2~* BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS. Qll JBllie lUatcr. 8, 60 illustrations . . $2.25 Constantinople. 8 3 . $1.50 - Stamboul Edition, with 25 illustrations 2.25 t>ollan& anD its people. s, with is nius- tions ....... 2.00 - Van Dyke Edition, with 84 illustrations 2.25 Spain an> tbe SpaniarDs. s , with n illus- trations ....... 2.OO - Saragassa Edition, 8\ with 25 illus- trations . . . . . . .2.25 The illustrated editions of these three books are put up together (in jackets) in a box . . 6.50 Stuoies of Paris. 8 ..... 1.25 Morocco : 1Fts people ano places. 8% with 24 illustrations ..... 2.00 XifC 111 Utalg. 8, with S illustra- tions ....... 2.OO Library Edition, 6 vols., 8 (in box) . . 10.00 " I take pleasure in stating that the editions of my works issued by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons have, from the out- set, been published with my authorization, and that the publishers have remitted to me each year the author's share of the proceeds of their sales." EDMONDO HE AMICIS. Turin, Dec. 26, 1890. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON or cmrr. HWMIIT. LOS ON BLUE WATER * BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS * * * TRANSLATED BY JACOB B. BROWN Illustrates NEW YORK & LONDON < G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS COPYRIGHT, 1897 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Entered at Stationers' Hall, London Ube Knickerbocker press, flew JJorl; CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE EMBARKATION OF THE EMIGRANTS ... 1 II. THE GULF OF LYONS . . . . .12 III. ITALY ON BOARD SHIP . ... 29 IV. FORWARD AND AFT . ... 44 Y. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN . . . . .70 YI. LOVES AND GRIEVANCES ..... 80 TIL THE TROPIC OF CANCER . . . .118 YIIL A YELLOW OCEAN . .... 138 IX. CHARACTERS IN THE STEERAGE . . . .160 X. THE WOMEN'S CABIN 179 XI. CROSSING THE LINE . . . . . .193 XII. LITTLE GALILEO . . . .212 XIII. A SEA OF FIRE . . . .232 XIY. A BLUE SEA 245 XY. DEATH ON BOARD .... 268 XVI. DEVIL DAY . .... 289 XYII. IN EXTREMIS 307 XYIII. TO-MORROW ! . ... 332 XIX. AMERICA . . . 353 XX. THE PLATA RIVER . . . 369 iii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. Edmondo de Amicis, in his book, SulV Oceano, 11 On Blue Water," has given an account of a voyage from Genoa to Buenos Ayres in the Galileo, a steamer carrying emigrants, this and nothing more. The narrative begins at the wharf at Genoa, and ends when the tug leaves the ship's side in the harbor of Montevideo. The ship does not even touch at Gibraltar. The interest in the story, and it is not small, lies entirely in the study of the types of hu- manity on board. The writer's observant eye has singled out, his lively imagination has characterized, and his ready pen has described at least twenty different groups and characters taken from both ends of the vessel, all dramatic, saying and doing in every case just what such persons would say and do. Nothing is exaggerated, nothing is improbable. And these personalities are kept quite separate and distinct without the mention of a single name. De Amicis seem to have made the voyage on purpose to write the book. The " commissary " on vi translator's pretace. board the ship, to whom the writer had due in- troduction, and who is himself a rare character, was able to point out to his guest so to speak all the life that was going on ; and most inordinately must he have enjoyed talking it over with so appreciative a companion. It has been well said that the beauty of De Amicis' travels is that they are more than travels. They are not merely the record of so many passages a day ; they are travellings plus seeings, listenings, feelings, thinkings, talkings, love-makings ; all that a warm- hearted, imaginative, educated young tourist would engage in ; yet they are told without displeasing egotism or tedious detail. His temperament is such that he is at home any- where. He can go off like Mungo Park on an hour's warning. He enjoys everything he sees, and sees everything that is to be enjoyed. The publishers under whose imprint this volume appears, have previously issued the authorized trans- lations of the earlier works by De Amicis on Con- stantinople, Holland, Spain, Morocco, Italy, and Paris. ILLUSTRATIONS. " OVERCOME " . . Frontispiece DONKEY ENGINE ... ... 3 " THROUGH THE OPEN HATCHWAY I MARKED A WOMAN WITH HER HEAD IN THE BERTH AND SOBBING VIO- LENTLY " ........ 5 " THE HUGE STEAMER MUST HAVE BEEN LIKE A NEW WORLD TO THEM" ..... .7 " BURST OUT CRYING " 8 " VIVA L' ITALIA " . . 9 IN PORT ...... 11 " A STEWARD CAME IN WITH THE COFFEE " ... 13 "OVERCOME" ........ 15 " LAY HUDDLED TOGETHER " . . . . . .17 " HER EYES RATHER TOO BLUE, HER NOSE WITHOUT CHARACTER" ........ 19 " NEXT HIM A COUPLE OF YOUNG LADIES WHO APPEARED TO BE RELATIVES OR FRIENDS " .... 21 " PERFECT FREEDOM FROM CARE " . ... 27 " IDLE FROM NECESSITY " .31 " ABOVE ALL THE FOREMAST" . 38 BLOCK AND TACKLE . .... 39 LIFE-RING ... ... 41 " I AM MIGHTY, BUT I FIGHT FAIR " . 43 vii viii "(Illustrations. " DRESSING THE CHILDREN " . . . . . .45 " THE PROFESSOR-HUSBAND " . .74 "WINDLASS" . . . . . 79 " CONJUGATING THE VERBS IN AN UNDERTONE " . .82 " WOMEN STOOD ABOUT WITH THEIR INFANTS IN THEIR ARMS AS AT THE CORNERS OF THE STREETS" . . 87 " HlS EYES FIXED, HIS FOREHEAD WRINKLED 5 ' . . 89 " No ONE TOOK ANY HEED " . .92 " MENDING HIS SLEEVE " ...... 96 " LISTENING WITH AN AIR OF RESPECTFUL DEFERENCE " 104 "MOLLUSKS" .... 113 THE COMMISSARY ........ 121 " SENDING A DOUBLE SPRAY OF WORDS INTO THE EAR OF HER HUSBAND ON HER LEFT, AND OVER THE TENOR ON HER RIGHT "....... 127 " THE TALL PRIEST " 133 " HE FAILED NOT TO ' RATTLE DOWN ' THE STEWARDS " . 143 " GRINDING OUT CURSES " .... 145 " GRAY, RUFFLED SEA " . . 159 "READY FOR ANYTHING" . .... 168 " HE OWED HIS POPULARITY TO A LARGE ALBUM FULL OF NASTY CARICATURES " . . . . . .171 " HlS ATTENTION HAD BEEN ATTRACTED BY THE TELE- GRAPHIC DIAL" . ... 175 " LITTLE GALILEO " . . 192 " EXPLAINING THE EQUATOR TO A GROUP OF EMIGRANTS IN IDIOTICALLY SCIENTIFIC PHRASEOLOGY " . . 197 " THE SECOND OFFICER WAS A MARINE PAINTER " . . 202 ON DECK . . . .211 " AKTKR THEM CAME THE MOTHER, HELD ROUND THE WAIST BY THE HUNCHBACK SAILOR" 223 11 1 lustrations. ix ' LAST CAME ONE OF THE TWINS WITH A BIT OF CANDLE IN HIS HAND "..... . 227 " HE TURNED HIS BACK TO THE SUNSET " . . 240 ON THE FORECASTLE HEAD .... . 244 " THE BIG BOI.OGNESE "... . 250 " MOVES A WHEEL OF WOOD WITH A TURN OF THE HAND "......... 255 " IT 'S NO USE THEIR SAYING, DON'T EMIGRATE, DON'T EMIGRATE "........ 273 " ON ONE SIDE APPEARED THE WAXEN FACE OF THE FRIAR" 285 " THE TWO THRONGS OF MEN EACH CROWDED FOR- WARD " .305 THE MID-SHIP DECK 306 ON THE BOOM ...... . 326 " THE BIG BOLOGNESE AND HER POUCH "... 337 " HARANGUING AWAY TO A LARGER AUDIENCE THAN USUAL" 338 " THE SIGNAL OFFICER "... . 357 HARBOR STEAMER AND BA"RGE 373 CHAPTER I THE EMBARKATION OF THE EMIGRANTS T was towards evening when I reached the wharf. The embark- ation of the emigrants had been o going on for an hour ; and there lay the Galileo 1 filling up with misery as there passed over her gangplank an interminable procession of people, coining in groups out of the building opposite where the police official was examining passports. The greater part, having passed a night or two in the open air, lying about like dogs in the streets of Genoa, were tired and drowsy. Workmen, peasants, women with children at the breast, little fellows with the tin medal of the Infant Asylum still hang- ! Not the Galileo of the Societa di Navigazione Geuerale. 2 n Blue Mater. ing around their necks, passed on their way, and almost everyone was carrying something. They had folding chairs, they had bags and trunks of every shape in their hands or on their heads; their arms were full of mattresses and bedclothes, and their berth tickets were held fast in their mouths. Poor mothers that had a child for each hand carried their bundles with their teeth. Old peasant women in wooden shoes, holding up their skirts so as not to stumble over the cleats of the gangplank, showed bare legs that were like sticks. Many were bare- foot and had their shoes hung around their necks. From time to time there passed through all this wretchedness gentlemen in natty dusters, priests, ladies in plumed hats, leading a lapdog, or carrying a satchel, or perhaps a parcel of French novels of the well-known Levy edition. Then, suddenly, a stoppage of the procession and, amid a shower of blows and curses, a drove of cattle or a flock of sheep came along ; and when they were got on board, all frightened and straggling here and there, they min- gled their bellowing and their bleating with the neighing of the horses in the forward part of the ship, with the cries of sailors and porters, and with the stunning clatter of the donkey engine that was hoisting in whole piles of packing-cases. Then the train of emigrants moved on once more; faces and O ' costumes from every part of Italy, strong, sad-eyed working men, others old, ragged, dirty; women en- Embarkation of tbe Emigrants. 3 ceinte, merry boys, half-tipsy youths, country fellows in their shirt-sleeves ; and boys, and still more boys, who hardly had put foot on deck, amid that throng of passengers, stewards, officers, company's employes, and custom-house people, when they stood amazed or lost their way as if in a crowded square. For two hours these people had been going on board ; and the great ship, move- less, like some grim sea mon- ster that had fixed its fangs into the shore, still went on sucking Italian blood. The emigrants, as fast as they got on board, filed in front of a table at which was seated the commis- sary, who told them off in messes of half a dozen persons each, writing the names upon a printed form which he handed to the eldest, that he might go at meal hours and get the ration. Families of less than six persons went in with their friends or with stran- gers, as the case might be. While this business was going on there was evident in everyone a lively fear of being cheated in the matter of half- and quarter- fares for children and infants; fruit of that invinci- 4 n Blue 1 sobbing 6 n Blue Mater, time, must have been like a new world, full of strangeness and of mystery ; and yet not one looked about him or aloft, or paused to examine any of those many wonderful objects never seen before. Some would fix an attentive eye upon a trunk, or a neigh- bor's chair, or the number on a box, or whatever it might be; others munched an apple, or nibbled a crust, examining it at every bite as placidly as if they had been in front of their own stable. Some women had red eyes ; some boys were giggling, but their mirth was plainly forced. The greater part showed nothing but apathy or fatigue. The sky was clouded and the night was coming on. Suddenly furious cries were heard from the pass- port office, and people were seen running that way. It proved to be a peasant with a wife and four chil- dren, all found by the examining physician to have the itch. The first few questions had shown the man to be out of his mind ; and, on being refused a pass- age, he had broken out into frenzy. On the wharf there were perhaps a hundred per- sons. Very few relatives of our emigrants. The greater part loungers or relatives of our ship's com- pany, quite used to such separations. When all were on board there ensued a kind of quiet in the ship, and the dull rumble of the engine could be heard. Almost all were on deck, crowded together and quite silent. These last few moments of waiting seemed an eternity. 8 a went aft again to the first-class cabin to find my stateroom. And it must be confessed that the first 10 <>n 3Blue Mater. descent into these submarine lodging-places is de- plorably like going for the first time into a prison with its cells. In those low, narrow corridors, tainted with the reek of bilge-water, the smell of 011 lamps, the fragrance of sheep-skins, and with wafts of perfume from the ladies, I found myself in the midst of hurrying groups who all wanted the steward, and were behaving with the low- O minded selfishness which characterizes almost all travellers in the first bustle of getting settled. A half-light fell upon the confusion here and there, and I caught glimpses of a beautiful blonde lady, three or four black-bearded men, a very tall priest, and the broad, bold face of an angry stewardess. I heard Genoese, French, Italian, Spanish. At a turn of the corridor I came upon a negress. From a stateroom came a solfeggio in a tenor voice. And opposite to that stateroom I found my own, a cage of a place, about a half a dozen cubic metres in size, with a Procrustean bed on one side, a sofa on the other; on the third a barber's mirror over a fixed wash-hand stand, and beside the mirror a lamp on gimbals, swinging to and fro as if to say, " What a fool you were to set out for America." Above the sofa gleamed a round window like a huge glass eye, which seemed, as it caught mine, to wear a mocking expression. And, indeed, the idea of having to sleep for twenty-four nights in that suffocating cubi- culuin, and the presentiment of the deadly duluess tlbe Embarkation of tbe Emigrants, n the heat of the torrid zone, of the bumped heads I should have in bad weather, for six thousand miles - But it was too late to repent. I looked at my baggage, which said, O, so many things to me in that moment; I handled it as if it were a faithful dog, the last living relic of my house ; I prayed God I might not repent having spurned the proposals of an insurance agent who came to tempt me the day be- fore leaving ; and then, blessing in my heart the good faithful friends that had stood by me imtil the last moment, I let myself be rocked to sleep upon the cradle of my country's sea. CHAPTER II THE GULF OF LYONS HEX I awoke it was broad day v and the ship was rolling along in the Gulf of Lyons. Suddenly I heard the warblings of the tenor from the stateroom opposite; and from the one next to mine a sharp female voice, that cried : "Your brush! What do I know about your brush ? Find it yourself." A voice that revealed not only momentary vexation, but a hard, bitter disposition ; and which made one feel deeply for the owner of the missing article. Farther on another female voice was sinking a child o o to sleep. It was a queer strain with a modulation which did not seem to belong to one of our race. I supposed it might be the negress I had seen the evening before. The song was marred by the low hissing voices of a couple of stewardesses disputing in the corridor about a picaggietta (a towel). 1 listened, and needed but few of their words to per- <3ulf of suade me that if there be a woman in the world that can hold way with a Genoese stewardess, it is a Venetian one. A steward came in with the coffee. The first morning one notices everything. He was a handsome, disa- greeable-looking youth, his hair drip- ping with oil, full of himself and smiling at his own beauty like a conceited ac- tor. When asked what his name was he answered, " An- tonio," with affected modesty as if that Antonio were the assumed name of a young duke disguised, with some amorous design, as a cabin steward. When he had retired I went out myself, stag- gering Up against the bulkheads ; " Stewart) came fn witb T ' . . i . . tbe coffee." and, turning into the mam corri- dor, I marked the back of the gigantic priest of the evening before as he entered his stateroom. A step or two farther on I caught sight through the crack 14 <&n Blue Water. of the door, and just as the green curtain fell, of a black-silk stocking being drawn by white hands upon a shapely leg. The passengers were almost all still in their staterooms, whence issued the sounds of water being splashed, of brushes being whisked, and of trunks being rummaged. On the poop-deck were three persons only. The sea was ruffled, but of a beautiful blue color, and the weather was fine. No land was visible. But the sight to see was the the third-class people. The larger part of these emigrants, overcome with sea-sickness, lay huddled together, some thrown across the benches like the dead or dying, with faces all dirty and hair all rumpled, amid a tangle of ragged wraps. There were families crowded in pite- ous groups with the dazed and dejected look of houseless people ; the father sitting up asleep, the mother with her head on his shoulder, the chil- dren slumbering on the deck M'ith their heads on their parents' knees, mere heaps of rags with noth- ing sticking out but a child's arm or a woman's hair. Women, pale and dishevelled, were moving towards the companion-way, staggering and holding on. What Father Bartoli nobly calls " the pain and anger of the stomach " appeared to have made that clearance, wished for by every good captain, of the bad fruit with which emigrants always cram themselves at Genoa, and of the feeds they are all sworn to take at the inn whenever they have any money. Even those who 16 <&n ffilue Mater. had not been sick were haggard and cast down ; looking more like convicts than emigrants. It seemed that the inactive and comfortless life on board ship had already quelled in most of them the courage and the hopes with which they had set out ; and that in the prostration of mind which follows the excitement of parting a fresh sense had arisen of all the doubts, the troubles, and the pangs of those last days at home, when they were selling their cows and their little bit of laud, were having sharp discussions with the landlord or the parish priest, or were saying their last sad farewells. But the worst was below in the great cabin, the hatchway of which was aft, near the poop-deck. For looking down one saw, in the half- light, bodies piled upon each other as in the ships that carry home the corpses of Chinese emigrants ; and there came up, as from an underground hospital, a concert of wailing and retching and coughing fit to make one think of landing at Marseilles. The only pleasant feature was the sight of a few bold spirits who were crossing the deck from the galley with their pannikins in their hands, to gain a place where they might eat in peace. Some, by dint of miracu- lous balancing, succeeded ; others, stumbling, fell headlong and scattered their broth in every direction amid an outburst of execrations. I heard with pleasure the bell that summoned us to breakfast, where I hoped to see a somewhat gayer picture. is n Blue Mater. There were about fifty of us seated at a long table in the middle of a vast saloon, rich with mirrors and with gilding, and lighted by numerous air ports through which we could see the horizon swaying up and down. While taking their seats, and for some moments afterward, the guests did nothing but eye one another ; concealing beneath a feigned indiffer- 7 O O ence that prying curiosity which we always feel about unknown persons with whom we are to live for some time in unavoidable familiarity. The sea being a little rough, several ladies were missing. I soon re- marked at the end of the table the gigantic priest, taller by the head than those around him ; it was the head of a bird of prey, small and bald, with red eyelids, and a neck of interminable extent. I was struck with his hands as they spread the napkin, huge, bony, with fingers like the tentacles of a devil- fish ; in short, an unpoetical Don Quixote. On the same side, and nearer me, I recognized the blonde lady I had noticed the evening before. She was a handsome woman of, say, thirty years old, her eyes rather too 1)1 ue, her nose without character; she was fresh and lively, and was dressed with an elegance perhaps a little too marked. She turned on her neighbors, as if she knew them all, the vague and smiling look of a dancer at the footlights, and I do not know what it was that made me quite sure she was the owner of those stockings that had caught my eye that morning. The legal proprietor of said tlbe (Bulf of silk was no doubt the gentlemanly quinquagenarian who was sitting next her. He had a kind and tran- quil face, surrounded by a professional head of hair "Ifoer esea ratber too blue, bcr nose wftbout character." and pierced for two half-closed eyes, in which there gleamed the look of a cleverness more apparent, per- haps, than real, but which seemed habitual. Next 20 n Blue Mater. him a couple of young ladies who appeared to be relatives or intimate friends. One was dressed in sea-green, and I was struck with her pale and hollow face, in strong contrast with her black, shining hair, which was like the tresses of a corpse. She had a large black cross about her neck. There was a droll little married couple, bride and bridegroom beyond a doubt ; very young, both small, like two little Luc- chese plaster figures. They ate with downcast eyes and talked without looking at each other, embar- O ' rassed, and shy of the others at table. I took him to be twenty and her not over eighteen, and would have wagered that not more than a fortnight had passed since their appearance before the city au- thorities ; in short, a white nun and a theological student who had found out in time that they had mistaken their vocation. On one side of the bride- groom there sat in state a matron with imperfectly dyed hair, her bosom up to her chin, and a great face such as the caricaturists give a sulky moon. There were above the mouth unmistakable traces of an over- strong depilatory. She ate conscientiously, having down from those aerial sideboards that swayed above our heads like chandeliers, first the mustard then the pepper, and then the mustard again ; as if she were try- ing to give a tone to a worn-out stomach, or to a hoarse voice which she tried from time to time with a bit of a cough. At the head of the table was the cap- tain, a kind of Hercules, low of stature and frown- 6ulf ot 21 ing of visage, red of hair and fiery of face. He talked in good Genoese to his right-hand neighbor, and in bad Spanish to the gentleman on his left. This was a tall, old, dried-tip person with long, very white hair, bright deep-set eyes, and an air about him that recalled the la- test portraits of the poet Ham- erling. As the greater part of the passengers were strangers to one another, there was but little conversa- tion, and that in low tones, ac- companied by the jingle of the swinging lamps, and interrupted from time to time by the sharp slap on the table with which some person seized an escaping apple or orange. A phrase of Spanish, followed by a burst of laughter, caused everyone to turn toward the end of the cabin. " It is a party of Argentines," said the passenger on my left hand. As I turned bim a couple of voimg la&fes wbo appeareo to be relatives ov frtent>0." 22 n JSlue Mater. to look at them my attention was caught by the handsome, manly face of my right-hand neighbor, whose voice I had not yet heard. A man of about forty, looking like an old soldier, stout of body, but evidently still active; hair already gray. The bold forehead and bloodshot eyes reminded me of Nino Bixio, but the lower part of the face was milder though sad, and contracted by a disdainful expres- sion which did violence to the gentleness of the mouth. I do not know what association of ideas it was that made me think of one of those noble Gari- baldian figures of the year '60 which I knew from the immortal pages of Cesare Abba, and I quite made up my mind that he had gone through that campaign and was a Lombard. While I was looking at him my left-hand neighbor dashed his fork upon the table, exclaiming, " It 's no use ; if I eat I am ruined ! " It was a withered little man with a face as of one suffering from stomach-ache, and a great black beard, too long for him, looking as if it were fastened on, like a jack-in-the-box. I asked him if he felt ill, and he answered with the easy fluency of an invalid when he is talking of his aches and his pains. He did not feel ill, or rather he was not exactly suffering from sea-sickness. His was a special trouble, rather moral than physical, an invincible aversion to the sea, a sombre angry disquietude which seized upon him the moment he stepped on board, and (Bulf of Xsons. 