The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise

We descended that long, paved, greased hill in toboggans that are nice, comfortable baskets on runners. They hold two and three, according to size, and you get in and two men take you in hand, and away you go. You go, too. A distance of two miles has been made in three minutes in those things. I don't think we went as fast as that, but it was plenty fast enough for the wild delight of it, and if I had money enough and time enough I would go there and slide and slide away the eternal summer days.

It was a swift panorama of flower and sunlit wall and distant sea – the soft air rushing by. Now and then we would whirl past a carrier – a brown, bent man with one of those great sleds on his shoulders, toiling with it up the long, steep hill. They were marvellously picturesque, those carriers, but I wish they wouldn't do it. It takes some of the joy out of the slide to feel that somebody is going to carry your toboggan up the hill on his back.

We shot out on the level at last, and started on a little tour of the town. Laura and I wandered away alone, and stopped at little shops, and tried to transact business, and finally bought a clay water-jug for a hundred and twenty reis, which is to say sixpence, which is to say twelve cents. Money in Madeira is calculated in reis, just as it is in the Azores, and the sound of the word suddenly recalled the visit of the Quaker City "Pilgrims" to those islands, and the memory of Blucher's disastrous dinner-party.

But they will take anything that looks like money in Madeira, rather than miss a trade, and when a person who has been accustomed to calculating dollars and cents is suddenly confronted with problems of reis and pence and shillings and half-crowns and francs, he goes to pieces on his money tables and wonders why a universal currency would not be a good thing.

All the streets in Madeira have that dainty cobble paving, and all the sidewalks are laid in the exquisite mosaic which makes it a joy to follow them. The keynote of the island is invitation. Even a jail we saw is of a sort to make crime attractive. I hasten to add that we examined only the outside.

We were adopted by a guide presently – a boy whose only English was the statement that he could speak it – and were directed quietly but firmly toward places where things are sold. We tried to impress upon him in such languages as we could think of that we did not want to buy anything, and that we did not care much for a guide, anyway. We said we wanted to see bougainvillea – a lot of bougainvillea, in a great mass together, as we had seen it from the ship. He nodded excitedly and led us away, but it was only to a place where they sold embroideries which we did not care for, though they were cheap enough, dear knows, as everything is cheap here – everything native at least.

When our guide grasped the fact at last that we did not want to do any buying, he became sad, weakened gradually, dropped behind, accepted a penny, and turned us over to another guide of the same sort. We wandered about Funchal in that way until it was time to embark, adopted by one guide after another, and abandoned to our fate when they realized that we were not worth anything in the way of commissions from the merchants and very little in any form. We did get a guide at last who knew where the bougainvillea house was, but it was too late then to go to it. It did not matter; there were flowers enough everywhere and bougainvillea on many walls.

The place did not lose its charm with close acquaintance. It seemed entirely unspoiled. We saw no suggestion of modern architecture or European innovation – no blot anywhere, except a single motor-car – the only one, I believe, in Funchal. There is but one fly in the ointment of Madeira comfort – the beggars. They begin to beg before they can walk, and they call, "Penny! Penny!" before they can lisp the sacred name of "Mamma." However, one good thing has come of our experience with them. They have prepared us for beggars elsewhere. We are hardened, now – at least, we think we are. The savor of pity has gone out of us.

But I was speaking of architecture. Without knowing anything on the subject, I should say that the architecture of Madeira is a mixture of Spanish and Moorish, like that of Mexico. Only it is better than anything in Mexico. From the ship, the stucco, tile-roofed city is flawless; and as we steam away, and night comes down and lights break out and become a jewelled necklace along the water's edge, our one regret is that we are leaving it all behind.

Good-bye to Madeira – a gentle place, a lovely place – a place to live and die in.

VII

A DAY TO OURSELVES

We had another full day at sea, after Madeira – a day of reflection and reminiscence, for each of us had some special joy to recall. Perhaps that of the Diplomat was as picturesque as any. He told it to me privately, but a thing like that should not be allowed to remain concealed forever; besides, the young lady is in darkest Germany now and does not know English, anyway. That last-named fact was responsible for the incident.

