them biting at all ... but most tramps "boil up"--that is, take off their clothes, a piece at a time, and boil them--whenever they find opportunity.

Manila. A brief adventure there ... a b.u.m for a few weeks, hanging around soldiers' barracks, blacking shoes for free meals ... till Provost Marshal General Bell, in an effort to clear the islands of boys who were vags and mascots of regiments, gave me and several other rovers and stowaways free transportation back to America....

A brief stop at Nagasaki to have a broken propeller shaft mended: a long Pacific voyage ... then hilly San Francisco one golden morning....

All these ocean days I peeled potatoes and helped to dish out rations to the lined-up soldiers at meal-times ... one slice of meat, one or two potatoes, to a tin plate ...

For long hours I listened to their lying tales and boasting ... then lied and boasted, myself....

My most unique adventure aboard the _Thomas_; making friends with a four-times-enlisted soldier named Lang, who liked army life because, he said, outside of drills and dress parade, it was lazy and easy ... and it gave him leisure to read and re-read his Shakespeare. He was a Shakespearean scholar....

"It's the best life in the world ... no worries or responsibilities about food and lodging--it spoils a fellow for any other kind of life ... the officers are always decent to a fellow who respects himself as a soldier and citizen."

Lang and I became good pals. Day after day I sat listening to him, as, to the accompaniment of the rumble and pulse of the great boat a-move, he quoted and explained Shakespeare to me, nearly always without the book.

His talk was fascinating--except when he insisted on repeating to me his own wretched rhymes ... in which he showed he had learned nothing about how to write poetry from his revered Shakespeare ... it was very bad Kiplingesque stuff ... much like my own bad verse of that period....

Once Lang recited by heart the whole of _King Lear_ to me, having me hold a copy of the play, to prove that he did not fumble a single line or miss a single word ... which he did not....

Lang was a prodigious drunkard. At Nagasaki I rescued him from the water-b.u.t.t. Coming back drunk on rice wine, he had stuck his head down for a cool drink, as a horse does. And in he had tumbled, head-first. If I had not seen his legs wiggling futilely in the air, and drawn him forth, dripping, he would have drowned, as the b.u.t.t was too solid for his struggles to dump, and he couldn't make a sound for help.

As we neared San Francisco several of the boys spoke to me of taking up a purse for my benefit. Soldiers are always generous and warm-hearted--the best men, individually, in the world.