23 which never left him until he landed, even though the sea were like a lake and the sky like a mirror. He had crossed several times, his family being set- tled at Mendoza in the Argentine ; but he suffered at the end as at the beginning. By day he felt a languor and a morbid restlessness ; by night he was tortured with incurable insomnia and the darkest imaginings that can pass through the mind of man. His hatred of the sea rose to such a pitch that he would, for a week running, never look at it. If he came across a description of it in a book he would skip the passage. In fact, he declared that if he could reach America by land he would rather travel in that way a year than make this trip of three weeks by sea. So far down was he. A friend of his, a doctor, had declared in jest, but he himself firmly believed, that this violent aversion to the sea arose from no other cause than a mysterious presenti- ment that he would be drowned in a shipwreck. " Scid se leve queste idee da a testa, avvocato ! " O avvocato, put that notion out of your head, said his neighbor on the other side. The advocate shook his O head and pointed with his finger to the bottom of the sea. Finding that this gentleman knew some of the people on board, I asked him about matters and things. How correctly I had judged ! My right- hand neighbor, he told me was, in fact, a Lombard ; he had heard him speak Lombard with a friend on 24 n Blue Mater. the wharf at Genoa ; and a Garibaldian no doubt, the commissary had told him so that morning. " But how did you know ? " he asked me ; and I am afraid I felt rather proud of my power of guessing, and showed it. He went on with his details. The family at the end of the table, father, mother, and four children, was a Brazilian family going to Para- guay. The young fellow, with the blonde mus- taches, sitting next the youngest Brazilian was, he thought, an Italian tenor singer (he of the stateroom opposite mine) going to Montevideo to sing. The person speaking so loud at that moment on our side of the table was a kind of original, a Piedmontese mill-owner who, having "Town rich in the Argentine, O O O was returning thither for good, after a short stay in his own country, where, as it would appear, he had not had the triumphal reception that he expected. In fact, as early as last evening he had been heard to tell the story to a steward, and boast that Italy was not going to hold Jit's bones. Here my informant stopped and said in a low voice, "Look at that arm." It was the pale young lady with the cross around her neck whom I had already noticed. I looked and almost shuddered. It seemed not an arm but a pool- white bone fresh from the sepulchre. Then I re- marked her eyes so dull and filmy, and with the ex- pression that seems to gaze at everything and see nothing. I remarked, too, that the Garibaldian regarded her with lids half-closed as if to veil the O 0ulf of %pons. 25 feeling of compassion which she inspired even in him. The company, in short, presented to an observer a variety that was highly satisfactory. Amongst others I noted the strange bronzed face of a man of thirty-five ; a grave and somewhat melancholy counte- nance. I could not take my eyes off him for a while after the advocate had told me he was a Peruvian, for the oblong head, the large mouth, and the thin beard answered well to the descriptions we read in history of those mysterious Incas that had always tormented my imagination. I seemed to behold him clothed in red woollen, with a fillet around his head, and golden earrino-s in his ears, marking; his thoughts o o ' O O with the many-colored strands of a knotted cord ; and I could almost see the gigantic golden statues of the imperial palace gleaming behind him, and gar- dens around him glittering with fruits and flowers of gold. But it was only the proprietor of a match factory at Lima, talking composedly of his business with his opposite neighbor. When the fruit came on the conversation became somewhat more general and animated. I could hear O the captain recounting an adventure which happened to him when he commanded a sailing ship, the up- shot of which seemed, from his gestures, to have been a monumental serving out, on his part, in some port or other, to some ragamuffin or other who had failed in due respect, of kicks and cuffs. At the foot 26 om from cave." 28 n Blue Mater. at sea, the feeling of perfect freedom from care. I could say, in fact : Now for twenty days I am separ- ated from the habitations of men, I can see none of my kind save those I have about me, these are for me the whole human race. For twenty days I am freed from every social tie, from every social duty ; no trouble can assail me from the outer world, for no news can reach me from anywhere. A thousand misfortunes may threaten me, none can reach me. Europe may be convulsed, I shall not know it. Twenty days of limitless horizon, of undisturbed meditation, of peace without fear, of idleness with- out sting of conscience. A long stretch without fatigue across a boundless desert ; a sublime pros- pect all around me, and an air most pure ; strangers for my associates, and an unknown country for my goal. Prisoner in an island if you will, but an island that bears me where I wish to go, which glides along under my feet; and, like a palpitating slice of my native land, sends its own thrill into my sympa- thizing blood. CHAPTER III ITALY ON BOARD SHIP HAD, moreover, as a remedy for duluess, a letter of introduction to the commissary from a friend in Genoa, praying that official to put me in the way of making such ^ observations on board the Galileo as should suit my purpose. Before we reached Gib- raltar I waited on him. His quarters were on deck near the captain's office, in one of the long gangways running fore and aft, called by the officers of the ship Corso Roma because there was such a constant passing of people there. I found him in a nice white stateroom, adorned with photographs and full of handy little trifles which gave it a homelike air, altogether different from the boarding-house look of our sparsely furnished domiciles. He was a handsome young Geno- ese of fair complexion, who wore with ease the simple uniform of the vessel ; and his grave regular features bespoke a power of acute observation and a fine 29 30 n Blue Mater. sense of humor. He took me at once to his office on the other side of the Corso. Besides having charge of the mails, he was a kind of justice of the peace on board the ship ; his duty being to keep order and settle all disputes which might arise among the third-class people. There needed but few words to show me that I was to have on the voyage a new and far more ex- tended field of observation than I could have sup- posed possible. It seems that, owing to the crowded condition in which this multitude of emigrants is forced to live, the diversity of their manners and cus- toms and the agitation of mind so natural under the circumstances, there arises in a day or two such a complication of psychological facts and questions as would not occur on land in a whole year among a number four times as great. I was not, however, to hope in the first few days for any proper conception of it all. I must wait, he said, until things were a little settled and arranged, until attachments and sympathies had been formed, until jealousies and quarrels had arisen. I must allow time for original minds to acquire their little celebrity, and the lead- ing spirits to get their followers around them ; the " belles " must have the chance to become known, the gossips of both sexes the opportunity to observe and exchange ideas, and then I should see that life on board would take the character and movement of a huge village where all the inhabitants, idle from fltalp on Boaro Sbip. 31 necessity, were passing the day in the street and eat- ing all together in the open square. " Imagine if you please," he continued, " what sort of a daily chronicle all this can yield." And as he said this the com- missary shook his head with a slight smile which gave token at once of the queer scenes at which it was his duty to be present and the treas- ures of patience he would be forced to draw upon. 32 n Blue Mater. count than on any other; and it would, beyond doubt stand as the dominant chord in the great symphony he was to be bearing for the next three weeks. " O, if I could only write a book ! " he con- cluded, smiling. And yet for the first few days the ark attracted me more than the animals. And I believe it is al- ways so with those who travel for the first time in those colossal boats that cany blood to the New World and brino^ back treasure to the old. At first O the brain is confused in that labyrinth of passages, of corners, and of nooks ; by that jostle of sailors and of officers in coats of various pattern, going into and coming out of all kinds of furtive doors, like those of a prison or a public office. How can so much intricate structure be necessary to move and steer the huge vessel ! But when one begins to un- derstand a little, it is impossible not to admire the perfection which human wit has reached in planning, fitting, and settling into one another all those little holes of offices, of storerooms, of sleeping-places, of workshops of every kind, in each of which one sees as he passes by some person who is writing, or sew- ing, or kneading, or cooking, or washing, or hammer- ing, crouched down, as it would seem, with hardly space to move, like a cricket in a hole, and yet ap- pearing quite at ease, as if he had been born and had always lived inside there, floating between heaven and earth. The enormous machine that on Boaro Sbip. 37 moves all this is the nucleus ; and the bow and stern are like the suburbs of a kind of stronghold called the midships, consisting of the second-class staterooms, the rooms of the officers, the engineers, the doctor, and the cooks ; of the bakers' and pastry cooks' rooms, the kitchen and the baths, the galley, the pantry, the linen-room, the flag-room, and the post-office. And this central city, traversed by two long side gangways, all noise and bustle, and full of the smell of coal, of oil, of tar, and of frying, is cov- ered by a huge terrace, like a hanging square, to which the enormous trunk of the mainmast and the two mighty smokestacks rising from among the boat davits and the ventilators, and at the far end the officers' bridge like an airy balcony, give a strange monumental aspect, which enchains the fancy as if it were some mysterious city. This deck, occupied principally by the third-class passengers, commands the whole fore part of the vessel, a bit of Noah's Ark, a huge place crowded with passengers, having alono; its sides the stalls for the horses and cattle, O / the coops for pigeons and fowls, and the pens for the sheep and the rabbits. At the far end the steam washroom and the slaughter-house ; this way again the fresh-water tanks and the deck-pumps, the sky- light of the canteen, and the hatchway of the women's cabin, covered by a strange-looking roof of thick glass, which serves the women for a seat. Above all the foremast, with its black shrouds and rigging Blue Mater. cut clear against the sky. Beyond all the forecastle, covering the sailors' quarters, the icehouse, and the sick bay, and forming another platform running to a point where plenty more people are crowded in among the huge blocks and the cap- stan and the anchor chains ; and more hatchways, and more ventila- tors, until it is like an outwork of the main fort, from which the poop-deck at the other end of the ship, covered with its awning and peopled with ladies and gentlemen, looks small, confused, far off, and not at all as if it belonged to the O same structure. Yet all this is only the outside of the mighty vessel. You are to imagine another world underneath, un- known to the passengers; endless bunkers full of on BoarS Sbip. 39 coal, enormous tanks of fresh water, provisions of every kind, as if for a besieged city; enormous stores of rope, of sails, of blocks, of fire hose ; an interminable labyrinth of half-lighted caves crammed full of baggage ; , passages where one must 1 stoop ; ladders that go down into the dark, black, damp recesses which no sound from the humming crowd above can reach, where one would seem buried in the granite vaults of a fortress did not the trembling of the walls inform him that all around is thrilling with tremen- dous life, and that the frail struc- ture is in motion. And so examining the Galileo O piece by piece, and turning over passports with the commissary, I passed the first three days. We had noble weather in the Gulf of Lyons; but, reaching the Straits of Gibraltar on the fourth day, we found a thick fog that wholly concealed the Rock, the coast of Africa, and the shores of Spain, and made the passage very difficult. Not 40 n Blue Mater. for the reason that disturbed the quiet of many women in the third class who supposed, the com- missary told me, that the ship had to thread her way through a narrow passage between the rocks, where she would scrape on both sides and run the risk of being knocked to pieces like the boats that go into the Blue Grotto of Capri, but that because of the fog and the crowd of ships that meet there in that ocean vestibule, where two continents almost touch each other, there might easily occur a collision that would send us all to the bottom and no time to make our act of contrition. 1 We had, therefore, to proceed with the greatest caution. And then a won- derful sight was seen, at once comical and solemn, well worth being made a picture of, and called in Genoese A fnjfetta, " Fear and Trembling." The Galileo was moving on very slowly indeed in the midst of a dense fog which shut in the view a short distance from the ship ; the officers were all on the alert ; the captain on the bridge was sending down order after order to steer to starboard or to port, while the whistle sent out at every moment its note of alarm, a kind of hoarse wail like the presage of woe. To the right, to the left, in front, behind, were heard hoarse ill-boding answers from invisible steamers, some far off, like roars from the lions of Africa, some quite near, as of steamers on the point 1 " Letter or line know I never a one Save my neck verse at Hairibee." Translator. 1Ttal on JBoaro Sbip. 41 of running us down ; others weak and at intervals ; others asrain coming thick and fast as if to threaten O o and entreat at once. At every sound those sixteen hundred passengers, on their feet and crowded to- gether on the deck, turned, everyone, towards the quar- ter whence it came, with wide eyes and suspended breath ; and some would hurry that way with fright- ened faces as if expecting to see the huge bow of the ship that was to run us down. Not a voice was heard, not a smile was seen in all that multitude. As if by instinct, families drew together, some crowded around the boats, ^^ others eyed askance the life- preservers that were hanging here and there, and all sent glances in turn from the captain, their guardian angel, to the fog ahead, where death might be lying in wait for them. One man only on the poop-deck seemed to be indifferent. It was my neigh- bor at table, the advocate. Seated with his back to the water, he appeared to be reading, and I was half- inclined to admire his coolness ; but I was quickly undeceived, for the book trembled in his grasp as did never glass of liquor in the hand of a hopeless drunk- 42 n Blue Mater, hands in their pockets, as if on the open square of their native villages. The women, meanwhile, with their hair hanging about their shoulders, were mak- ing their toilettes before twenty-centime looking- glasses, or dressing the children ; passing soap, towels, brushes, from one to the other, or mending clothes, or washing handkerchiefs in a spoonful or two of water ; all busy, but plainly hampered by their nar- row limits and the lack of a hundred things they needed. Through the dense throng there moved the O O long blue bonnets of the herdsmen (ca/oni), the green corsets of the Calabrese women, the wide felt hats of the north Italian peasant. There were seen the caps of peasant women from the mountains, red bonnets from the Papal States (italianelli}, coronets of pins worn by the countrywomen of Brianza ; white heads of old men ; wild black shocks of hair, and an amaz- ing variety of faces, wearied and sad or laughing or astonished ; while many a dark and sinister look ave reason to believe that this emigration carried O *--3 out of the country the fruitful germs of many a crime. But the sea being smooth, the air pure and fresh, the greater part were in good spirits. And it was to be remarked that the excitement of departure, in which all thoughts had been absorbed, once over, immortal womanhood had resumed its undying sway even here. And that the more because, being scarce, it commanded here, as in America, a higher price. fforwarfc anfc Bft. 47 Very few of the men were looking out over the sea. The greater number were scrutinizing the women passengers. The young fellows astride of the bul- wark, and one leg hanging outboard, their hats on the backs of their heads, took on like bold mariners, talking loud and laughing so as to attract attention ; nearly all of them looking at the hatchway of the women's cabin where were assembled, as on a kind of stage, many young women with nicely- dressed hair, with ribbons and white dresses and bright-colored kerchiefs neatly put on ; the enterprising portion, it would seem, of the ladies of the third class. Among these was conspicuous a rather pretty young woman, a peasant of Capracotta, with sweet, regular features, a countenance like a Madonna (ill-washed) charm- ingly set oft* by a neck scarf which she wore crossed on her bosom, all roses and pinks which looked flamingly real to the eye. And I marked two girls, one a brunette, the other with red hair, two bold pretty faces, dressed with a certain town-bred co- quetry. They talked with great animation, giving from time to time a shrill laugh, and looking hard at one or at another, evidently discussing their fellow- passengers and reviewing the figures of fun among the " emigration people." The commissary, who came by as I was studying them, said they were Lombards, travelling alone, and calling themselves singers. They were two little devils, he said, and were likely to give him a great deal of trouble on 48 n Blue ZKHater. the voyage. And as I did not know just what kind of trouble was meant, he proceeded to set forth that one of the greatest plagues of life on board ship among all those emigrants was the jealousy of the married women. A terrible business! The honest women with infants in their arms were fit to kill these impudent adventurers who, taking advantage of all that confusion, were trying to bewitch their idle husbands; and so furious quarrels arose in which he had to do the moderator. "Ah! you '11 hear more later on ! " There were about a dozen of them this time as if they had got together on purpose to plague him. And then he showed me another girl, a Bolognese, a heavy-artillery kind of woman (donna cannone) sitting behind the other two with her head / O high, dressed in black, a face like a lioness, dark, not ugly, but, Lord save us ! She had a haughty co- quetry of her own, the whim it would seem of stand- ing pre-eminent, and of being longed for on account of an ostentation of high-bred contempt for every- body be they who they might, of an excessive delicacy which would be soiled by a breath. And she threatened everybody, boasting of a relative in Montevideo who was in journalism, and who struck terror into the government. On the first evening she had come to the commissary to demand justice because a peasant passing near had disturbed a leathern pouch which she wore over her shoulder. And on being asked once why she was going to 3f or wart) anfc Eft. 49 America, she had answered loftily, "To get a little air ! " So here was one who was pretending to be out of her sphere ; but there were those who were really so, and the commissary looking about him for n moment pointed out to me some families and some individuals in corners as it were and keeping as far as might be apart from the crowd. These, to judge from their air and their clothes, ragged but of superior make and material, had evidently been forced to embark for America through some sudden reverse of fortune which had brought them down from competency to the streets, without even money enough to take a second-class ticket. There was, among others, a married couple with a little ten-year-old girl, who stood apart near the cattle-pen with the uneasy air of people who do not venture to sit down ; both about forty years old, feeble, and of most woe-begone aspect. They were shopkeepers. The woman, tall and thin, with red eyes, had seemingly just recovered from ill- ness, and had passed the whole of the first day in the cabin, weeping over her little girl and not eating a morsel. " Yes," said the commissary, " there is wretchedness everywhere, but it seems worse at sea." Meanwhile, looking down and right under the bridge, I discovered one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen by land or sea, in the flesh, or in painting, or in sculpture, from the first day that I be- gan to go about the world. The commissary told 50 n Blue Mater. me she was a Genoese. She was seated on a little stool beside an elderly man who seemed to be her father ; and she was washing the face of a little fel- low before her who was no doubt her brother. She was a tall, blonde girl, with an oval face of the most angelic regularity and purity of outline, eyes large and clear, skin most fair and delicate ; the body per- fect, except that the hands were a little too long. She was dressed in a fluttering white jacket and a blue skirt which clunsr around limbs that seemed of O marble. Her dress, though perfectly clean showed that she was poor ; but her air was the air of a lady, mingled, however, with a simple and ingenuous grace of movement which accorded well enough with her lowly station. She was like a ten-years child that had grown to that stature in a day or two. Many of the passengers were standing about looking at her, and others turned to give a glance as they passed. But for the whole time that we were regarding her she never raised her eyes or gave the slightest sign of consciousness that she was being admired ; and her face preserved a tranquillity, I might almost say a transparency, which rendered any suspicion that all this was put on a thing out of the question. So dif- ferent was she from her surroundings that she ap- peared quite alone in the midst of a solitude, although people were pressing upon her from every side. How did this dainty miracle get there ? And there was evidently fame of her all over the ship, for the fforwarfc anfc aft. s 1 next thing we saw was the cook of the third class looking out of his own window and regarding her with the air of an habitual admirer. This personage with his imposing white cap, a bluff red face, and an amazing stateliness, seemed to know that he was for the emigrants the most important person in the ship, revered, dreaded, paid court to like an emperor. "She too," said the commissary, shaking his head, "she too will, without intending it, give me no little annoyance." And he predicted a troublesome voyage. But though there was a good deal to make one smile, the spectacle on the whole was one to wring the heart. No doubt, in that large number, there were many who could have got along honestly in their own country, and who emigrated only to try and rise out of a mediocrity with which they would have done well to be content ; and many others who, leaving behind them fraudulent debt and ruined reputation, were going to America, not to work, but to see if there were not there a better chance than in Italy for idleness and rascality. But the greater part, it must be allowed, were forced by hunger to emigrate, after having struggled vainly and for many years in the clutch of want. There were those jour- neymen laborers from around Vercelli, who, having wife and children, and half-killing themselves with 7 O work, when they can get it to do, hardly earn five hundred lire per year; and