The Diplomat had just landed at the bottom of the slide, he said, when two of our party – Americans – came along with a bright-faced and quite stylish-looking German girl who was not having a very good time because they knew no German and she no English. It was clearly a case for the Diplomat, who is an unattached person, full of the joy of travel and familiar with all languages, living and dead.

He had not been presented to the young German person on the ship, but he had seen her now and again in company with an older, rather plain-looking woman, very likely her maid. No doubt the young woman was a countess, or a baroness, or at all events a person of station and importance. Politely enough he proffered his services as escort, was accepted, and the two set out gayly to enjoy the halcyon Madeira afternoon.

She was a most sociable companion, the Diplomat said, ready for anything that resembled a good time. They visited places of interest; they dropped into little shops; he bought flowers for her; they had refreshments here and there – dainty dishes and pleasant Madeira wines – keeping up, meantime, their merry German clatter. They became quite gay, in fact, and whenever they met any of the ship party, which they did frequently enough, the Diplomat, as he confessed to me, became rather vain and showy – set his hat on one side and did a sort of fandarole, accompanying his step with operatic German airs. At such moments she even took his hand and entered into the spirit of the occasion.

Altogether it was a charming experience, and they were both sorry when it was time to return to the ship. Arriving there they were met by the older, plain-looking woman, who greeted his companion with words that were pleasant enough, gentle enough, but which partook of the nature of a command. Then it dawned upon the Diplomat; it was not the older, plain-looking woman who was the maid!

"I would have done it just the same," he explained to me in a dark corner of the deck, after dinner, "just the same, of course, being a gentleman, only under the circumstances I might have cut out the cakewalk and the music."

A ship is a curious place altogether; a place of narrow limits and close contact, yet full of subterranean depths from which surprises may develop at any moment. The Chief Engineer, to whom I sit next at meals, often quotes meditatively,

"A ship it is a funny thing,It sails upon the sea – "

The Chief does not recall the rest of the stanza, but we all admit the truth of what he does remember. Ship life on the whole is not like other life; ship characteristics do not altogether resemble those on land.

Take the "Porpoise," for instance. I have no doubt that the Porpoise on land is a most excellent and industrious business man, more or less absorbed in the daily round of his ventures – a happy-hearted contented Hebrew person, fairly quiet (it doesn't seem possible, but I am willing to believe it), on the whole a good citizen, satisfied if his name appears now and then in the local paper, when he gets in some new line of goods or makes an improvement on his home.

But on shipboard the Porpoise is just – a porpoise. He is fat, as his name implies, and describes revolutions of the ship, blowing constantly. At no time of day and in no part of the ship will you be safe from the Porpoise. He is from an interior town – an unimportant town, by its census and location, but it has become important on this vessel.

He has instructed us upon other subjects, too. Nothing is too complicated, or too deep, or too abstruse for the Porpoise. He will attack any question at sight, and he will puff and spout and describe circles and wallow in his oratory, and follow his audience about until he has swept the deck clean. Yet we love that Porpoise, in spite of everything. He is so happy and harmless and gentle. It is only because he is on a ship that he is a bore.

Also, we love the "Mill." The Mill is a woman – a good woman – one of the kindliest souls on earth, I suspect, and her mouth is her warrant for her name. It goes all the time, but it does not deal with important things. Indeed, nothing is too unimportant for her hopper, and she grinds exceeding small. Just now, for an hour or so, she has been explaining that she did not sleep very well last night, and minutely cataloguing the reasons why. She will keep it up for another hour, and then if somebody hasn't dropped her overboard she will dig up something else of equal value and go right on, refreshed and rejoicing in the consciousness of well-doing.

The Mill would not act this way at home – she would not have time. It is only because she is on a ship where everybody is idle and irresponsible and "different," and likely to be peculiar. As Laura, age fourteen, said to me to-day – paraphrasing the words of the old Quaker spinster to her sister, "I think everybody on this ship is peculiar except thee and me, and sometimes I think thee is a little peculiar." That expresses the situation, and on the whole we enjoy it. We are like the little boy whose reputation for being a strange child did not interfere with his happiness. "Gee, ain't it great to be crazy!" was his favorite remark, and whatever we may be on this ship, we are content with the conditions, and would not change them, even if we could.