there were peasants 52 n 36lue Mater. from around Mantua, who, in the cold season, pass over the Po to gather black bulbs and roots, which they boil and eat, not so much to live as to keep from dying before the winter is over; and there were rice gatherers from lower Lombardy, who, in the slimy water that is poisoning them, sweat for hours under a scorching sun and, with fever in their O ' veins, earn a lira a day that they may have a little polenta and mouldy bread and rancid pork to eat. Then there were peasants from around Pavia, who mortgage their labor to get clothes and implements, and, not able to work enough to pay the debt, renew the obligation, each year under harder conditions, bringing themselves at last to starving and hopeless slavery, from which there is no escape but death or flight. And there were Calubrese, who live on a O / kind of bread made of the wild vetch, something ' O like a paste of sawdust and mud ; and in bad years eat the grass and weeds of the field, and devour the raw tops of the wild carrot, like cattle. And there were those plowmen of the Basilicata, who walk five or six miles to their work every day, carrying their implements on their shoulders, who sleep with the asses and the hogs on the bare ground, in hideous hovels without any chimney, with no candle but a bit of resinous wood ; and who never taste meat from one year's end to another unless one of their animals happens to die. And there were many of those unhappy eaters otpanrosszo and acgua-sale from fforwarfc anfc Hft. 53 Apulia, who, with the half of their daily bread and one hundred and fifty lire per year, have to maintain their families in the city far away from them, while they in the country, where they are killing them- selves with work, sleep on bags of straw in niches dug in the walls of a cabin, where the rain drops down and the wind draws through. And, finally, there was a good number out of those many millions of small proprietors who, brought down by a system of taxation wliolly unexampled in tlie world to a con- dition worse than that of their laborers, and living in huts which many of these would shun with horror, are so wretched that " they could not live in a healthy way even if compelled to by the law." All these were emigrating from no spirit of adventure. To be sure of this one had but to mark how many there were in the thronsr with stout, large-boned bodies O ' O from which privation had worn the flesh ; how many whose brave, haggard faces declared how long they had fought and bled before quitting the field of hat- tie. Useless to try and bid down the compassion they awaken by raising the old cry of the outsider that the tillers of the Italian soil are feeble and slothful an accusation long ago refuted by these very foreigners, who proclaim the solemn truth that in the south, as in the north, these laborers pour out their sweat upon the land to the extent of possibil- ity / a truth proved, moreover, by the hundreds of countries that call for their labor and prefer it. 54 n Blue Mater. They deserved profound and sincere compassion; and the more when one remembered how many of them, no doubt, had with them ruinous contracts drawn by forestallers of the market, who scent de- spair in their huts, and who buy it up ; how many of them, too long ill-fed and broken with toil, bore in their bodies the seeds of disease which must be fatal to them in the New World. And it was use- less to recur to the remote and complex causes of that misery, " before which," as one minister re- marked, "we are as sorrowful as we are powerless," to the greater and greater impoverishment of the soil, to cultivation neglected on account of the revo- lution, to imposts increased by political necessity, to the heritage of the past, to foreign competition, to malaria. In spite of myself those words of Gior- dani would be in my memory like a refrain : "Our country will be blessed so soon as it shall remember that the peasants, too, are men." I could not but allow that human wickedness and selfishness was greatly to blame in this matter. So many indolent gentlemen for whom life in the country is but a care- less sojourn of a few days, and the hard lot of the toiling classes nothing but the conventional com- o O plaint of humanitarian Utopians ; so many farmers without discretion or conscience ; so many heartless, lawless usurers ; so many middlemen and traders who must make money no matter how, foregoing nothing, trampling every consideration under foot; jforwarfc anfc Bft. 55 ferocious despisers of the instruments they make use of, whose fortunes rise from an unwearied course of sordid oppression, petty larcenies, and small deceits, from crumbs of bread, from centesimi wrung on every side for thirty years out of poor creatures who have not enough to eat. And then I thought of the O O thousands of others who, stuffing their ears with / O cotton, as it were, rub their hands and hum a tune. And it seemed to me that there is something worse than profiting by the misery we despise, and that is, denying its existence while it is wailing and howling at our doors. I should have liked to go down among these people and talk with some of them, but thought it better, on the whole, to wait for a day when the crowd should be less. To get rid of uncomfortable thoughts I went to pass an hour on the so-called piazzetta or little square, a part of the deck on the port side of the ship between the midship-deck and the poop. It had been given the name of the piazzetta because, as the doors of the saloon, the smoking-room, and the pantry opened upon it, there was there, of necessity, a constant traffic of people ; and being, moreover, shel- tered from the trade-winds which swept the poop- deck above, the ladies cono;re;ated there to read and * O O do their embroidery work. The staterooms, too, on one side, with their green window-blinds did give it the look of a theatrical piazzetta, and the covered passage that ended there was like a public street. 56 n Blue Mater. Here was where we read the daily bulletins of the course and the distance made, with the latitude and longitude, all posted up on a slate hanging at the door of the saloon ; and here the officers usually came to take the sun at noon, and here were retailed the first bits of news in the daily chronicle of our voyage. It was a nook where one smoked a ciirar with calm O contentment, as if in front of the cafe ; and there was a kind of sense of being on shore and enjoying city life. Now and then there came a little dash of spray that sprinkled the books and embroidery of the ladies, who would hastily make their escape, but soon come back asjain. And it was here during the O O first few days that the greater part of the passengers had made acquaintance. When I got there that morning, there introduced himself with attractive ease a passenger whom I had not before noticed, and who was to be my most agreeable associate from that time until the end of the voyage. It was a Turinese agent of a banking-house in Genoa. He went to the Argentine nearly every year, and was one of those men whom one gets to know thoroughly in an hour's time. He had the look of a comic actor, was well dressed, white hair and black mustaches, a face so serious that it made one laugh, eyes like a schoolboy's, a brain full of notions, an inexhaustible good-humor, and a ready flow of talk, slightly euphuistical but without affect- ation, tormented by a gossipy curiosity, thinking fforwarfc anfc Hft. 57 of nothing but the people about him ; as indefatig- able and sharp as an old detective, prying into and finding out all about other persons' affairs, and excess- ively skilful at making fun out of them for his own benefit and that of the company, but without ever being suspected by anybody. He knew the most amazing things about several passengers with whom he had made the voyage, and after ten minutes' talk began familiarly to ask me if I knew this gentleman or that lady. But I could not listen to him just then, because my attention was attracted to another personage, the type of a curious set of people whom I saw now for the first time. It was the mill-owner, who was running down Italy as he lounged in the middle of a group of passengers, and gloried in his lately acquired corporosity as if it were a mark of gentility. He was dressed like a well-to-do farm steward ; had a huge gold ring on his right hand, a snaky eye, a petulant nose, and a con- ceited mouth. From his face and his talk he seemed to be one of those old emigrants who, having made their fortune without getting any education, think, on returning to their own country, that they will have but to show their well-filled purses and hold forth before the apothecary's shop in a mixture of lies and bragging about all sorts of far-off things, to be elected oO O O / councillors and made syndics, and to mount on the shoulders of their fellow-townsmen, who will of course not dare to say a word because they have not 58 <>n JSlue Mater. stirred from home. This one certainly must have had a sharp awakening; and his scorched self-love must have pained him cruelly under all his show of rude joviality. Three months, he said, were enough to show him that his native air would not do for him any more. After twenty years he expected to find a transforma- tion there, some progress. He had instead found the old ideas, the old prejudices, the same sordid life and accursed creed. A hundred doors around one O O bone, when there was a bone ; and no enterprise in business ; everything moving on leaden feet ; a thou- sand perplexities ; all misers, rotten, suspicious ; an entire want of cdballerosidad. So saying, he sent glances at the Italians who were near by, as if rather enjoying the chance of wounding their national pride. But the best was to listen to his vocabu- lary. It was the first sample I had come across of the strange jargon spoken by our lower classes after many years' sojourn in the Argentine, where, by min- gling with the people of the country and with their fellow-citizens from various parts of Italy, almost all of them lose their own dialect and <*et a little Italian, O and then confound Italian with their own dialect, putting vernr.cular terminations upon Spanish radi- cals, and vice versa, translating literally from each language phrases which in translation change their meaning or lose it altogether, and occasionally jump- ing half a dozen times in the course of one sentence from one language to the other like so many maniacs. jforwarfc anfc aft. 59 Amazed, I heard him say, si precisa molta plata, for " ci vuol molto danaro," much money is needed ; gitastar capital^ for " spender capital!," spend prin- cipal ; son salito con un carigo di trigo, for " son partito con un carico di grano," I set out with a cargo of grain. And in this horrible jargon he went on at- tacking the government, the behiud-the-age (atrasado) government, the beggarly people (inendigos), the Chamber of Deputies, and even the works of art, remarking that as he passed through Milan he had found the cathedral much smaller than he remem- bered it. He glorified the beauty of the American plains, using a broad, clumsy gesture like a tipsy landscape painter. But he always came back to Italy with a sort of refrain, no doubt picked out of the leading article in some provincial newspaper. " Me- diaeval, you know, mediaeval." The bank agent, who was listening at the same time and laughing in his face, had had experience of that style of patriot, and told me that when such persons were in America they took the other side, or rather they abused everything, glorying in their own distant native laud, compared to which they regarded as uncivilized, ignorant, and repulsive the laud in which they had found refuge and in which they had grown rich. But he cut this talk short off to tell me that he had found a most delightful origi- nal among the crew, an old hunchbacked sailor who was set to keep order in the women's cabin. This 60 Bft. 63 settled in the Argentine. The mother had an arrowy tongue fit to raise a tumult among the passengers, and was so envious about dress that every new toilette that appeared on board was like a knife thrust into her body. "And what do you think of the daughter ? " u Nothing at all an ill-developed schoolgirl that might be playing with her dolls." " Never made a greater mistake in your life, beg- ging your pardon," cried the agent, and he took me over to the other side of the piazzetta so as to speak more freely. That dried-up little thing that no one noticed was a real psychiatric case worthy the atten- tion of the alienist. The year before in the Ful- mine, one of the officers of the ship, a handsome youncj fellow, a friend of his, used to chat now and J O then with the mother, but probably never, during the whole voyage, had exchanged twenty words with " that ugly little (acqua cheta) still-waters," who re- garded him with an eye of the most tranquil indif- ference. And yet beneath all that there had been burning a kind of love that never seems to break out except on board ship in the silence cf the cabin and in the solitude of the ocean, where soul sometimes seems to grapple to soul with the fury of the sinking sailor as he grasps a floating plank. As soon as they landed at Genoa, the lady and the daughter set out for Germany, and the young officer received next day a letter of eight pages, "full of a passion so furious, such phrases, such red-hot phrases you know cries 6 4 Qn Blue Mater. of passion fit to make a man shudder, a brutal tu at every line, cataracts of insensate adjectives, words that were sobs, kisses, bites a language incredible, unspeakable at thirteen years old ! And in midst of this lava-flow, blunders in grammar and spelling; and between two leaves, some hair." Then, looking hard at me, "Only think Some hair! The Lord knows where her wits were. And mark this ! A letter giving no address and so without object- nothing but the ungovernable outbreak of soul and body tortured by twenty days of silence and enforced hypocrisy." I turned to look at the girl and could not help saying, " It is impossible." But the agent made a movement as if I had denied the liojht of the O sun. It was quite true. "And so ?" " A record of human nature. That's all." As he said this the Garibaldian came by from forward. He passed near me and I asked him, almost involuntarily, from a kind of fellow-feel- ing, "Have you been among the emigrants?" He seemed surprised that I should address him, and nodded, yes coming to a stand, but half-turned away like a man that means to talk but little. The agent, who no doubt perceived in this gentle- man an instinctive antipathy for men of his stamp, moved oft'. I asked once more, " Have you seen those poor peasants ?" "The peasant," he said, looking at the sea, "is jforwarfc anfc Hft. 65 an embryo burgher." l I did not at once catch his idea. "The only merit they have," he went on, without looking at me, "is their not trying to put on that mask of patriotic and humanitarian rhetoric. Otherwise the usual egoism of domesticated animals. Their stomachs, their pockets. Not even the idea of elevat- ing their own class. Each would like to see the others O worse off so only lie might get on better himself. If the Austrians came back and made them rich they would be for the Austrians." Then, after a pause, " I wish them joy." "And yet," I observed, "when they are in Amer- ica they remember and love their native country." He leaned over the bulwark towards the sea ; then answered, "Their native land, yes; not their country." (La terra, non la patria^) " I do not agree with you," I said. He shrugged his shoulders. Then without preface, and in the tone of one who means to be rid, once for all, of an importunate person, rather than to confide in him, he spoke his mind in a few quick, dry words. He did not even mourn for his country after all. She had fallen too far short of the ideal for which he had fought. An Italy of declaimers and plotters infested with old-time court-intrigue, dropsical with vanity, void of every great ideal, beloved by none, feared by none ; like an abandoned woman, now caressed, now 1 Borghese is not accurately translatable into English. 66 <>n Blue Mater. buffetted, by one and by another ; strong in nothing but the patience of a beast of burden. High and low, nothing to be seen but universal rottenness. A policy that licks the hand of the most powerful, who- ever he may be ; a scepticism tormented by secret terror of the priest ; a philanthropy inspired not by generous individual sentiment, but by timid class interest. And no honor, not even kingly honor. Millions of monarchists, incapable of defending their own banner in time of need, and ready to grovel on their faces before the Phrygian cap so soon as they see it reared aloft. A furious eagerness in all to o reach, not glory but fortune ; the education of youth directed to this end alone ; every family a business firm, without any scruple, and ready to coin false money so only they can get their children on in the world ; the sisters following the brothers, losing day by day from the education and life of woman all spirit of poetry and of breeding. And while popu- lar instruction, a mere pretence, was planting the seeds of nothing but pride and envy, misery was in- creasing and crime was flourishing. Could those men who gave their blood for the redemption of Italy come back to life, one half of them would blow their brains out. So saying he turned away. " I do not agree with you," I said. " We our- selves are the cause of the disillusioning that we o have suffered ; for we imagined that the liberation, anfc Bft. 67 the unification, of Italy would bring about a com- plete moral regeneration, would do away, as by miracle, with crime and suffering. We must not judge the present state of things by an ideal standard to which one nation is not much nearer than another. We must judge it by the past, the horrible and dis- graceful past. To have come out of that, no matter how, is comfort enough." He made no answer. I asked if he were going to the Argentine, and if he had any relatives there. He was going to the Argentine, and he had no relatives there. I then observed, for the first time, that he had be- hind his ear a deep scar as from the wound of a pistol- ball. I asked if he had made the campaign of sixty-six, not supposing from his age that he could have been in that of sixty. But he had been through the last also, at sixteen years of age. I looked at him attentively and asked if he had ever been hit. Never, he said, quite naturally. But turning unexpectedly at that instant, and taking me in the act of looking behind his ear, he gave me a quick, searching glance, while a flush rose to his cheek, and a flash of anger shot from his eye. He frowned and turned once more to look at the horizon with a sharp movement that said most 68 n Blue Water, plainly, " Let me alone." But that look had revealed to me a secret of liis life, a terrible moment to which lie must have been brought by long and bitter suffer- ing, and after a great change had been wrought in a mind no doubt once firm and full of fertile force, like his fine soldierly, athletic body. And all enthu- siasm, all affection, perhaps, was dead in him; but the unbelief into which he had fallen, was not iur- / *j noble scepticism; for he suffered, and he still loved the good in which, alas ! he could no longer place any hope. I saw, moreover, that there could never be anything in common between him and me, or anyone else for that matter; so I left him alone there, looking at the sea. 7 O And I went over to the other side of the deck to look at it myself, for since the day we sailed it had never been as now, all bright, frolicking waves which rose, lucent and tender, with a hundred soft- ening shades of crystal blue and green, of velvet and of satin, crowned by silvery tufts and plumes, by crisp white crests and a thousand little rainbows hung amid a mist of drops ; and ever and anon a high white spout of water through it all, like a cry of joy from that crowd that was dancing in the sun beneath the kiss of the trade-wind. The swell would roll up to the level of the deck and then sink out of sight, like a threat that turns into a jest, and then rise again, as if angry at not being able to say it, giving place to other billows which kept running up and jforwarfc an& Eft. 6 9 looking at us, and then going out of sight with their secret, like the rest. And I could have remained there for hours to watch that ceaseless forming; and CD dissolving of snowy mountain chains and hollow valleys, of solitary and fantastic tracts, thrown to- gether, dispersed, collected, scattered again, like the surface of a world at the will of a god. But all this turmoil was near us only; around us and afar the sea was moveless, laughing blue, picked out with whitest spots that seemed the sails of countless fleets in company with u CHAPTER V LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AVING at hand a living gazette in the bank agent, I was not long in finding out, almost involun- O ' tarily, all about many of the first-class passengers. The next morning the agent came to sit beside me in place of the advocate, who had not left his room. Every day this gentleman made half a dozen new acquaintances. The morning before, he had got into conversation with the young couple that occupied the stateroom next to his, and finding that they were timid and embarrassed before other people, he thought he would torment them a little. Hardly, accordingly, had he taken his seat when he asked the young people sitting opposite whether they had rested well. " Quite well, thank you," they an- swered with an uneasy glance. " And yet," said the other, with the most natural air in the world, but looking hard at both, " and yet the sea was, I thought, XaMes anfc Gentlemen. 71 rather rough last night." The rest smiled ; the young couple blushed and began to examine the knives and forks with much attention, while the agent talked quietly and pleasantly on without appearing to notice; doing, the while, great honor to the cookery of the Galileo. The tall priest was a Neapolitan who had been settled in the Argentine for about thirty years. He was returning thither after a short trip to Italy, made, he said (though there were doubts about it), to see the Pope. The agent had heard his story one evening. He had gone to the Argentine with what he stood in ; had been parish priest of rising farm colonies in several States of the Republic, in regions almost uninhabited, where he carried the viaticum on horseback, galloping all night long with the host about his neck and a revolver in his belt. He had, he said, been several times attacked and had defended himself with his weapon ; and it had happened, more- over, that travellers, meeting him by moonlight, had taken to flight, scared by his great black shadow. It was clear that he had had as much care for his own body as for other men's souls, and had been in the habit of accepting a fancy price for the marriage and burial services. At any rate he boasted of having got together a comfortable maintenance, and was always discoursing of pesos audpatacones with a disagreeable flapping about of his hands, like a weathercock, and with a Basso porto accent which years of speaking Spanish had not been able to obliterate. The agent 72 n Blue Mater. knew but little of the tenor. He had, he believed, a good voice enough ; it made one think of a scalded cat, but no matter, and he was, as usual, a very peacock for conceit. From the first day he had gone around among the passengers exhibiting a tattered newspaper with a These-Our-Actors article and the words underlined, "This artist has the key to the human heart." " Made one think of his hearers' house-door keys," said the agent, but that might be an error. Believed the tenor was getting up a vocal and instrumental concert for the evening when we crossed the Line. He knew more about the blonde lady with the black-silk stockings, Italian-Swiss, wife of an Italian professor of some- thing or other at Montevideo. Had made the voy- age from America to Genoa with her two years previously. An excellent creature, as good as gold (buona come il pane), with the brain of a sparrow, as beautiful and as ignorant as a dahlia, a great thirty-year-old girl whom the solitary condition of single male passengers inspired with a bold and lov- ing pity. During ten years, taking every now and then a run over to her native country, she had been, with her childish good-humor, the life of six or eight different ships, and had consoled with her sweet pity as many sets of passengers, so that she enjoyed a kind of jolly celebrity with the Societa di Navigazi- one. In a trip of two years previous, amongst others, she had had a droll adventure with an Argen- Xafcies anfc Gentlemen. 