VIII

OUT OF THE SUNRISE

I have seen the shores of Africa and Spain! The bath steward came very early, this morning – earlier than usual. He had his reasons, but I had forgotten and was sleepy, so I said "No," and tried to doze again. Then all at once from the deck there arose a swell of music – rich, triumphant music – an orchestration of "Holy, Holy, Holy" – such a strain as one might expect to hear if the eternal gates should swing ajar. I remembered, then; it was Sunday morning – but there was something more. Land! The land that lies on the other side of the ocean!

In a moment I was at my port-hole, which is on the starboard side. We had changed our course and were bearing more to the north. Directly in front of me the sun was rising. The east was a mass of glowing outlines – golden clouds and hill-tops mingled. It was the Orient – that is what it was – the Far East; the sun rising over Africa! Something got hold of me then – I hardly know what. Certainly I was not unhappy; but then it was all so sudden and spectacular, and I had waited for it so long.

I do not remember how I got dressed; only for a moment at a time could I drag myself away from that port-hole. The sun rose higher – the outlines of Morocco became more distinct, but they did not lose their wonder of color – their glory of purple and gold. I realized now that the prospectuses had not exaggerated the splendor of the East, even on their gorgeous covers – that they could not do so if they tried. By the time I was on deck we were running close enough to the lofty shores to make out villages here and there and hill-top towers – the habitation and the watch-towers of the Moors. How eagerly and minutely one scanned these with the glass to distinguish the first sign of Oriental life – to get a glimpse of the reality of what had so long been but a romance and a dream. It was those people who had conquered Spain and built the Alhambra.

What was going on inside those curious flat-topped houses and those towers? Marvellous matters, no doubt, that had to do with nargileh and magic and scimiters and flying carpets and scarcely imperceptible nods to the executioner who always hovered among the draperies in the background. The Reprobates appeared and declared there was no romance anywhere in sight and never had been in that direction; that Morocco was just a place of wretched government and miserable people whose chief industries were laziness and crime. There are moments when I would be willing for this ship to sink to properly punish the Reprobates.

The Diplomat was better. He said there was as much romance and magic over there as ever, and more executioners; and the Diplomat knows. We would pass Ceuta, the African Pillar of Hercules, before long, he told us. The other pillar was the Rock of Gibraltar, which lay still farther ahead.

We went over to the other side of the ship presently, for we were overlooking the Bay of Trafalgar, where a little more than a hundred years ago Horatio Nelson died, after convincing the combined navies of France and Spain that it required something besides numbers to win a victory. Nelson went into that fight with thirty-two vessels, little and big, against forty of the combined fleets. He hoisted the signal, "England expects every man to do his duty," and every man did it. One half of the combined fleets struck their colors, and the rest made off, or sank, and with them went Napoleon Bonaparte's scheme for invading England.

We looked out on the placid water, laughing in the Sunday morning sunlight, and tried to imagine those vanished fleets – stately ships of the line with their banks of guns; smart frigates and rakish cutters – all that splendid concourse of black hull and towering canvas, and then the boom and the flash of guns – the conflict and the glory of that morning so long ago. This much was real, and it was romance; not even the Reprobates could brush away the bloom.

The captain came by and pointed ahead to Tarifa, where the Barbary pirates a long time ago levied tribute on the merchants and added the word "tariff" to the dictionary. Their old castle has fallen into ruin, but the old industry still thrives, under the same name. Then we went back to starboard again for a look at Tangier, where, alas, we were not to land, because Algiers had been provided for us instead.

But now Gibraltar, the crouching lion of Trafalgar, had risen from the sea. The English call it "The Rock," and that is just what it looks like – a big bowlder shaped like a sleeping lion – its head toward Spain, its tail toward Africa. I think most persons have an idea that the Rock lies lengthwise, east and west – I know I thought so. Instead it lies north and south, and is really a stone finger pointed by Spain toward the African coast. It is Great Britain's pride – it has cost enough for her to be proud of it – and is her chief stronghold.

About it are gathered her warships of to-day – dark, low-browed fighters like our own – any one of them able to send to the bottom a whole fleet like Nelson's and the combined fleets besides. They look quiet enough, ugly enough, and drowsy enough, now. So does Gibraltar, but it is just as well, perhaps, not to twist the Lion's tail. We had no intention of doing so, and I don't see why they were so afraid of us. They wouldn't let us visit their shooting-galleries – the galleries where they keep their big guns, I mean; they wouldn't let us climb the Rock on the outside; they wouldn't even let us visit an old Moorish castle which stands about half-way up. Perhaps they thought we would spike their guns, or steal the castle, or blow up the Rock with infernal machines.

They did let us take carriages and drive along the main streets of the city, through a park or two and out to Europa Point, I think that was the place. We were interested, but not enthusiastic. After Madeira, one does not go mad over the beauties of Gibraltar. The vehicles were funny little affairs – Spanish, I suppose; the driver spoke the English of Gibraltar – an English which nobody outside of Gibraltar, and only a few people there, can understand; the road was good; the flowers – bluebells, yellow daisies, dandelions and heliotrope – all wild – were profuse and lavishly in bloom everywhere along the way. Had we come direct to Gibraltar, we should have raved over these things like enough, and we did rave a little, but it was a sort of placid ecstasy. Military hospitals and barracks and officers' quarters are not the kind of scenery to excite this crowd.

It was different, though, when we got to Europa Point. There, on one side rose the great Rock abruptly from the sea, while before us stretched the Mediterranean, all blue and emerald and iridescent, like a great fire-opal in the sun. It was our first glimpse of the water along whose shores began the history and the religions of more than half the world. "The grand object of all travel is to see the shores of the Mediterranean," said Dr. Johnson, and there were some of us who not until that moment, I think, fully grasped the fact that this object, this dream of a lifetime, was about to be accomplished.

The Patriarch forgot the Phœnicians for a little and began to talk about Athens and of Mars Hill from which St. Paul had preached, though he added presently that it was quite certain St. Paul's grandfather had been a Phœnician; the Diplomat quoted something about his soul being "far away sailing on the Vesuvian Bay"; the Porpoise began to meditate audibly how far it was in a straight line to Jerusalem; the Mill ground a quiet little grist about flannels she expected to wear in Egypt; even the Reprobates were subdued and thoughtful in the face of this watery theatre that had held the drama of the ancient world.

We drove back to the town, separated, and wandered about where fancy led us. Laura and I had a little business with the American consul, who is an example of what an American consul ought to be: a gentleman who is a consul by profession and not by party favor, being the third Sprague in line who has held the post. Through him we met a most interesting person, one who brought us in direct contact, as it were, with that old first party of Pilgrims to make the Oriental cruise. Michael Beñunes was his name, guide and courier to Mark Twain and his party, forty-two years ago.

Beñunes must have been a handsome creature in those days; he is a handsome creature still – tall, finely featured, with flowing black hair – carrying his sixty-five years as lightly as wind-flowers – gay, voluble, enthusiastic – ready for the future, glorying in the past. He took us to a coffee-house and entertained us, and held us enthralled for an hour or more with his tide of eloquence and information. He told us of the trip he had made through Spain with the "Innocents"; of many other trips in lands near and far. He told us of the things in Gibraltar we had not seen – of the galleries and the monkey-pit; also, of the wonderful monkeys themselves who inhabit the Rock and are intelligent almost beyond belief – who refrain from speaking English only because they are afraid of having red coats and caps put on them and being made into soldiers.

Gibraltar was once a part of Africa, according to tradition, and the monkeys remained on the Rock when the separation took place. But guides know that a subterranean passage from the bottomless monkey-pit connects the Rock with Africa to this day; also that the monkeys travel back and forth through it and keep posted on warfare and new inventions, in preparation for a time when they shall be ready to regain their lost empire, and that sometimes at dusk, if one lies hidden and remains very quiet, he may overhear them discuss these things, as in the failing twilight they "walk together, holding each other's tails."