73 tine, a deputy, who, it did so happen, was on board with us in the Galileo. This gentleman, a very good- humored, amiable person, but exceedingly precise and orderly in his habits, occupied a stateroom on deck. So, while he was amusing himself in the saloon or pacing the fore-deck, this lady and a friend of hers would go and throw everything about in his room, and he would storm and rage over having to set it to rights. This had gone on well enough several times. But one day when the sweet Swiss had made the venture alone, the gentleman had un- expectedly come back, had flown into a passion and had shut the lady up in the room until she should have restored order. But this, being no light task, lasted some time ; and, a sudden squall coming up, the lady remained shut in there for several hours, her alarmed husband meanwhile looking and calling out for her along the corridors, demanding that a boat should be lowered to pick her up, and wholly unconscious of the derisive pity of those about him. But no further harm came of it. On this voyage, however, the lady and gentleman made no sign of ever having met before. I turned to look at the deputy, where he sat at the lower end of the table. A dark man, between thirty-eight and forty, strong profile, eye-glasses, the face of a man who would not allow his home to be invaded with impunity. As for the professor-husband, the agent said he was a fine man, devoted to the study of nautical median- 74 n Blue Mater. ics, although he had a face rather literary than scien- tific, and he passed the day in grave meditation before the engine, the wheel, the capstan; at every fresh order that was given on board requir- ing the most minute explanation from the officers. This he carried forward, for the pleasure of giving to the people there morsels of the bread of science, while those on the poop-deck enjoyed his. ' But I was just then looking at the next neighbor of the Argentine, a pale, blond man with a pair of whis- kers like weeping-wil- lows in hair, such as are seen in the hair-dress- ers' windows, and who rolled his eyes around upon the rest of us like a suspicious fish, but spoke to no one. I asked the agent if he knew who he was. "O, he is worth your while." Thought to be a thief escaping. People were talking of it on board the ship. Frenchman. One of the passengers read- ing the Figaro, which had reached Genoa on the day "Ube professoi'sbusbaiifc." XaMes anfc Gentlemen. 75 of sailing, thought he perceived a striking resem- blance between this strange, suspicious face and cer- tain traits which the Paris journal ascribed to the cashier of a bank in Lyons who had disappeared three days before, leaving his safe an exhausted re- ceiver. The agent said he had made his investiga- tions ; at any rate he hoped to find out all about it on our arrival, when the police should come on board. He had not asked any questions about the married couple seated opposite this last gentleman. They were my neighbors below, they of the brush. The lady forty or so, with a pair of cold eyes and a per- petual forced smile on her thin lips. Not ugly, but one of those whose mind has spoiled the face ; such as at first glance inspire repugnance for the ill they work to others, and then compassion for what they must themselves suffer. The husband had the air of a retired major of cavalry ; seemed a man of firm mind, but mastered by a nature stronger than his, and worn out by dull, unchanging trouble. They never spoke to one another; they never were together except at table ; they behaved like strangers ; but my neigh- bor noticed that she darted terrible side-glances at him when she thought he was looking at any other woman, the jealousy of pride had survived affection. An ill-assorted couple, in short ; like two convicts in a chain-gang between whom there existed a mysteri- ous and deadly aversion. But the one my neighbor knew best was the captain, a capital seaman, rough 76 n Blue Mater. and irascible, master of an amazingly rich vocabulary of Genoese oaths and abuse, which he heaped upon the humbler portion of the crew, a perfect litany of reprimand delivered with a most irresistible cres- cendo of effect ; proud, too, of the vigor of his fists, which he had used pretty freely during his twenty honored years of command. He had a fixed idea, and that was an absolute severity in the matter of morals. Porcaie a bordo no ne veuggio, "I won't have any n well, nonsense on board," was his word. He wished to have the ship as virtuous as a monastery, and he thought he could carry his point. Sometimes his lessons were rather emphatic. On a previous voyage, having found out that two persons of opposite sex had retired to a deck stateroom, he had caused a good stout batten to be nailed across the door, and had left them there until the pair, driven by hunger, had pounded furiously, and at last had come out coram populo, mezi morti da-a vergeugna, half-dead with shame. But he had like to have fallen ill with rage on the last trip, for he brought from Buenos Ayres to Genoa a complete company of singers and a corps de ballet of one hun- dred and twenty legs; and there were not in the ship battens enough or nails enough to keep them in order. In fact, all his threatening eloquence in the language of xci had not prevented the Galileo from becoming something of a pandemonium. Under ordinary con- ditions, however, when he was not borne down by Xafcies anfc (Bentlemen. 77 the numbers and the boldness of the enemy, he was so rigorous as not to allow even a mild flirtation. He boasted, too, that he kept people in order with- out infringing the laws of courtesy, that he could say anything without offence. When a passenger followed any lady about too much he took him aside and said, respectfully : " I beg your pardon, but you are getting somewhat nauseous (angoscioso). I won't have any nonsense on board here." In other respects a right good fellow. The majestic old person who sat beside him, the Hamerling, was a Chilean a real personage. Called on board, the " Mountain borer," because he had made the little run over from his own country (thirty-five days at sea) to buy tunnelling machines in England, and had stayed in Europe, from time of landing to time of leaving, exactly one fort- night. Grave, as the Chileans always are, and with high-bred ways, he had chatted a little the first few days with the Argentines ; but as these had vexed him in a dispute about the eternal question, the south- ern boundary of the two republics, he had drawn away from them and spoke with no one but the cap- tain and the priest. My neighbor knew no more of him just then. But he was looking up a beardless, over-dressed young Tuscan who sat at table over against the professor's wife, on whom he kept his eyes, so absorbed that sometimes his fork itself stopped short on the way to his mouth, as if it were struck with admiration. lie seemed a kind of half- 78 n Blue Mater, starved Don Giovanni who was taking his first long flight from home ; and he had, none the less, an amazing boldness under that guise of sucking premier amoureuXj for while he was prancing around the Swiss lady, whom he seemed to have known on land, he was all the while making little excursions for- ward, where he snuffed the air like a young colt, especially at evening when he ran the risk of having the jacket that he changed so often dusted for him by the emigrants. So saying, the agent rolled an orange almost into the plate of the young bride- groom, and then suddenly put out his hand, saying, " Would you mind ? " Unhappy bridegroom ! At that instant, profiting by the little confusion usual at the end of every course, he had dropped his right hand under the table while the bride dropped her left. At the unexpected address the two hands came briskly to the surface separate; but it was too late, a chaste blush had already betrayed the secret. " They are too happy," said the agent in my ear, "I must embitter their lives for them a little." He then rose, and when I went on deck half an hour later, I found him talking with a priest in the second class. But the second class was nearly empty and offered but little food to his curiosity. There were two old priests who were always reading their breviaries; there was an old lady, travelling alone, and wearing glasses, who turned over from morning till night some old illustrated newspapers ; and there XaMes anfc Gentlemen, 79 was a numerous family all in mourning who made a dark, sorrowful group amidships, quite still for hours together, save that the two smallest boys would now and then race across the bridge to the poop-deck, where the lady with the black cross would sadly caress them with her small wasted hands. CHAPTER VI LOVES AND GRIEVANCES SPOUT of water, received full in the face as I opened my port for a little air at dawn next morning kept me in my berth the whole day with a wet bandage around my head, to meditate at leisure upon the brutality of Father Ocean. The blow was so well planted that my Lead was dashed against the other side of the room, and I lay there in a pool, stunned, and with my mouth full of salt water. Owino: to this accident it was not until the ninth O day that I could make my visit to the emigrants. Ruy Bias, as, with dignified air, he handed the coffee, announced that the weather was fine. But it was not his decoction that aroused me so much as the warblings of the tenor and the mewlings of the Brazilian baby, accompanied on the pianoforte by (no doubt) that magnificent edition of humanity the young person of the letter. In the midst of these so %ov>es ant> Grievances. Si noises my ear was pained by an excited discussion in the next stateroom, occupied by the lady of the brush and her husband. 'T was wondrous pitiful. I caught no more than a word here and there, but the ring and the intonation of those two voices, in un- regarding quarrel, and, urged by a sentiment colder but more deadly than anger, bespoke a habit of dis^ puting about nothing, an involuntary impulse, a sudden swelling up of evil thoughts and wishes which they must give vent to or be suffocated. The dialogue was crossed from time to time by a sardonic laugh or a half-uttered word repeated now by one now by the other, in the same tone ; a refrain, as it were, of abuse ; and by, " Oh, hush ! " rather hissed out than spoken. The words seemed all torn to pieces between the teeth so that it was impossible to distinguish the voice of the man from that of the woman. It was a quarrel in undertone, with poison- ous blasts for weapons ; more painful, a hundred times over, to listen to than if it had been yells and blows. What a dreadful thing was that conjugal hatred shut up in a dungeon out on the wide ocean ; two creatures tied together only to tear each other, and carrying from one side of the world to the other the hell that was tormenting them. Then they stopped short ; and a moment after, as I came out they did so likewise, perfectly well dressed, and to all appearance unmoved ; but when they reached the stairway that leads to the deck they turned one to 6 n Blue Mater. the right the other to the left without a glance. In the corridor I came upon the young Tuscan, a good deal got up and standing sentinel. Then passing the Swiss lady's room I thought I saw the flash '^k. of a blue eye at the softly opening door. Next I ran against the as;ent, who re- O 7 marked, apropos of nothing, "Do you know, that young couple an- noys me ? " He had heard over- night the bride say- ing her prayers, and then a variety of things. Amongst others, at all sorts of hours they would study the Spanish grammar, conjugating the verbs in undertone, and stopping every now and then to kiss each other. Only last evening he had heard a pluperfect that he could not stand. He was going to change his room. And he had accounts to give me of some new peo- ple; but, begging him to keep these until later on, I went forward to see the emigrants and get into talk with them. It was cleaning time, the forecastle was crowded, 'Conjugating tbe verbs in an uitoertonc." anfc 0riex>ances. 83 the weather fine ; everything seemed favorable. But I soon found it was not so easy a matter as I had supposed. Taking the greatest care to touch no foot, I passed among the people that were sitting about, and I soon heard behind me, " Make way for the signori " ; and, turning round, encountered the glance of a peasant who fixed upon me an eye which boldly confirmed the sense of his sneering exclamation. O Farther on I put out my hand to caress a child ; but the mother bluntly drew the little creature to her without looking at me. I was inexpressibly pained. I had not thought of the state of mind that many of these people must naturally be in, all troubled as they were with memories of the life they had left ; a life so intolerable that to cut it short they were willing to quit their country. Nor, again, of the resentment they must feel against that varied crowd of proprietors and extortioners, of overseers, of lawyers, of middle- men, of government officials ; all known to them as the signori, the gentle folk, the quality, and all supposed to be leagued together against them ; all looked up- on as the authors of their misery. For them I was a representative of that class ; and I had forgotten, moreover, that to persons in their state of mind a denizen of that little privileged world, the first cabin, image of the country which they were forced to leave, must be especially odious ; as if he were a vampire following them across the sea and sucking their blood until they reached America. So that it was quite 8 4 <>n Blue Mater. impossible that they should understand the really kind and respectful feelings which actuated me ; and it would have been imprudent to enter point-blank into talk with any of them. Had I done so they would have regarded my motive as one of cruel curi- osity ; a desire to hear of woes and horrors : they would have taken me for some schemer, some med- dling contractor who had come out in the Galileo to o engage laborers on the sly, where he would not be troubled with competition. These reflections over- threw at once all my hopes. So I tossed away my cigar and began walking about, looking at the rigging and the spars as if I were thinking of nothing but the ship, yet all the while listening closely. Many settled groups had already been made up, as always happens among emi- grants from the same province or of the same pro- fession. The greater part were peasants, and there was no difficulty in perceiving what was the princi- pal theme of discourse: the miserable condition of the agricultural class in Italy, the too great compe- tition amonjjr the laborers, all turning to the ad van t- O CD age of the proprietors and tenant farmers low wages dear food excessive taxes seasons with no work bad years greedy employers no hope of better- ing their condition. The talk for the most part took the form of narrative: tales of misery, rascality, in- justice. In one group, where a kind of bitter joyous- ness appeared to prevail, they were laughing at the OLoves anb Grievances. 85 rage which would devour the signori when they found themselves without any laborers, forced to double wages or to sell their lands for a bit of bread. o " When we are all gone," said one, "they will perish of hunger too!" And another, "Before ten years are over the revolution will break out." But those who said the most dangerous things spoke low after cast- ing a look around, because a great many of them, as I afterwards learned, were afraid the government might have on board some secret police service. There were groups of Calabrese peasants with their hooded cloaks, their sandals, and their leg-bands, (zampitti) ; but few of them spoke. In other parties the talk was of the sea and of America ; and it was easy to preceive who had been there, from the high confident tone in which such persons held forth and the attention with which the others listened ; for it is amazing what power vanity has over many of these poor creatures even in their distress ; and what a burning desire they feel to become known, to make for themselves a pedestal even in so poor a throng, in order to show how superior they are to the wretched- ness to which they are reduced and by which they are surrounded. Those who seemed to talk the most were the Ligurians, and one could almost know them by the confident, almost defiant, way they had with them ; an air which comes from a commercial and naval spirit and a general sense of fifty years' successful 86 n Blue Mater. emigration by those of their race. They had, or gave themselves, the air of being quite at home and at ease on board ship. The mountaineers, on the contrary, were almost all stolid and taciturn, as if dazed by the sight of that flat, boundless surface, so different from their mountains, all varied with broken plains, and from their narrow cosy little valleys. Some of these people were standing up- right like wooden automatons, some were crouched like wild beasts. There were, however, among them a few of those bold, light-hearted spirits whom novelty and the throng of men excite like wine. These bustled about from party to party addressing their little remarks to everyone, and laughing over the sea as if they were to find heaps of gold ready for them on their arrival. And from the many couples of men, and women too, who were sitting talking face to face, as if smoking or working at their own house doors, it was clear that not a few of those permanent friendships were being formed which, cultivated in America as circumstances per- mit, are always the most dear; bearing for life, as they do, the impress of that early need of sympathy and mutual encouragement to face a mysterious future which gave them birth. Women stood about with their infants in their arms as at the corners of the streets. Near the caboose, or canteen of the third class, I marked the Lombard singers chatting and laughing with theatrical ease in the midst of a group 'TOlomen stoofc about wttb tbefr infants in tbeir arme as at tbe corners of tbe streets." n Blue Mater, of young Switzers. These all wore, probably with some political idea, caps of red cloth, and made good with a pantomine, perhaps a little too ex- pressive, their lack of the needed phrases. I met the handsome Boloimese walking all alone, with her O ~ ' prima-donna stride, the cynosure of many glances ; her inseparable satchel at her side, and looking down at every moment with a grimace of disgust lest she should soil her shoes. The deck was, in fact, strewn with bits of paper, with apple parings, crumbs of biscuit, all sorts of things, and looked as if a regiment had been bivouacking there. In general, too, the faces and the clothes of the soldiers agreed w^ell enough with the condition of the place. Many countenances indeed had on them the dirt of sailing day. But I did not blame them so much when I remembered that while German emigrants at Bremen, before going on board, have good shelter and a bath to refresh them from their land travel, ours at Genoa sleep on the sidewalks. I moved on towards the water-tanks. The fair Genoese was there in her white jacket and her blue petticoat, between her father and her little brother, clean and fresh as a flower, and busily sewing. But the crowd of her admirers had grown thicker. She had around her at different distances perhaps a dozen passengers who never took their eyes off her ; jesting and whispering in one another's ears with a kind of grin and a look in their eyes which left but Xcves anfc Grievances. 8 9 little doubt about the character of their admiration. Others came up, stood on tiptoe to look at her, and then went away. She was famous already, and was beyond all doubt to be the great success of the voyage in the society of the fore-deck. But celebrity had not changed her ; no, not in the least. From time to time she raised those quiet blue eyes, as if she had trees around her instead of men, and then dropped them once more upon her work, un- consciously, as she bent her head, display- ing to all those O eager looks her white neck and the maimificent O folds of her golden hair. Ah, poor third-claSS kitchen ! I looked " Dig eses fir*, bis forebeaa at its window and saw the red face of the cook, his eyes fixed, his forehead wrinkled. Beyond all doubt there was a passion flaming up 90 <>n Blue Mater. among the saucepans too. The public health was in danger. As I looked at him I saw his glance as it turned from the girl take a fierce expression, and fol- lowing it my eye fell upon a figure in the circle of admirers that fixed my attention in a new quarter. It was a youth less than twenty years old, beardless and starved-looking ; his poor wretched shoulders like coat-pegs ; a sort of cross, it appeared, between the village schoolmaster and the bookkeeper; the kind of person that goes to America "to get something to do." Seated on a barrel-head, he kept his look fastened on the girl with a passion so ardent and so humble that it might have extorted a glance of compassion from a woman of marble. He seemed to be alone on board, and carried around his body a belt of yellow leather which probably con- tained his whole peculium. I looked at him for some time, and all the while those eyes were moist and moveless, with a faint sad smile in them as of pity for himself; the whole body quite still, like one who is content to adore, who expects nothing, hopes nothing, and is there for life. All this time the girl did not seem aware of his presence. He languished there all alone like a Stylites on his column ; and the warmth of his poor unregarded flame was lost in space like the smoke from the Galileo's funnels. I next repaired to the forecastle which was full of people. As I went up I heard alongside of me, %ox>es ant> Grievances. 91 "Yes, they make this their theatre ! " Gia, vegnen cM al teater. This vegnen was meant for me, of course. I was received here worse than in the other place. I met with furious glances and turned backs. Nor this alone. Sub terris tonuisse putes. It oc- curred to me, and I was not wrong, that the place was a kind of Mountain where all the emigrants with revolutionary ideas, all those who had to go into a corner to hold dangerous talk, came together; and where all the protests against bad food, and all the plottings against rules and regulations were to have origin. There were bold dark faces ; and the general air of the men was that of the bravo in repose. They seemed to be all single men, or such as had left their wives behind them after two or three years of mar- riage (these last a long list) either because they are driven to emigrate by the needs of an increasing family or because, having tried married life and found it a bore, they wished to get out of it this way. In one group I found the tall old man who had shaken his fist at his country the evening of our de- parture ; the very type of a dried-up adventurer, with fiery eyes, with cords in his neck that looked ready to burst the skin, and wearing a green jacket that seemed to have belonged to some actor. His head was bare, his gray locks free. He spoke loudly with a Tuscan accent, and gesticulated with raised fore- finger. I heard as I walked about the word pagnot- tisti, and caught, flying, a furious look that made me Blue Mater. think it would be as well to move on. Near the capstan a little fellow was playing on his pipe, but the wind carried the sound away and no one took heed. Some were seated on the deck, at cards. Right forward, on ^ e Clj t- water, stood a queer figure of a mountebank with a O long, bony, olive-colored face lighted up by two large green eyes, his black hair falling over his shoulders, his bare arms folded on his breast, and having tattooed on one of them the initials, A. S., with a cross. Thus upright and gloomy in his loneliness, now borne aloft, now sinking with the ' O movement of the vessel as if dancing in the air, he seemed the personified idea of all the misery brought together on that deck ; the living symbol of the vagabond and uncer- O tain destiny of every one around. There was but one woman up there, an old woman seated on a timber-head, beside her husband, likewise old ; both with arms crossed upon their knees and their heads upon their arms, so that their faces were not seen ; nothing but the thin irrnv hair; and their necks, O 3 f " t\o one tool: bee&." %ov>es anfc Orievances. 93 whose wrinkles showed them to be past seventy, were stretched out in an attitude of utter aban- donment and mortal weariness. What were they going to do in America ? Perhaps join their chil- dren. I saw nothing on board more pitiful than these two poor, old, broken-down creatures, almost in the grasp of death already, and yet going out to a land where their future must be a bitter struggle. I bent over them. They were asleep. A short distance off, upright against the bulwark, cowled and solitary, stood the friar who was going to Terra del Fuego, a face as of wax, with eyes va- cant, expressionless. Coming down from the forecastle I met the sur- geon, a Neapolitan, the very image of Giovanni Nicotera, but with different eyes and a different air; vacant, stolid, a not unusual case of physical like- ness between persons of opposite natures. I went with him to the sick bay, a large oblong apartment lighted from above, with two tiers of bunks round about. There was a child here ill of the measles, flushed and feverish, a love of a boy with bright curly hair. Standing near him was a peasant wo- man from the neighborhood of Naples, a fine, hand- some woman, who, as soon as she saw the doctor, began to weep, choking her sobs with her hands. The doctor examined the child and then said, in a reproving tone: "The '"Iness must run its course; there is nothing to fear. Put that foolish notion out 94 n Blue Mater. of your head." He then explained to me that some silly women had upset her by saying that if anything happened to the child it would be thrown over- board into the sea ; and she was in despair. Then turning another way and speaking loudly he asked, " And how is it with you ? " Presently I saw V +/ thrust out of a low berth the head of a sickly old man who, in spite of the doctor, persisted in putting forth his legs and sitting on the edge of the bunk. He had his clothes on. He answered in a thin voice, "Pretty well " (Non c ? e tanto male). The doctor examined him and shook his head. The man was suffering from a bad pleurisy, and had taken to his bed the day after we left. He was a peasant from Pinerola, all alone, and was going to the Argen- tine to join his son. I asked him in what part of the Argentine his son was. He did not know. His O younger son had gone thither three years before, leaving him at home with the other brother, and this one had lately died. Then the younger son had written him to come out and had sent a buo?w for the trip, but without giving a precise address, the fact being that he worked on the roads, and was constantly changing quarters. But he had told his father how he might be found. So saying the poor old man thrust his thin hand into a breast pocket and pulled out a handful of tattered greasy papers which he began to run over with 'rembling fingers. Just then a sudden roll of the ship threw his poor bald Xoves anfc (Grievances. 95 bead bard against tbe upper bertb. He passed bis baud over tbe place to see if tbere were auy blood, aud then turned once more to his papers. There were torn envelopes, papers with figures, perhaps his last accounts with his padrone, a receipt, and a little almanac. At last he picked out a crumpled half- sheet on which was written in large characters, but blotted with ink and almost illegible, tbe name of a village in the province of Buenos Ayres in which, at such a number of such and such a street, he would find shelter with a Piedmontese family. Hither would come within the month & pabriotta, a comrade of his son, who would take him to his Carlo. With such a direction as this, old, sick, and ignorant, he had set out for America. " I greatly fear," said the doc- tor, as we went out, " that he has set out too late." And then I must go with him to see the " man- ger." In a little corner in the forward part of the ship, between a turkey coop and a huge hogshead shoved up against the side, about large enough to hold a sack of coals, a family of five persons had made their lair, passing the day jammed in against each other and against the walls so as to look as if they had only gone in there for fun. It was a family of peasants from the neighborhood of Mestre. Hus- band and wife, both still young, she enceinte, two boys twins six years old, aud a girl of about nine, with her head bandaged. She was in front, knitting, and the blond urchins were imprisoned between the 9 6 n Blue Water. knees of the father, who was smoking, with his back against the side of the ship, and holding out his arm to the wife, who was mending his sleeve. Poor but clean, with faces that wore a certain air of serene I bis sleeve. resignation. As the doctor approached, the man rose up smiling, and said the "wench" was better; she had got a cut from falling down the cabin stairs a day or two before. " And how about the kitchen ?" the doctor asked. The peasant with several others went to the kitchen every day to peel potatoes and shell beans for the second cooks, who paid them with a glass or so of wine. " All right," he answered, "at anfc (Briexmnces. 97 all events we get a drop of wine. But that capo cogo (head cook) is a queer fellow." On being asked, the peasant told his story. An uncle had left him a bit of land, enough to live on or nearly, if he worked like two. Ma co no glie xefortuna, " When a man has no luck, everything goes wrong its own way." There was a little mortgage on the land, and then one hundred and ten lire of taxes ; two bad years to begin with ; in short he had worked himself nearly to death for five years and had done no good. And what if the wife did work fit to kill herself just like a man, there were five mouths and only two pair of hands. To be wearing out his life in this way, to be always in debt, to eat polenta and nothing but polenta, and to have his children starve day by day before his eyes, this could not go on. Then the girl fell ill for a Ions; time, and at last one of his cows was o killed by lightning. That settled it. He had sold everything, and was going to try whether he could not screw out some kind of a living in America. Good- will and courage were not lacking. Ma co no glie xv for tuna. Then he eagerly went on, " Salude putei, die vien la parongina" Make your bow, chil- dren, here conies the young lady. And greatly was I surprised to see, coming along through the throngs on deck, the lady with the black cross, in her dress of sea green, leaning on the arm of her companion, paler and more feeble than I had ever seen her. *She approached the family, asked about the girl in Ven- 98 n Blue Mater, etian dialect, and put her hand on the heads of the twins ; then taking out a little parcel, probably of sweetmeats or fruit, she gave it to them with a cer- tain worn invalid grace that was infinitely touching. Meanwhile the doctor took me aside and told me she was also from Mestre, that she had recognized that family of peasants on the .day of sailing as they were going on board. She was the daughter of an engin- eer, a widower, who had been for two years in charge of certain railway work in the interior of Uraguay, and she was going out with an aunt, who was only one year older than herself, to see her father " once more." I was in the act of asking what the last phrase meant, when the young lady coughed, and I had no need to finish the sentence. It hap- pened, too, that the doctor pointed out to me a woman sitting near by all alone, and looking at the family with glassy, almost despairing eyes, in which there appeared a glimmer of envy and the undying memory of a lost affection. She, too, was Venetian, and was going to join her brother at Rosario, be- cause, two months before, her husband had been stabbed in a quarrel. And all this misery is Italian, I thought as I re- turned to the after-deck. And every ship that goes out of Genoa is full of it, and they are going out of Naples and Messina and Venice and Marseilles every we*k throughout the year, and so have been doing these ten years. And these Galileo emigrants, as far Xoves an& Grievances. 99 as the voyage went, at all events, might well be called fortunate in comparison with many who in previous years were, from lack of room in the hold, littered down on deck like beasts, living there for weeks, drenched with water and suffering deadly cold ; or with others who had nearly perished of hunger and thirst in ships half-provisioned, or almost died of poisonous fish and putrid water, and many did die. And I thought of many others, again, who, shipped off for America by rascally agents, had been treacherously landed in a port of Europe, where they were forced to beg their bread ; or, who, having paid for their passage in a steamer, had been put on board a sailing vessel and kept six months at sea ; or, who, supposing they were to go to the Plata River, where friends and relatives awaited them, had been put ashore on the coast of Brazil to be decimated by the tropical heat and the yellow fever. And thinking of all this foul crime and of the thousands of my fellow-citizens who in foreign cities keep body and soul together by the most degrading drudgery, and of the bands of starving street performers whom we send out to the four winds, and of the hideous traffic in children, and of many other things, I bitterly en- vied those who can go about the world and not find at every turn those of their own blood in wretched- ness and sorrow. But to sweeten all this bitterness, a kind Provi- dence had sent on board two French commercial ioo n Blue Mater, travellers. One was a Parisian, a good fellow enough though somewhat loose in talk, but, alas ! with a face on him which I seemed to have seen before in one of Darwin's illustrated works at the head of a chapter on apes. The other I have spoken of already, a Marsigliese, fifty years old, with a Patagonian bust and short legs, one of which was crooked and trail- ing. He had a face like a bloated Napoleon I., and he was so grave that the nonsensical things he continually said seemed doubly ridiculous. He pre- tended to be commercial correspondent of the Jour- nal des Debats, though no one believed it, and he bragged a good deal about literature, citing on all occasions one and the same book, which was his gospel, and of which he had most certainly read nothing but the title, the Dictionary of Littre, " uti ouvrage qui restera dans les siecles" Moreover, he boasted of knowing Italy thoroughly, and spoke Italian in a way to frighten the sharks. But the funniest part of it all was that, having enjoyed in Italy, us well appeared from his talk, nothing but street-corner conquests, he harangued, ex cathedra, about the fair sex, making a hundred nice distinc- tions, a la Stendhal, between the ladies of one great Italian city and another, as if he had made study of the flower of our aristocracy in the capacity of French ambassador. And then he had a way of ar- guing about all sorts of things, a way common enough among the lower French bourgeois class, by %o\>es anfc Grievances. 101 subterfuges and set phrases, of which the following plea may be taken as a fair sample, brought up by him against one of the Argentines, who declared that beer was hurtful. " J^ai assists a Tenterrement de bien des gens qui rien buvaient pas" But his forte was gallant adventures, which he recounted half- o ' boastfully, half -comically, with actor's gesticulation, standing up, and always making a wave with his fingers and a pirouette on one heel, to come round aojain and face his hearers with " Et voila ! " like a o juggler asking for applause. That very morning lie and his colleague, who sat over against him at table, enlivened us all with a O discussion, begun I do not know how, about the cost of a respectable dinner at one of the so-called mar- cliands de vin. After a few words, the attention of the company having piqued the vanity of both, the Parisian allowed himself to remark in a sympathizing tone that his interlocutor did not know Paris. The Marsigliese flew out like a shot, "tTaifait vingt- cinq voyages a Paris, monsieur ! " " Et moi" an- swered the other, rising in the midst of a general silence, "je Vhdbite? But the look, the accent, and the gesture were so solemn as to provoke a loud laugh which almost drowned the rejoinder of the enraged Marsigliese : " Vous prenez la chose sur un ton . . . JVous nous moquons pas mat de Paris . . . Thiersqui a sauve deux fois la France" . 3Blue Water, But the other was so happy in the triumph of his moije VJiabite that he said no more, but turned to his neighbors with some words, among which I caught ". . . Tliiers, une vilaine figure On which we all rose from table, still This clay, the weather being most charming, all the beau nionde was on deck a couple of hours before dinner except the Argentines, who at that time were in the habit of having a kind of national luncheon O upon their delicious preserved meats, a provision of which they had on board with them. The deck looked like the terrace of a vast bathing establish- ment. Some of the passengers were lolling on the benches, turning over the leaves of Charpentier's yel- low literature ; many were promenading two and two. The old Chilean walked up and down with the Nea- politan priest, who was shaking his long flesh-hooks in the air as if to catch bank-notes flying, and every time that he passed near me I heard some of his phrases : " Yo creo que con un capital de docientos mil pataconse. . . . Vea Usted la vendida de las cedillas Jiipotecarias provinciates. ..." Beyond, and near the wheel the white robes of the blonde lady were seen. She had a blue ribbon in her hair and was leaning over the bulwark beside the beardless young Tuscan and it was plain that they were talking of commonplace matters, of the sea, of America; but though they did not look at each other it was no less plain, from a slight but constant smile which %o\>es anfc (Brievmnces. 103 trembled on the lips of both, that this was only the exterior accompaniment of an inward and exceed- ingly harmonious duet. Looking around for the husband I descried him on the piazzetta below, deeply attentive to the dis- course of one of the officers who was explaining the sextant. On one of the long benches about midway was the young lady from Mestre with her aunt. I observed the latter closely for the first time. She was a specimen, not altogether rare, of a freak of nature which had enclosed a woman's soul in a man's body broad, bony face large hands deep voice. All the womanhood of the poor girl was brought together into the eyes. These were small, gray, full of kindness and sweetness; and from their expression it was plain that she felt the disagreeable want of harmony between her body and her spirit ; that she was resigned to her fate of being unpleasing; that she tried to keep apart from one sex as from the other, and sought in every way to pass unnoticed. But that timid resignation and the shade of something almost like shame that veiled her eyes inspired a sentiment of mingled sympathy and pity which made her sometimes seem quite different from what she was. All at once and with much sur- prise I saw the Garibaldian come and take a seat be- side the niece. He bowed respectfully but with an air that bespoke a several days' acquaintance. It was the first time I had seen him in conversation with a 104 Blue Mater. human soul. How could they have become ac- quainted ? The young lady spoke from time to time, regarding the horizon with her clear, quiet glance, he listening with an air of respectful deference, his eyes fixed Upon the deck. I " listening witb an air of respectful inference." imagined that from D that first moment the soft breath which came from those pallid lips might be calling back to life in the man's soul many feelings that were dead and buried ; but no sign of it appeared upon his face, immovable %o\>es ant> Grievances. 105 and stern in spite of its respectful expression. The lady of the stateroom next to mine was sitting at the other end of the bench, dressed too much for a steamer's deck, and reading ; but the unquiet move- ment of her flat little foot showed that her thoughts O were not on the page. The encounter of that morn- ing, however, had not chased from her lips their usual nervous smile, a smile that bespoke an indomitable power in domestic strife, a power of stabbing the heart or the brain of a husband with pin-pricks for thirty years running. What could there be to separate them thus ? A carnal aversion like that of the married couple in Germinal! 1 No fault that I could imagine on the part of either was a cause suf- ficient to account for the loathing there was between O them ; for the husband, who did not look like a villain, would have forgiven her ; and she did not seem one of those delicate souls that carry all their lives the unclosing scar of a treacherous wound. And o yet I would have sworn that these two creatures could never more be reconciled and that the way they were in was leading them to crime. ~ But what most drew my attention among all these people was the Brazilian family : husband and wife, with three growing children and one infant at the breast, carried in arms by a negress short of stature and with a bosom like a Hottentot ; all close together on a O settee near the mizzen-mast, quite silent, like statues, and rolling their large black eyes around upon the io6 n Blue Mater. passers by as if all moved by one string. The father and the mother sat close together, as if each jealous of the other, and had the air of being rich. Perhaps they had become uncivilized in the solitude of one of those fazenda,s in the interior of Brazil, swarming with negro slaves, surrounded by boundless fields of sugar o v o or of coffee, and only to be reached through dense forests by many long days of journeying. On the bench opposite to them, with her back to the sea, and doing fancy work, sat the young lady pianist. I could not but remark how deftly she handled the little scissors, and note the exquisite art with which she managed to get a good long look at everybody, yet without displaying the smallest curiosity and without allowing anyone to catch her eye. Her mother, meanwhile, was talking with the agent, who was standing in front of her; and, from the smile he wore, it was plain that she was pulling to pieces with delicate ferocity one or more of the company. A bright flash of envy which came into her eye an- nounced the appearance of the Argentine lady, who had not been seen for two days. She came along, simply and elegantly dressed and leaning on the arm of her husband, with the step and the smile of a convalescent who did not try to conceal the pleasure she took in being looked at by all. She was indeed a noble specimen of the rich beauty of Creole blood. Hair and eyes of the blackest, these veiled by long lashes; complexion dark and warm, and of marvel- %ox>es ant) Grievances. 107 lous freshness. Her walk, undulating and most graceful, set off the lovely fulness of her person. And in that walk, that look, that bearing, shone out the gay haughtiness of the porteTia to whom is con- ceded the first place among the beauties of Latin America, the bold self-reliance of the woman born amid surroundings of struggle and adventure, a so- ciety which respects her for herself alone, and which educates her from a child to be ready for any change of fortune. Slowly, and with the easy, smiling grace of the hostess she made the round of the deck as if it were a ball-room, and then sat down near the com- pass, the real one, which, luckily for us all, she could not interfere with as she could with ours. 1 Meanwhile the groups were breaking up and form- ing again, so that I found myself for a moment near the monoculous Genoese, whose face wore its usual expression of infinite boredom, lighted up from time to time with thought of food, as a stagnant pool by a ray of sun. I asked what he thought of the cui- sine on board the Galileo. He shook his head and considered a moment ; then, in the tone in which he would have pronounced that Russia was abusing the forbearance of Europe, he answered : " Look here ! I am a candid man. We get more brown sauces than is exactly fair, in my opinion, at least." And yet he had a respect for the cook, who had been at the Hotel Feder very strong on sweet dishes two hundred 1 Fur perdere la bussola a qualcheduno, " To turn his head." io8 n Blue Mater, and fifty lire per month, and a handsome man. He offered to present me, but I put off the introduction until another time. "Exactly!" he said, pulling out his watch, " I must go and take a look. We were to have liver pie to-day." And he made way for the haliphobous advocate who was passing at the moment, his face twisted as usual. This gentleman stopped for an instant to listen to the Marsigliese who was singing the praises of the sea in the usual stock phrases : Mais regardez done ! Est ce beau ! Est ce imposant ! Est ce grand ! J\idore la mer, moi ! The advocate shrilled his shoulders w T ith a OO vexed air, as who should say : The sea, beautiful ! That 's a strange notion. People when they are all comfortable think everything beautiful, like so many cretins, drivellers. Mountains beautiful, plains beau- tiful. The sky beautiful when it is clear, beautiful in storms, lovely where there is vegetation, lovely where there is none. Asses ! To me the sea seems like a great puddle, nothing more. " Ah ! what now ? " he said, looking uneasily around as the screw gave a bang rather more violent than usual. But the queer part of it was that while he was talking of the sea he never looked at it. The most that he did was to send a glance around which rapidly swept the outline of the ship ; just as a nervous soldier casts a glance towards the enemy which is advancing towards the fort. " Never mind," I said, " we have a smooth sea." " Ah ! " he said, " I dare say ; a smooth sea, 0riex>ance6. 