We could have listened all night to Beñunes, for he made the old time and still older traditions real to us. And perhaps Beñunes would have talked all night, for he declared – and we believed him – that he could talk for five hours without a break. Naturally I expected to pay the score in the coffee-house and to make some special acknowledgment to Beñunes for his time. Not at all; he called the waiter with a flourish, threw down more than enough money and told him to keep the change, regretting volubly that we could not partake further of his hospitality. We should have the freedom of the city – of everything – he said, when we came again. Ah me! I suspect there is only one Beñunes, and that he belongs to a time which will soon vanish away.

We went through the town – almost a closed town, because it was Sunday, and not an inviting town, I think, at best. Here and there were narrow streets that wound up or down, yet were only mildly seductive. But it is a cosmopolitan town – the most cosmopolitan town on earth, perhaps. Every kind of money is in use there – every language is spoken.

"Picture postals twelve for a quarter!" was the American cry that greeted us at every turn. If we had been English it would have been "twelve for a shilling," or if German "zwölf für ein Mark," no doubt. They do not mistake nationalities in Gibraltar – they have all kinds to study from. Moors we saw – black, barelegged, and gayly attired – a taste of the Orient we were about to enter – and if there were any nationalities we did not see in this motley-thronged Mediterranean gateway I do not recall them now. We bought a few postal cards, and two fans with bull-fights on them, but unlike the Quaker City "Pilgrims" we bought no gloves.

I did look at certain stylish young creatures who passed now and then, and wondered if one of them might not be the bewitching saleslady who had sold those gloves. And then I remembered: she would not be young and bewitching any more; she would be carrying the burden and the record of many years. Unlike the first "Pilgrims," too, we did not hear the story of the "Queen's Chair." That was worn out, at last, and exists to-day only in the guide-books. We drove over to Spanish Town by and by, but it was still less inviting over there, so we drove back, passed out through the great gates which close every evening at sunset, and waited at the pier for the little tender, for it was near evening and we were through with Gibraltar – ready for the comfort of the ship.

It is a curious place – a place of a day's interest for the traveller – of enormous interest to the military world. For two hundred years it has been maintained with English blood and treasure, until it has become the most costly jewel of that lavish kingdom. There are those to-day – Englishmen – who say it is not worth the price – that it is no longer worth any price – and they advocate returning it to Spain. No army could take it, and no army wants to take it – nothing could be gained by taking it any more. But it is one of England's precious traditions, and it will take another two hundred years of vast maintenance before England will let that tradition go.

There were papers on the tender, London and Paris journals, but the only American news was that Congress had been advised against tinkering with the tariff. That did not interest us. Had we not been face to face with the headquarters of tariff that very morning, and heard the story of how that noble industry was born? This later item was mere detail.

Back on the ship, looking at the lion couchant while the twilight falls and the lights come out along its base. There is no harshness now. The lion's skin has become velvet – it is a veritable lion asleep among fireflies. We lift anchor and steam slowly into the Mediterranean. The lion loses its form, becomes a dark wedge, the thin edge toward Spain. Night deepens as we creep farther around; the wedge shortens, contracts to a cone, a pyramid – the level sea changes to a desert. The feeling somehow grows that Africa has reclaimed its own – the Lion of England has become a pyramid of the sands.

IX

EARLY MEDITERRANEAN EXPERIENCES

Our first day in the Mediterranean was without a flaw. It was a quiet, sunlit day – just pleasantly warm – the ship steady as a rock on that luminous, level sea. No wonder the ancients did not want to leave these placid tides and venture out upon the dark tossing Atlantic which they could see foaming just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. No wonder they peopled those hungry wastes with monsters and evil spirits. Here, on this tranquil sea, there were no unfamiliar dangers. The summer shores that shut them in held all their world – a golden world of romance wherein gods mingled with the affairs of men; where fauns and hamadryads flitted through the groves; where nereids and tritons sported along the waves.