109 no doubt ; and in less than an hour we may all be on our knees expecting death." At this juncture along came the agent to announce a discovery. That plump lady with the red face sit- ting there near by, who was always so cross in the morning and so jolly in the evening. The mystery was cleared up. She drank like a fish. She was said to be a beast-tamer and had her preserves in Chili. Posi- tively, she had in her stateroom liqueurs of every color and of every country, which she kept sipping all the time from noon on, out of a collection of little glasses O which she had had made on purpose darling little bits of glass work with which she tried to deceive herself about her weakness. He had heard it all from the mother of the pianist. The lady and her maid got half-seas-over regularly every evening, and when they were properly primed would talk with any- body, saying whatever came into their heads. When we got into the warm regions we should hear more of them. The lady was at that moment talking with a tall passenger whom I had not yet particu- larly remarked, a veteran globe-trotter, who had on the nape of his neck a long red mark. And there were stories about him too. He was said to be an old sea-captain, a regular beast, and that red streak was the mark of an attempt by his sailors to hang him on the high seas many years before. We all burst out laughing, at which the "scape-gallows" looked round. The name stuck to him. And there no n Blue Mater. were other nicknames going. One passenger, who did not talk with anyone, his nose like a beak, and his ears like handles to a head of the uomo delin- quents of Lombroso, was called the " fire-bug." The Frenchman of the Figaro was called the " thief," no less. And another, I have no idea why, received the title of " Director of the Society-for-no-more-bad- smelling-cesspools." On the first occasion, however, all these people made acquaintance and shook hands like good friends. " Stop ! " said the agent, all of a sudden. " I don't see the Swiss lady and the young Tuscan. I must go below and have a look." I re- marked that what he suspected was impossible because the stewardesses were about. " On the contrary," he said, " outposts to announce the ap- proach of the enemy with an ahem ! " And away he went. I looked once more for the professor and saw him not far off profoundly musing over the magnetic needle; and just as the agent came back with the face of a hunter who has brought down his O game, he moved away, placidly remarking, " There is a little motion." " Yes," said the agent, " she does pitch a little." With these mild, friendly jests we whiled away the hours. But the true time to enjoy the sea was towards night, when the passengers had all gone below save two or three lonely individuals. At that hour, when on the yet faintly glimmering western sky the sea cut a clear line, and, all black, as if of pitch, did not Xoves anfc Grievances. m attract the eye at any one point, it was pleasant to yield oneself to that ebb and flow of tangled and disconnected thoughts which, keeping time to the measured cadence of the screw, seem like the passing fancies of a dream. But the thoughts at that hour take the color of the sea. Compared with that boundless spread of waters which shows no trace of man or of time, the objects of our voyage, our little pursuits, our own country, all seem so confused, so small, so wretched, so far off. And to think that three days before leaving we were pained by a cold salute from an acquaintance in the Via Barbaroux. How pitiably small a matter ! All such things seem now the records of another existence, which rise to view for a moment and then sink again into that measureless abyss which is under and around us. And then we let ourselves be carried out over the wide waters in an imaginary ship, that sails and sails without rest beyond the farthest land, upon that mighty southern ocean w T hose continents would, to a micromega, seem all shrunken and drawn together into the other hemisphere as if in dread of solitude. And then the fancy is lost and confounded in that solitude, and eagerly flies back among the human race, to creatures that are loved, to that very room where dear faces are gathered around the lamp which shines like a sun in our inmost soul. But those faces do not smile. On every one of them there is the trace of pensive disquietude, and we, H2 Orievaiiccs. 113 cold and utter darkness of that boundless stretch of living ooze and of microscopic skeletons that con- stitutes the bottom of the sea : " The enigma of life Murmurs and surges down there." IS enigma delta vita La sotto ondeggia e mormora. Whose are those lines ? Ah ! My good Pauzacchi. What is he about no\v, I wonder ? And then visions of a festive evening at the Artists' Club at Turin, like a great luminous circle which sails aloni beside our O vessel, bright ' O with gleam- ing, well- known faces ; and one almost hears the laughter and O the voices. Then it all goes out, lamps, dreams, friendships, all the joys and the doings of humanity ; the eternal reality is that formidable mass of water which covers four fifths of the earth, and that land, with the fearful head whose crown is ice and whose brain is n4 ii JBlue Mater. fire, which flies howling and weeping into the in- finite. O Prodigy ! O Mystery ! I would stay here on an island for centuries and centuries, my head upon ray hand, thinking and thinking, so only I could for a single instant comprehend it all. Duu! Oinqu ! Vott! Tucc ! were the cries that roused me, coming from a group of Lombard emi- grants who every evening played mora on the mid- ship deck. At that hour in the cabin people were at chess and dominoes. Those who had rooms on deck received their friends there, and there were lights and there was beer and Bordeaux wine. O Around the canteen, forward, was a throng of pas- sengers who presented their order duly signed by the commissary for a cup of coffee, a glass of rum, or a half-litre of wine to feast the closing day. I went on the fore-deck to range like a libertine under pro- tection of the darkness, through which I could dimly see groups of women with children asleep in their arms, men who were drinking all alone, youths with noses like beagles looking and searching in every corner. And that evening I was present for the first time at the separation of the two sexes, done under the surveillance of the little, old, hunchbacked sailor, whose business it was to send the women off to bed. There had been nine days of monastic life in the open air. Matrimonial tenderness had reawakened a little, and, besides the regular relations, others not so legiti- mate appeared to be in train. But the old hunch- %ox>es anfc Grievances, 115 back had to separate them all alike, without regard to rights, legal or otherwise, and every evening at ten o'clock, punctual and inexorable as old Silva, he appeared, lantern in hand, and began to poke in every corner, loosing embraces and breaking off amorous colloquies, crying at every five paces, "To bed, to bed, you women ! To bed, you girls ! " Comical it was to the last degree. The couples resisted. Separ- ated here they came together again farther on, be- tween the washhouse and the butcher's shop, under shadow of the cattle-pens, in dark passages, in every place where no light came from the lantern. And then the poor old boy went back on his tracks, patiently repeating his "Come, you women! come, my children ! It is time," Andemmo donne ! A.n- demmo figgie ! Che Te ooa. Sometimes to propiti- ate the recalcitrants he would say, Andemmo scignoe, -" Come, ladies ! " In about a quarter of an hour the women moved in procession, just as if it were a dress promenade, between two rows of men down through the cabin door into the bowels of the vessel. Some came back once more, holding out the baby to be kissed by its papa. Some stopped to squeeze and squeeze again the hand of a new friend ; others stood and o / called their lagging children : Gioanniiin ! Bac- Oo o cicciiin ! Putela ! Picciridu ! Piccinitt! Gennariello! and the lifted lantern shone on languishing glances from pretty girls, on the glittering eyes of young fel- n6 n Blue Mater* lows, the discontented looks of husbands whom the regulations annoyed ; and still the old fellow kept calling out, " Come, come, scignoe, a little faster, ladies, if you please," until the last of the procession had gone below. But the old boy, who knew his kittle cattle, went back to make another tour of the deck, quite sure of finding some lurking mischief, of un- earthing some darkling intrigue. And so it was every evening. I followed him at a little distance and heard his scandalized father-guard- ian exclamations ; and male voices would answer de- siring him to o;o to the devil, while softer tones would i-j O ' be heard apparently denying something or begging for mercy. But he had no mercy. And I could see, amid a volley of coughs, women run by with their hair down and covering their faces to conceal O them from the eager and curious bystanders. As soon as he had swept up the last fragments of love- making the old hunchback with the lantern stood before me, and, wiping his brow with his hand, growled out, "There's another cursed day gone!" Ah ! die mestv ! " Ugh, what a trade ! " But on his rough, good-natured old face, as he looked down the stairway, there was a look of pity for all that trouble, and perhaps a little sympathy with all those yearnings which he had "only obeyed orders" in chasing below. " Hard duty, eh?" I said to get him into talk and hear some of his philosophy. lie raised his lantern a little to look me in the face, and Xoves anD Grievances. 117 then after a moment of reflection said, sententiously : " When a man [ommo] finds himself in the position, as I find myself in the position, to judge people as they are on board here, gentle and simple, and the things that go on in a ship, funny and sorrowful, and the men and the women, but the women more than the men, believe me, sdgnore, he gets a notion that it is no use being surprised at anything, and is ready to put up with almost everything." So saying, he disappeared, and the men also one after another went below. The ship was silent and quiet, like some enormous animal that was gliding drowsily over the sea without sound save for the measured beating of its mighty heart. CHAPTER VII THE TROPIC OF CANCER HE next day we were to pass the Tropic of Cancel'. I was told this early in the morning by the steward with his usual down- cast look, for he practised, among other things, the affec- tation of dropping his eyes while he spoke, as if to conceal the joy that filled his soul at the pros- pect of final triumph in the quest of love. But the Tropic of Cancer. It was the despiteful harbinger of nearly three thousand miles of torrid zone which we must pass before we could feel the cool trade- winds of the other hemisphere ; and with the very thought I seemed to feel two great drops of sweat course down my temples. I looked out of the port, and lo ! a wonder. The ocean most placid, all silver and rosy red, covered with a transparent veil of vapor which the rising sun made look like a luminous cloud of dust ; and then some miles away, us Ube TTropic of (lancer. 119 in the very midst of that boundless virgin beauty of air and water, a large ship which seemed immovable, her broad, white sails like the outspread wings of a gigantic swan that was regarding us. I open the port and a delicious waft of sea air floods my face and breast, runs down into my very veins, and stirs me up like a breath from a freshened world. The ship was a Swedish sailing vessel, probably from the Cape of Good Hope ; the first sail we had seen since Gibraltar. For a few moments she shone white before my eyes in the clearness of that enchanting morning, welcome as the greeting of a friend ; then she passed out of view and the ocean seemed more solitary than before ; but kindlier, too, than I had ever seen it ; as if the horizon were the boundary of an enormous garden. It was one of those morn- ings in which passengers meet one another on deck with smiling faces and outstretched hands, as though the first breath of the rising day had brought each of them some good news. But in a few hours all this fair prospect was dark- ened, the sky was clouded over, the air grew heavy and hot as if we had made a leap from spring into the midst of summer. We had entered that mass of vapor, terror of the navigators of old, which the great heat of the equator draws up from the ocean and heaps upon the torrid zone, and which those happy creatures of Jules Verne's creation, as they travel in the sky, see as a dark belt stretched around 120 n Blue Mater. our planet like the blue streaks upon the disc of Jupiter. The smooth sea of that morning was the last smile of the temperate zone softened by the last waft of the trade-winds. We were now sailing in o the region of clouds, of thickest showers, of doleful dulness. And its influence was straightway seen among the third-class people. The agent came for me in the saloon. " Come and see some alley squab- bles, 1 " he said ; " the play has begun." A parcel of women had risen in rebellion about the distribution of fresh water, of which, over and above the number of litres allowed each rancho, a sailor was to serve out a certain quantity to every woman when she asked for it for her own personal use. So some complained that it had been refused them while the others received it. But it was an intricate matter. It was the outbreak of a resent- ment they had long been brooding over against what they regarded as an habitual and not uninter- ested injustice. The old women said the young ones were preferred because they played the co- quette ; these on the contrary declared that the old ones were favored because they had money and greased the palms of those in charge. Others again complained that the gentlefolk, the quality, were treated with more distinction ; the signore, forsooth, poor, decayed creatures who had nothing left of that 1 "Alley squabbles," baruffe chiozzotte. Chiozza answers very well to Billingsgate, its inhabitants being noted for fluent and abusive slang. TTropic of Cancer, 121 about them but the worn dress and the sad mem- ory. The most waspish of the protestants were crowded together in a corner near the kitchen, where the carcass of a calf was hanging up. When I got there the commissary was surrounded by fifteen or twenty slipshod women, red as turkey-cocks, all talking together in three or four different dialects, and all pointing the finger of accusation at the sailor in charge, who, with his great beard like a Capu- chin friar, stood there as unmoved in the midst of all that cackle as a statue in a <2rale of wind. "But o I do not understand a word," said the commis- sary, with native coolness. " Do me the small favor to speak one at a time." And the looks of some of the younger ones sof- tened a little as they -Cbe commissars. rested on the white hands and rosy cheeks of the handsome fellow ; but in the eyes of the rest there flashed that sombre fire which 122 n Blue Mater. gleams in the face of the low-lived woman whenever she disputes even about the merest trifle with her betters, and which arises from vague ill-will of very old date and quite independent of the matter in hand. Inn lalossad ! we heard some of them say. Pure nui avimmo pagato sigmiri. A Te ora d'jfinila, " We have paid too. There must be an end of this." And the women's complaints were backed up by dull murmurs from a little crowd of men, who in their secret hearts enjoyed the show, and moreover encouraged the malcontents from class sympathy and perhaps from a little embryo insolence as future republicans. At last the commissary ob- tained a partial silence, one woman only speaking. I had but time to see a head of tangled hair and a raised forefinger keeping time to a flood of gutter eloquence when an outburst of exclamations drowned her voice : " That 's not true !" Tcizevn! Busiarda! Clt^l me senta mi ! A Te rfonta ! " Hold your tongue ! Liar ! Listen to me ! It 's a shame ! " Tli en in the press a baby began to cry, and they were ready to tear each other's eyes out. Suddenly a woman's shrill shriek was heard, and the people were seen running together near the foremast. In a moment there was a crowd there, and a loud burst of laughter, as if at something that had hap- pened. The news spread, and more people flocked in from every side until there was a bustle and a laugh- ing from the kitchen to the forecastle. But it was a O ZCropic of Cancer, 123 broad suggestive Iaii2;h which, with certain winks Oo O ' and nudges that passed, sufficiently showed what kind of event it was that had happened. And such was the curiosity to know the cause of it all that the very disputants, forgetting their quarrel, rushed off to see what was the matter. It seems that a couple of flying fish sailing across the deck had hit the rig- ging and fallen, one among the wheels of the donkey engine and the other right upon the bosom of a young damsel, and headforemost, as if he meant to keep on. As soon as she could, the girl ran behind the butcher's shop ; and a clown of an emigrant car- ried the shameless fish about, yelling something or other like the criers in the seraglio until the com- missary signed him to be quiet. But the scurrility and the lauovhino; went on all the same, while the o n Blue Mater. the Marsigliese, boldly ; "prouvez moi cela I " But the others, with that admirable readiness of memory for which they were remarkable, quoted Malthus to show that in the years of fullest emigration England did not cease to suffer from want. " Malthus, rfa pas dit cela!" "How? How?" But he, without either admitting or denying, said nothing at all. "Stuart Mill," they went on, "holds that emigration by no means releases us from the necessity of pro- viding against the increase of population. You will allow that he has said that." Then the other, frankly, " Pas precisement, messieurs.' 1 '' And as he knew no more of Stuart Mill than he did of Malthus he backed down (sincaponiva), amid the laughter of his interlocutors, who saw 7 the joke. This was the only cheerful passage of the breakfast. The cloudy horizon, the gray sea, and the heat, which began to bedew our faces with sweat, kept all the rest of the company quite silent. The blonde lady only showed a countenance as cool as a rosy apple, sending a double spray of words into the ear of her husband on her left, and over the tenor on her right, now and then between whiles encouraging the little Tus- O o can with a glance or so not to be jealous of her new friend. And we had to thank her, moreover, for a gleam of hilarity which hovered over the yawning groups on deck during the heavy hours of chylifica- tion. A naive blunder of hers had been going the rounds all the morning, and showed how wholly TTbe tropic of Cancer. 127 confused were the ideas of geography shut up under that crown of curly gold. The agent, meeting her, had said, "Signora, we cross the Tropic of Cancer "Sending a Souble eprav of worts into tbe ear of ber busbanfc on ber left, anJ> over tbe tenor on ber riobt." to-day." " O, indeed ! " she cried, with enthusiasm. "Then we shall see something at last !" But I could not understand how one could be dull on board ship on the contrary, I rather liked seeing how bored the others were for the same reason that makes one feel so happy at being well when those around are suffering with sea-sickness. And to-day there could be no lack of diversion. Between one oYlock and four, the most trying time, I began to see 128 <>n Blue Watet*. faces that half made me think : Now they will drop to pieces and have to be swept off the deck. It was not the ennui which Leopardi calls the greatest of human sentiments, but a pitiful slackening of mental fibre, betrayed by the drooping of eyelids, of cheeks, of lips, as if these faces had been made of boiled meat. Among those most tormented was the Geno- ese, who stood looking through the window of the engine-room, with a face upon which there was not even a dying gleam of intelligence. " What are you doing here ? " I asked. " Why are you not in the kitchen ? " He had just come from there. No news. Thought there would be tagliatelli (flat maccaroni) to-morrow. Could not be sure. And then he explained why lie stood so long looking at the monotonous movement of a piston-rod. It was his theory about boredom, his own. " I have re- marked," he said, " that a man is bored because one cannot prevent himself from thinking of disagreeable things. The only way, therefore, to get rid of bore- dom is to be like the beasts, and not think at all. So I stand here quite still and watch that rod go up and down. Little by little, in about twenty minutes, I bring myself to a condition of perfect stupidity - a very ass. So I do not think about anything at all and am not bored. No (/tie afro. That 's all there is to it." I burst out laughing, but he was quite grave, and turned round to gaze at the piston-rod again, his eye fixed and dilated like a dead man's. Uropic of (lancer. 129 I wanted to tell him that a better way to get out of himself would be to go right down and see the whole engine ; but perceiving that the desired effect was in a fair way of being brought about I forbore. And then I went down myself. One reflection I had made, every day, in this con- nection, and that was that probably not ten out of the seventeen hundred passengers on board the Galileo knew what the engine was like or had any curiosity about it. And so of a hundred other mechanical marvels of human wit. We make use of them and go our way regardless ; not less ig- norant than the savages whom we despise for their ignorance. And yet not only for those whose ideas go no farther than a huge kettle and a mysterious and intricate mass of wheels, but also for many who have read about these things in books, it is a great pleasure to get into the blue overalls of the machinist and for the first time go down into that dark noisy kind of infernal region of which they had never yet seen anything but the ascending smoke. When down at bottom one looks up at the faint gleam of day above, one seems to have descended from the roof to the deepest foundations of a lofty edifice ; and at the sight of all those steep iron ladders, one above another, those horizontal gratings, that variety of cylinders, of mighty tubes, of rods and joints of every description, all driven by furious life and all together making up some kind of formidable mon- 130 n Blue Mater. ster, which with its hundred limbs occupies a third part of the enormous ship, one stands fixed in won- der and humiliation at seeming so small beside that prodigy of power. And the wonder grows when we push on into the volcano that gives life to it all, and walk among those mighty boilers, six steel-built houses standing on four crossing streets like a dis- trict barred up and on fire, where many black, half- naked men with red faces and bloodshot eyes, who swallow at every moment floods of water, toil cease- lessly to feed thirty-six red-hot mouths which, urged by the blast of six huge ventilators that roar like the open throats of lions, devour in the twenty-four hours a hundred tons of coal. We seem to come back to life when, issuing thence, all dripping with sweat, we stand once more before the engine, where but a moment ago we seemed quite buried. And yet it takes some time to get one's ideas together. The engineer may explain as much as he likes, but all that dizzying movement of pistons and rockers and governors and what not, among which the oilers move with such blood-chilling coolness ; the stunning uproar of the cranks, the whistling of valves, the dull plunge of the pumps, the sharp stroke of the eccentrics; the spectres who, lamp in hand, climb up and down the ladders, appear and disappear, above, below, on every side, and light up witli weird gleam steel, iron, bronze, brass, copper; strange shapes and movements hardly understood; Uroptc of Cancer. 131 unknown depths, unexplored passages; all this upsets the few clear ideas we may have had on coming down here. O We feel reassured by the mighty strength of this machinery ; but our security diminishes as we mark with what anxious care the attendants watch it, listen- ing to hear whether in that uniform concert of sound there be the faintest tone of discord, snuffing for the merest suspicion of burning amid all those familiar smells ; how they run here and there to feel if the metal be hotter than it should be, to look if there be unjustified smoke, and to keep up that unbroken rain of oil which, from fifty long-nosed cans, runs down through the joints of that colossal frame. For that colossal frame, which copes successfully with the gales of ocean, is as delicate as a human body ; the smallest disorder in any of its members is felt throughout, and must instantly be remedied. It does indeed resemble a living tiling. Thirsty, like the men that feed it, from the fire that burns within, it must swallow up unceasingly a torrent of water from the sea and send it out again in boiling streams ; and all that complication of rods and joints is like a Titanic body, whose every effort is concentrated upon giving formidable impulse to a mighty arm of iron, driver of the great bronze screw which tears up the ocean and urge: the whole mass onward. As we look, the Liburnian of old time comes into our minds with its three pairs of paddle-wheels moved 132 n JBlue Mater, by the slow tread of oxen ; and we think with pride of the wonder which would fix one of that ao;e to O the spot, could he see what we see, and the cry of amazement which would burst from his soul. But he could not imagine what that miracle had cost his fellow-creatures. A century of fruitless attempts ; a legion of great geniuses who spent their whole lives over an improvement which the next generation consigned to oblivion the martyrdom of Papin ; the suicide of John Fitch ; the poverty of Jouft'roy ; Fulton made a mock of; Savage driven mad; an interminable series of injustice, of pitiful struggles, of doubts, and of despair. The examples of genius and heroic constancy to be found in this great history must console the human race for the existence of that stubborn ignorance, that ferocious greed, that detestable envy which fought against them and would have crushed them if it could have done so. All this that wonderful monster, with its hundred harsh and weary voices, says to us ; and yet it may seem to our remote descendants the weak and clumsy work of groping beginners. Going up again I met at the top of the stairs the tall priest, who, pointing with one hand to the en- gine, put the forefinger of the other in front of my face like a wax candle. I did not understand ; but what he wished to say was that the engine of the Galileo had cost a million. I thanked him, put aside the finger, and went on deck again just at the right Ube Uropic of Cancer. 133 moment to see, for the first time, my friend the com- missary in the exercise of his function as justice of the peace in a most curious " case." The big Bolognese was at that instant going into his room with the face of a wounded lioness, her inseparable pouch around her neck. There was nothing to cover the entrance o but a thin green curtain, so every word could easily be heard. That unhappy com- missary ! I was not long in coming to a sense of what en- O ormous patience he had to exercise in these sittings. The voice of the complainant be- gan to be raised, quivering with rasje and full of hauo-hti- O O ness and threatening:. All I O could make out was that she complained of some injury which appeared to be neither more nor less than a surmise ventured upon by a fellow- passenger as to the contents of the mysterious pouch. She stated the facts, demanded the punishment of the insulter, and 134 n Blue Mater, called upon the commissary to do his duty. He in turn desired her to respect his office, and to be calm, promising to look into the matter. At these words her voice softened a little, and she appeared to commence a long story in a senti- mental tone, which gradually rose to the dramatic. Yes, it was her autobiography, the usual thing a distinguished family, a relative who wrote to the newspapers and would call them all to account, a father and mother, good bringing up; then misfor- tunes, the injustice of fate, a blameless life ; and, in due time, the inevitable crisis the burst of tears. Then I heard the voice of the commissary soothing her. Meanwhile a little crowd had gathered before O the door, men and women of the third class, among them that clown-faced peasant who had lost the tip of his nose. He appeared to be the culprit, for he was making excuses. " After all, I did n't say I was sure, did I ? It was only a sort of guess. 1 ' He was the culprit ; and when he reached the commissary's door he went in, saying, " Here I am." Straightway came an outburst of Bolognese abuse, which utterly belied the lady's claim to distinguished descent " Caroyna (Vtm fastidi! At d feyhet d^avgnlrom dlnanz ? A t dap pi'" 1 d col, brott pni'zcll ! brott (/royn d\ui vilan seinza education I " Then all three voices together, and finally the culprit's only. If you will believe it, the quarrel was about the supposed con- tents of the famous pouch, as to which all the gentle TIropic of Cancer. 135 creatures of the fore-deck had been cudgelling their brains these nine days, and making the most ridicu- lous conjectures. But I did not catch the fatal word. I did, however, hear the commissary give the peasant a setting-down, threatening to put him in irons, the peasant making excuses, and the Bolognese scolding all the while, until, at last, the man came out with his head hanging and the woman with her head high. O o O Then, raising the green curtains, I went in, to find the judge rolling on the sofa with his hands to his sides, suffocated with suppressed laughter. What was the surmise ? What was supposed to be in that blessed pouch ? You would never guess in the world. One of the most ridiculous notions that ever passed through the brain of an impertinent clown ; one which would have made the most crabbed moralist laugh in his beard, and to which the author 1 of the Bo/ruffe Chiozzotte, with respect be it spoken, might have set his name. And I had to make way to the sofa, too ; but straightway had to rise as another woman came to complain of " certain reports which had been put in circulation about her." "Alas, poor commissary," I said as I went out, "the day has begun badly and will end worse." " Oh, this is nothing," he said in his mild, resigned voice, and with a look at the thermometer. " Wait until we have 97, Fahrenheit." Then putting on his judge's face he turned to the newcomer. 1 Goldoni, Cliioggia Squabbles. See p. 120. 136 n Blue Mater. But the heat had upset us in the after-cabin no less, as might easily be perceived that evening. It was pitiable. There were half a dozen creatures who ten days before did not know of one another's existence ; who in ten days more were to separate forever; who, one would imagine, had nothing so important to think of as what they had left be- hind in Europe, or what they were going to in America; who had nothing but a couple of planks between them and the bottomless sea ; and who yet had devised all sorts of tangled intrigues, mutual O O / hatreds, and complicated antipathies. There was national rancor between the Chilian and the Peru- vian, between the Italian and the Frenchman ; bick- erings between the Italians of different provinces; miserable jealousies among the ladies, mushroom growth of shameful little spiteful nesses which broke out in cross looks or reciprocal ostentations of neglect and aversion. One half of the passengers was ready to scratch the faces of the other half. And this quite independent of other vulgarities. Alas ! If the Galileo had foundered on the spot she would not have carried to the bottom, many lofty souls. The only two who, as far as one could judge, would have deserved to survive were the young lady from Mestre and the Garibaldian who, even on that evening, were sitting together con- versing. Their acquaintance, the agent told me, arose from his having been comrade to the young tlbc ^Tropic of Cancer, 137 lady's brother, wounded at Bezzecca and dying in hospital at Brescia. No doubt his soul was far above the wretched little jealousies of the others, for his face expressed such an indifference about himself, about life, and about his fellow-creatures, such a cold and lofty scorn of everything that was low, that everyone avoided him as if they instinct- ively perceived in him a foe. And the manner in which the pair separated late that evening struck me most forcibly, remaining in my mind as the most vivid impression of the day. Yes, I can, even now, see that handsome, haughty giant rise and bend his head with its impress of attempted suicide before that pale, pale mask, that face as of the dead, in which no expression was left but the bright hope of a life hereafter. CHAPTER VIII A YELLOW OCEAN T this point I find on the cover of my Berghaus Atlas, where I made some notes every day, these words: "llth day. Stroke of spiritual apoplexy," and I call to mind a singular psychological phenomenon, which occurred to me on tlmt day, and which falls to the lot of everyone, I suppose, on a long voyage, so soon as the novelty of life on board ship has worn off. Some fine morning, as you go on deck, dulness comes down on your soul all of a sud- den, like the blow of a club on the back of your neck. Everything has lost color; you feel an inexpressible disgust for life and all about you ; there is a sense of suffocation, such as one might experience who, fall- ing asleep in the open air, should wake up in a dun- geon with the gyves upon his wrists. At such a moment you seem to have been at sea from time im- memorial, like the passengers in that fantastic dis- 138 a HJellow cean. 139 co very ship of Edgar A. Poe ; and the idea of passing another fortnight on that bundle of planks among all those boredom-stricken wretches overwhelms you. You cannot help yourself; this strange brain -sickness, hitherto unknown, will surely get hold of you before the voyage is over. How get rid of the torture ? Kind Heaven, how ? Write ! But, as many a one has remarked before, the ship attacks the writer in one of his weakest points, the sense of harmony ; the noise of the screw makes him write the same word over twenty times in a page. Read ! But, with the very idea of forcing yourself to write you have shut up all your books in the trunks that are down in the hold. You seriously think of taking a sleeping draught, of tipsifying yourself with cognac, or of trying, like the Genoese, the experiment of the piston-rod. O for something new ! A hundred lire for this morning's Corriere Mercantile! A pound of blood for an island ! Let us have a mutiny, a hurricane, the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds, so only we may for one day get out of this horrible condition. The sea showed itself that morning in one of its ugliest aspects ; moveless beneath a low-hanging arch of lazy-pacing clouds of a dirty-yellow color and looking viscid, like so much fat mud in which a harpoon would have stood upright like a toothpick in a lump of mastic ; and it seemed as if no fish glanced through it, but only foul, deformed creatures 140 n Blue Mater, The heat being great at that hour, almost every- body remained on deck a long time under shade of the awning; and I could mark better than the even- ing before the changes which the last few days had brought about in the relations between passengers. Such politeness ! Persons who during the first week seemed hardly able to endure one another were now in close and friendly conversation ; whereas others who had seemed tied together now avoided each other with disgust. A long trip is like a bit of separate existence, where friendships are born and ripen and die for us as quickly as the seasons follow one another for the ship, which passes in three weeks from spring to autumn. The certainty of parting before many days and of meeting never again en- courages confidence. The facility of going over to new friends on the first quarrel, and the ease with which we can pretend to be more than we are, or different from what Ave are, is a temptation to make new ties and to break out of old ones ; because everyone does the same by us, and we hardly have time to see the little trick when all is at an end. For this reason friendships on board ship dance the contra-dance and " set " to one and to another. Then, too, there is nothing like boredom to make men do mean things. On the tenth day there are those capable of humbly courting the conversation of certain others whom they had affronted the even- ing before with the most barefaced manifestations H fellow cean, 149 of aversion. I saw, amongst other new pairs, the Neapolitan priest walking with a young Argentine who hitherto had bantered him more openly and more impertinently than all the rest, but who now listened with visible deference to his harangues about emisiones fiduciarias y de nmnerario of some financial institution in Buenos Ayres ; and on the other side of the deck was that upstart of a mill- owner, who had somehow fastened upon the old Chilian, and who complained in a loud voice of the falta de limpieza (lack of cleanliness) on board Italian ships, without remarking that his inter- locutor wore upon his face an expression of disgust which meant that he would before long turn his back. But the great event was going on abaft the wheel. The husband of the Swiss lady was for the first time in colloquy with the Argentine deputy, to whom he appeared to be explaining the mechanism of the patent log ; and most comical was the pro- found attention which the listener seemed to pay, slowly turning his head now and then to glance at the sometime violatress of his quarters, who promenaded between the surly little Tuscan and the radiant tenor, all smiles and blandishments, but attentive the while to the other two, and well pleased, as may be supposed, at such unexpected overtures. The lady, as she walked up and down, passed before the little piano-player seated on one side ; and she in her turn looked the other from head 150 n Blue Mater. to foot with a long piercing glance, in which there was curiosity and sensual envy and all the im- prisoned passions of a captive animal ; and then her countenance resumed its usual expression of nunlike impassibility. Her mother, meanwhile, seated be- tween her and the lady of the brush, tore to pieces with eye and tongue a new lilac dress which the young bride had on. It was a little creased, there 's no denying it. Said young lady was hanging on her husband's arm, and standing with him before the beast-tamer, who seemed to be jesting in a way to embarrass her, and, lolling in a rocking-chair, ineffectually tried to medicine her somewhat " ele- vated" condition with aromatic extracts. Mean- while the a^ent, commanding the whole with his O O detective glance, leaned against the mizzen-mast, his arms folded on his breast, with the air of a man who is awaiting a crisis of some kind. All the others, sitting or standing about, talked in a wearied way, yawning openly, while the yellow sea made a suit- able background for those gossippy, sleepy faces. Amongst many pictures, driven out each by the next, which the deck presented during the voyage, this one only, painted in mud color, has remained, I do not know why, fixed and vivid in my memory. But suddenly the scene became alive and the rep- resentation a real farce. The Tuscan quickly, almost rudely, quitted the company and went straight for- ward as if with a view to indemnification among the H fellow (S>ceam 151 ladies there. A moment later the Swiss lady and the tenor separated, he to sit down and make pre- tence of reading a book, she to join her husband, the Argentine retiring at once with a diplomatic salute. The agent appeared at my elbow like a ghost. " Now mark," he said, " there is a military movement going on. You, who are a writer, ought to note these things. The Tuscan has retreated, the tenor is held in reserve. The lady is manoeuvring in face of the enemy. Oh, by Jove ! they played it on me yes- terday, but they shall not to-day." In fact, the lady was coaxing her husband most outrageously ; she passed her arm through his; she whispered in his ear; she seemed to ask explanations of the patent log. And the face of the long-haired professor was a sight to see. There was a whole system of phi- losophy there, doubtless of old date with him. He half-closed his eyes like a drowsy cat, and twisting his whole face to one side, showed the tip of his tongue with a leer of indescribable facetiousness through which there shone all the while a flash of mockery, as if in his heart he were laughing at her himself, the other, the others, the whole world. Meanwhile the tenor had disappeared. The lady passed her hand over her eyes and covered with her fan an ill-acted yawn, as if to show her husband that she wished to go below and have a nap. " Look out ! " said the a^ent, " now for the decisive move- o ' ment." The words were hardly out of his mouth i52 n 36lue Mater, moving slowly along in the midst of the press I saw that " decayed gentlewoman " of the third class whom, with her daughter, the commissary had pointed out some days before ; her feeble health now feebler, and looking most pitiably poor in her black silk dress, all soiled and torn. There are some small humiliations in misfortune which are worse than misfortune itself. Both mother and daughter timidly, after much hesitation, and looking about them as if ashamed, went to the fresh-water tank and bent down like animals at a trough, to drink from the iron spigot as the others did ; but, seeing the Swiss lady coming that way again, they drew back and, with downcast looks, disappeared in the throng. Some emiorants, who had marked O O this scene, laughed a loud, mocking laugh. The blonde lady meanwhile, at a sign from the first officer, stopped to look at the Genoese, whose fame as the " virtuous beauty " had no doubt reached her ears. She seemed to think the girl beautiful; but I saw in her eye an expression of pity, the pity with which a bold and fortunate operator would regard a rich simpleton who was keeping a splendid capital idle in his safe. Then she moved on, saluting with O a wave of her hand her husband, who was above on the hurricane-deck examining the structure of the O red side-light. That poor Genoese girl ! The commissary, on his way to look at a broken spigot, told me a pitiful Characters in tfoe Steerage. 165 story. Around that good and beautiful creature there had closed a circle of envious aversion which gave her no peace. All the aspirants whom she had declined to look at or had repelled with her disgust had become her enemies, and her firm and dignified manner had made them fairly hate her. They said she was too stupid for anything (stttpida come una scarpf(\ a piece of bloodless flesh, all hands and feet, and such teeth ! To the anger of the men was added the jealousy of the women, furious at seeing a hundred adoring " sapheads " about her. The Bolognese, especially, and the two opera girls looked as if they would like to boil her alive. They had begun by sarcastically calling her " the princess " ; then they had said that that n unlike modesty of hers was all put on, and finally had circulated the most atrocious calumnies regarding her. Impossible to describe the foulness of the talk that went on, the vileness of the remarks made upon her person, pro- voking insolent laughs whose significance there was no mistaking. They would have insulted her open- ly, perhaps have laid violent hands upon her, for no other purpose than to humiliate her, but for the authorities. The very cook was furious, and showed at the window of his stronghold the countenance of an offended sultan. For two or three days the little Tuscan in the after-cabin had been buzzing about her, and had at last got into conversation with her father; whereon all that scum of the earth had said 166 n Blue Water. it was a bargain, a settled matter, but suddenly had ceased their talk, and that without anyone knowing why. The only one who remained faithful, in love to the very marrow of his bones, poor fellow, was that weakly youth Avith the leathern bag around his neck, a "limed soul" that did not struggle to be free, a Modenese, a bookkeeper by occupation, to whom an ugly, red-haired, pimply, short-sighted creature in the third class had taken an open fancy, but he would not look at her. His passion, which had almost crazed his brain, was the jest of every- one. They brayed out heart-rending sighs behind his back ; they sang : " Too small, too small To make love art thou ! " and all the rest of it; but he was so dead in love that he took no heed, staying in the same place for hours, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, fastening his gaze upon her as in an ecstasy ; happy when those clear blue eyes, as they looked around, encountered his own by chance. He was there Avhile the commissary was talking of him, im- movable, with a face and look Avhich showed that for one word he would have given bag, pen, pass- port, America, the universe. It was pitiful to see. He was likely to lose his head and make an utter ass of himself before the voyage was over that was clear. Gbaracters in tbe Steerage. 167 This then was our " innamorato " ; a kind of person never lacking on board ship, the commissary told me ; and sometimes there is a variety of them, men really in love, that is to say ; the others do not count. But in the Galileo there was quite a collection of other characters still more queer and original, each one of whom had in those twelve days come to the front and acquired his own celebrity in the little republic of the fore-deck. There were jovial souls and there were serious men. These last preferred the forecastle which was a kind of Aventine Mount, where all the turbulent and atrabilious spirits got together. The most popular among these was the old Tuscan in the green jacket who had shaken his fist at Genoa 011 the evening of our sailing. This man was a born devil. From morning till night he harangued, in a hoarse voice, his threatening fore- finger in the air; and his following increased from day to day. He would have liked to raise a social revolution on board the Galileo; he inveighed against the signori on the poop-deck, urged the passengers to protest against the dirt of the sleeping- places and the uncleanness of the food ; sometimes by way of example hurling his ration from him and calling down vengeance upon the cookery. His audience applauded but ate their food ; while he, in a f ury, cried out that they were all " slaves " and every one of them was "bought." There was, however, one who did not bow down be- i68 it JBlue Mater. fore him, a little, old, dried-up man, with a black tuft on his forehead and a pair of black eyes like a hawk, who said he was a smuggler. This per- son chose, likewise, to cherish the reputation of a great criminal, loaded with the guilt of a thousand myste- rious murders, and ready for anything. Perhaps no more than a kind of Captain Fracasse in crime, but skilful in playing his part, so that he was universally feared, though he had not hurt a hair of any- body's head ; and the women pointed him out, saying he had a long dagger under his jacket, and would cer- tainly do something dreadful before the voyage was over. lie walked among the throng with folded arms and head held hi^h, and did not choose O that anyone should fix an eye upon him. If anyone Gbaracters in tbe Steerage. 169 did so he would stop and stare at the rash man, as who should say, " Are you tired of your life ? " But from fear or prudence they all turned their heads another way. This pretence was, of course, necessary to his reputation as a dangerous man; hut beyond it he did no harm to a living soul, and entertained for the old Tuscan the usual scorn of the warrior for the politician. The third in the triad on the forecastle was that queer fellow of a mountebank with long hair and tattooed arms, whose voice no man had heard, so that everyone said he was dumb. This character would stand for five hours at a stretch perfectly motionless at the extreme fore-part of the ship, his green eyes raised to heaven as if he were gazing at a star invisible to other mortals, and profoundly immersed in superhuman contemplations. Tbe jolly fellows, on the contrary, assembled on the midship-deck, which offered more space for buf- foonery, and was like the open square of a village ; a lounging place convenient for groups and gossip. Up here in a corner on the port side close by the bridge there was chatting and uproar from rise of morn till set of sun. The buffoon of the company was a peasant from Monferrato, the one who had made that scandalous surmise about the leathern purse of the Bologuese ; a quarrelsome little figure without any nose. The whole third class knew how he had lost it in fact, a drunken carabineer, 1 whom 1 Police officer so called : partly military, partly municipal. i;o n Blue Mater. he, reeling ripe himself, had provoked one evening in the street of his village, had cut it off with a blow O ' of his sabre. But the fun of it all was that, next morning, hoping to make something out of this nasal mutilation, he had gone to the authorities, to whom the more prudent carabineer had carefully refrained from making an} 7 report, and had been rewarded for his trouble with much summonsing before the courts, several days in jail, and a fine of one hundred lire. This fellow had mistaken his vocation. He was a born clown. He could thrust out his mouth like a beast's muzzle; he danced all sorts of grotesque steps of his own invention ; he mimicked people in the most amazing way ; and when any officer of the ship passed by, would salute him with a mock respect that was altogether killing. Next after him in renown was a little man with a bald head and a huge sty on one eye ; an ex-porter, who always kept near him a cage with a couple of blackbirds, of which he took great care, expecting to sell them in Buenos Ayres for eighty lire apiece a common speculation enough. He owed his popularity to a treasure which he had inherited from some rela- tive, a large album full of nasty caricatures, charades, and anecdotes which, read with the page doubled, were passages from the lives of the saints, otherwise devilish beastliness. lie always had around him a group of liquorish dilettanti, who read the same filth a hundred times a day, rolling over the benches and 172 n Blue Mater, laughing until they cried, while he held his head high, like an applauded actor, and was happy. And then there was a third, a cook in a tavern ; a very usual type on board ship, the wiseacre who has been to America and, in virtue of this, assumes a kind of learned superiority over his fellow-travellers, ex- plains in his own way the wonders of sea and sky, holds forth upon naval architecture, talks as familiarly of the New World as of his own house, lavishes ad- vice right and left, and calls everyone who does not go along with him a clodhopper and a blockhead. The commissary came upon him one day as, apple in hand, he was uttering explanatory absurdities, fit to stop the ship, about the rotation of the earth. Be- tween whiles he played the ocarina. 1 Finally, there was a Venetian barber, who enjoyed a proud pre-eminence from his ability to imitate a cur of low degree (can da pagliaia " yaller dog ") bay- ing the moon in a lamentable howl which lacerated the nerves and would have deceived any dog in Italy. But then every specialist there had been unearthed and forced to give proof of his skill ; one old gar- dener, amongst others, would squat down behind a cattle pen and imitate the furious panting of one for whom I cannot waits upon I would with unsurpass- able perfection ; he was a real artist, they said, and they set great store by him. They played at draughts, at cross and pile (tit-tat-to), at lotto, and 1 Kind of flageolet made of earthenware. Cbaracters in tbe Steerage. 173 they sang for hours together. They even played at bliiid-man's-buff like great gray-headed hobblede- hoys, and at hot cockles like little children. The grand spectacle, however, was when the tattooed mounte- bank, fired with professional enthusiasm, came from forward and walked about on his hands or did the wheel or the serpent trick, amidst a tempest of ap- plause, his countenance all the while quite grave and sad, as if he were doing penance ; and then went back where he came from without a word. Still, all this merriment looked rather forced than spontane- ous; these men seemed to seize with fury upon the slightest occasion to stun themselves with clatter as when one gets drunk on purpose to drive away sorrowful memories and grim forebodings. They would throw themselves, a hundred at a time, against the bulwark, or rush together in a whirling circle with shouts and cries and whistling and cat-calls and cock-a-doodle-dooing that was heard from, one O end of the ship to the other, making the very officers look round at them, and all this for no better reason than a hat blown overboard or a nose blackened by a fall against the coal bunker. And when an un- protected girl or woman passed among them there was a clacking of tongues and a chirruping and a general exhibition of onomatopoeia which made the unhappy victim take to her heels at once. The black nurse of the Brazilian family, above all, when she went to her place in the third class to eat or 174 n Blue Mater. sleep, aroused, with her white eyeballs and her grin- ning teeth, such a chorus of brutal love-strains that it was like the yelling of an excited menagerie. And we of the first class had our little ways too. Would there have been, after all, any very great dif- ference between the fore-deck and the poop ? And if the varnish of culture and good manners had been taken off from those who had it how easily could we have matched in our part of the ship the types and conversation of the third class. It is quite won- derful how much they knew of us, how they hit upon each one's weak points, and how nearly right they were in their gossip about us behind our backs. It all came round to us again in one way or another. They knew from the stewards and the servants some- thing of the character and habits of everyone, and were posted as to our daily doings ; just as those living in the garrets know about the tenants of the handsome lodgings below. What they did not know they guessed, and they made their remarks upon everything. They gave everyone a nickname, and mimicked everybody's gait and voice. Often enough, when walking among them, we would turn suddenly round and surprise three or four of them winking at one another, or composing their faces to preternatural seriousness after a mocking grin. These were our Caudine Forks. This very evening the whole ship was delighted by an exquisite joke practised upon one of these Cbaracters in tbe Steerage* 175 fellows, a third-class passenger who had paid the difference and dined in the second cabin, but passed his time among the gossips of the midship-deck. He was a little man, neither old nor young, with a face as wrinkled as a roasted apple ; a good fellow enough, dressed like a verger, and giving himself the airs of a well-to-do citizen, but simple and credu- lous as a child. He was much coaxed and petted as being the possessor of a case of wine which he was taking to his brother in America, and which he guarded most jeal- ously as a sacred treasure against the many snares that were laid for it. That morning, go- ing on deck, his at- tention had been attracted by the tel- egraphic dial which sends signals from O the bridge to the engine-room. The third officer, who dined with him at "tjfs attention bal> been attracteti table, being near by, t> tbe telegraphic t>tai." was asked what that bit of mechanism might be. " That is the telegraph," said the other. 1 76 <>n 3Blue Mater, The little man was amazed. " Tlie telegraph ! " he exclaimed, " to telegraph with ! " The officer caught on in a moment. He was a Genoese, as sharp as a steel trap (fno come la ti'iam\ a masterly practical joker, and always quite serious. " To telegraph," he said, " of course. What for ? Why, the fact is that by means of a travelling wire we are always in connection with the great hollows under the ocean, and we send news to the owners every four hours." The little man expressed his admiration, and then, as an idea occurred to him, timidly remarked : " Ah ! yes ! I suppose that it is used only for the ship." " As a special favor," said the officer, " passengers are sometimes allowed to use it." " Oh, in that case," said the other eagerly, " I should like to send a despatch to my wife." He hesitated a moment as he thought of the ex- pense, but was told that exception would be made in his favor, and he should pay only the usual tariff. So he wrote the despatch : " Am well ; sea smooth ; half-way ; many kisses," etc., etc. And asked if his wife could answer. Certainly she could answer. " Because I know," he went on, " she would go with- out her dinner rather than not send me a word." And was going to pay ; but the officer said he must see how much it would all come to ; he might pay that afternoon, about four o'clock, when he came back to see if there were any answer. Cbaracters in tbe Steerage. 177 The poor fellow went away well pleased, leaving the paper. Came back at three nothing. At half- past, still nothing. But at four there were twelve blessed words : " Thanks ; well ; God bless you ; I pray for you ; come back soon." Overjoyed he reads the despatch twice over, kisses the paper, wants to pay. "Poh, poh," said the officer, " it is not worth mentioning. I '11 have it go in with the others. Just open one of those bottles of yours, and that will make it square." " Why not. By all means, we '11 open one or two and have a good time. What a thing science is, and what things it can do ! " In short, a couple of bottles were opened at table and absorbed ; but the poor dupe got so very happy that he opened a third, a fourth, and so on, until the case, up to that mo- ment so carefully guarded, was quite empty. The news meanwhile had spread ; and when he came out on deck for a constitutional, excited, flushed, triumphant, he was received with a carnival of yells. At first he did not make out why they were making fun of him ; but when he did understand, instead of being thunderstruck, as they expected, he laughed for pure pity of their ignorance. " Fools, dolts, idiots, noodles, asses ! " he shouted, as he turned away towards his friends of the second cabin, happy and quite unmoved in the midst of a perfect chorus of barking and mewing and chirping and crowing. And this scene occurred just before we saw one of 178 it JBlue Mater, the most amazing sights which sea and sky can offer in the regions of the tropics. The thick veil of clouds which had enveloped us for three days had been rent a short time before sun- set, and the sun went down into the sea like an enormous ruby, sending along the tranquil waters a long streak of purple like a torrent of lava which was rushing to burn the Galileo up. And when his disk touched the horizon, the clouds, fired with brilliant colors, began to move majestically ; present- ing shape after shape so wondrous that we stood transfixed ; and, as each dream-like contour vanished, cried out, "Alas ! that it should go !" There were mountains of gold, with rivers of blood that fell from their over-hanging crags ; huge fountains of molten metal ; mighty canopies lighted from below by a gleam so glorious that as one gazed, the mind was troubled with a half-sense of terror; one almost expected to see the last vision of Dante, 1 as: "Within the deep and luminous subsistence Of the High Light appeared to us three circles, Of threefold color and of one dimension " seeming to be " painted with our effigy " and before which " Vigor failed the lofty fantasy." 1 Paradiso, xxxiii., 115 et seq. Longfellow's Trans. CHAPTER X THE WOMEN S CABIN ND still ocean, ocean, ocean ! At times one could almost imagine that the land had disappeared from the face of the earth, and that we were to go on sailing, sailing, and never touch it more. The water was not yellow as it was the day before, but seemed one huge sheet of lead ; while the sky was white, and the sun was white, and everything on board our ship scorched us as we touched it. But the bakino; heat was not the worst. There was o a waft of foul and pestilential air from the men's cabin which, rising through the open hatchway, reached us on the after-deck ; a dreadful stench that moved deep compassion as one thought that it came from human beings, and hideous terror as one consid- ered what would happen if disease broke out. And yet we were told that there were no more passengers than the law allows. Each had his allotted number 179 i8o n Blue Mater. of cubic feet. But what has that to do with it if one cannot breathe ? The law is wrong. It allows on board the Italian steamers a whole third more of the tonnage to be occupied than in the English and American ships ; and it does not have its officers con- stantly by to see that the report of " all right" made by the police at sailing is justified throughout the voyage ; that there be not, for instance, at another port, more passengers shipped than there is room for ; that healthy passengers be not put into rooms re- served for the sick; or that sleeping-places be not improvised on the open deck. How much there is still to be done for those noble boats that gleam like princes' palaces as they sail out of harbor ! In most of them the foremast hands and the firemen are lodged like beasts ; the sick bay is a dog hole ; the places that should be cleanest turn the stomach ; and for fifteen hundred steerage passengers there is not one bath. Those hygienists who pretend to settle the space that each man ought to have, may say what they like ; human flesh cannot be crowded like that, and it is no excuse to ur^e that things are O O far better than in former times. The case, now, to- day, is one that moves to pity and to indignation. Meanwhile, as the thermometer went up, the com- missary's work increased and his annoyances multi- plied. The chief est of these was the care of the women's cabin, into which he had to pass, night and day, to keep order, and to see after cleanliness. In tlbe Momen's Cabin. 181 fact, without taking his work into account at all, the mere sight of what he had to look at would have been enough to disgust any man with the task this gentleman had undertaken. Imagine two stories below decks, like two huge entresols, about as light as an ordinary cellar; in each story three tiers of berths all round about and down the middle; and, what with women and children, weaned and un- weaned, about four hundred people to occupy each story, the thermometer standing at 90 Fahrenheit ! Here, in a lower berth would be a woman far gone in the family way, with a two - years - old child. Above her an old woman of seventy, and in the upper berth a girl in the flower of her age. Then a Calabrese cafona, or herdswoman, next her a poor lady who had fallen into poverty ; farther on a city adventuress who used cosmetics under cover of the darkness ; and not far off a God - fearing young peasant woman who slept with her rosary in her hand. Going down there by night there were seen hanging out of the bed-places gray heads and blonde tresses, nursing children rolled up in their bandages, the horrible shins of the old, and the shapely limbs of the young ; a foul heap of shawls and gowns and petticoats of all imaginable and possible colors, natural and acquired, like banners of the unnum- bered hosts of wretchedness ; while on the deck were orderless piles of boots and shoes and wooden san- dals and gaiters and slippers and stockings, which 1 82 <>n Blue Mater. it was frightful to remember were only so many heaps of quarrel and dispute all ready for the mor- row at the hour of rising. There were many who did not sleep. The commissary went about amid an unbroken hum of talk, varied by suppressed laughs, by wails, by the sighs of girls and the groans of women over- come by the heat ; and the murmurs of poor old creatures who, unable to close an eye, were mum- bling Pater-Nosters and Ave Marias. At times he was called aside by a suppressed voice and had to bend over or rise on tiptoe to hear a complaint or a protest. " Signer Commissario," said one in his ear, "please do something that girl in No. 25 is a scandal and a shame. I Ve two little boys down here ; do make her behave herself and remem- ber where she is." Another begged him to tell those above her not to stick their feet out, and to be less foul in their talk. The old women in particular beset him upon the point of morals ; and denounced certain culprits furiously, but in the greatest con- fidence. " Think a moment, Signor Commissario ; you others do not see anything at all, saving your presence. There 's that blonde girl in No. 77 ; she goes up on deck every night at one o'clock and does not come down aimin for hours. It is a shame. O It ought to be put a stop to." Some wished to move because of an asthmatic neighbor; or (reasonably enough in this case) because that girl Women's Cabin. 183 near by smelt so strongly of musk that it could not be endured. And the commissary had to soothe them : "All right, we '11 see about it Don't mind Go to sleep." Then, moving on with his lantern, he would see mothers slumbering with their children in their arms and breathing heavily, their faces con- torted by a sad or a frightful dream ; young bosoms left uncovered ; toothless mouths gaping wide as if yelling in their sleep; and glistening, smiling eyes fixed upon him in the half-light. Sometimes in the passage-way he would come upon a face that looked suspicious and must be questioned. " Where are you going at this time of night ? " " Up on deck (of course) for a purpose." " What, with eyes glisten- ing like that ! I '11 give you five minutes and then I '11 feel your pulse." Farther on he stopped to give a warning : " I tell you for the last time, if you do not change to-morrow I '11 Are n't you ashamed ! " And the poor creature would reply with what was sometimes the miserable truth : " Alas ! I have no other ! " And so from one aisle to another, now putting back on the pillow the head of a naked infant that was hanging out of the berth, now quieting a couple of old tattling (bracone, prying) crones, who were quarrelling under their breath about some difficulty arisen that morning as to a partition of biscuit ; and a few paces farther on cheering up a poor lone creature who was weeping on her pillow 184 n Blue Mater. oppressed with a melancholy forboding that she would not meet her husband in America. By dint of passing and repassing among these people he had come to know each one's way of sleeping. The burly Bolognese who lay upon her side almost touched the berth above her; the pretty peasant of Capracotta curled herself up like a squirrel ; those two jades of singing girls slept with all four limbs spread out, and the " decayed lady " kept that poor black silk dress spread over her like the pall of her past fortune. The fairest and most tranquil even in sleep was the Genoese, who lay supine and covered from head to foot like the statue of a queen upon a tomb of marble. But the sight of those gray un- happy heads, of all those mothers, homeless and lacking bread, asleep on the wide sea thousands of miles alike from the country they had left and the country they were seeking, kept every sensual idea far from his mind, even in view of the much expos- ure, conscious or unconscious, which he was forced to behold. He went about down there like a doctor in a hospital, as impregnable to temptation as that poor old jumping-jack of a sailor who carried the lantern for him. Unhappy hunchback ! For him, not protected by the dignity of his office, the task was far harder ; especially when the commissary went away, and left him alone in the place with the bucket of water and the dipper, at the beck and call of every one who wished to drink. Vien qua Ube Momen's Cabin. 185 vecio A mi, omm dipersi Dessedet pivel I Acqua ! ^Egua ! Eva ! Da lev ! Da haver ! They would all quarrel right before him, setting rules and regulations at naught, and laughing him to scorn. When he called them to order they stunned him with chatter, woman-fashion, and some of them turned their backs upon him with scant politeness. At getting-up time especially, when the question was whose was which in all that snarl of things, they drove him mad, completely ; and, fleeing as from a swarm of wasps he took refuge on deck panting and perspiring. That very morning, at the fated hour, I found him at the door of the cabin utterly de- moralized. " Well ! " I said, " they make your life a burden to you, don't they ? " " All ! " he replied, spitting out his quid with fury, "No ne posso cm!" " Is it so every voyage ? " I asked. " No ! the Lord be thanked ! " he said. There were voyages and voyages. Sometimes it was a cargo of right good women. Sometimes, as this trip for example, a Ve na raff eg a de donne maleduchce 1 a real car ego d" 1 - agidenti ! Then resuming his philosophical calm and raising his forefinger he whispered confidentially in my ear: Scia sente ( stia a sentire ) . Scia no piggie mogge! (non prenda moglie), " Mark me, don't you get married ! " And so, turning his hump upon me, he went his way. 1 Una raffica di donne maleducate, literally a squall of ill-conditioned women. 1 86 n Blue Mater, That very morning, too, there had come to pass in the women's cabin a most scandalous thing, of which I did not hear until later. I stood with the commissary on the bridge to watch the great noon jaw-exercise (ballo del denti). This was like what one sees on saints' holidays in the country where a hundred families take their food out in a meadow in the open air; a hum and bustle as of an encamp- ment; numberless groups of men, women, and chil- dren, sitting, kneeling, squatting in a thousand differ- ent ways, above, below, on every projection and in every corner ; their plates in their hands, between their knees, between their feet; their heads covered with handkerchiefs, aprons, paper caps, with their up-turned skirts, even with baskets, to protect them against the blazing sun ; and in midst of these groups, between the canteen and the kitchens, an eager running to and fro of numberless capi-mncio (heads of messes) with loaves under their arms, pots and wooden bowls in their hands, and followed by a thousand eyes, beckoned by a thousand hands, apos- trophized by a thousand tongues. Beside the com- missary was the Garibaldian, regarding group after group with slow, unkindly glance, and on his right the young lady from Mestre, leaning on the railing, both intently gazing at the Genoese girl who sat on the deck below. She was cutting up the meat for her little brother, pouring out drink for her father, and handing this thing or that to a couple of other Momen's Cabin. 187 women and a little boy who belonged to her rancho. As graceful as ever, but not as calm. She ate nothing and her hands trembled. The young lady remarked that her eyes were red ; and, supposing that she might have been crying, asked the commissary if he knew why. He knew perfectly well, and told us all about it. From that vipers' nest of envious hatred which had been hissing round about her for several days, one head had at last arisen, and had stung her to the quick. Going back into the cabin that morning, after taking her little brother on deck, she had found a crowd of women around her berth, to which a slip of paper had been stuck with a lump of moistened bread crumb. It had been torn from a dirty newspaper, and had been scrawled over in black chalk and in large characters with a dozen words or so. She had hardly read them when she put her hands to her face and burst out into violent weeping. The words were crude, cruel adjectives ; not to be written ; hardly to be imagined. Then the women, who had never once thought of taking down the paper, had tried to comfort her after their fashion ; and one of them, on the ,part of a third, had whis- pered in her ear the name of the culprit, a vile, un- clean, little wretch, who had stolen in and tacked up that horrible stuff at a moment when there was hardly anyone below. Not so quickly, however, as to escape the sharp eyes of a little fellow who seemed 1 88 <>n Blue Mater. to be asleep, but was broad awake, and duly told his mother all about it. "Take the paper to the captain," the woman had said, "have the commis- sary send for her they '11 put her in irons they '11 put her in the pillory on deck. She '11 be tried for it when she gets on shore in America." Then the poor girl had taken down the paper, sobbing, and waited until her slanderer should appear. She came down, sure enough, a short time after ; and was no less a person than that blear-eyed, red-faced creature who had taken a fancy to the little bookkeeper, and was as jealous as any animal. At the very first sound of " There she is ! " the Genoese had run towards her, followed by the gossips, all eager for a scene. The creature turned pale, but raised her head defiantly, nevertheless. And the poor girl only held out the paper to her, saying, in a trembling voice : E ben, cose v'Jio facto ? " What have I ever done to you ? " The quickness with which the other seized and tore up the corpus delicti was an involuntary confession which made denial worse than useless. The Geno- ese, without another word, had gone on deck, weep- ing and quite overcome, but without complaining to anyone. The commissary, informed of the matter, had sent for the culprit, who swore through thick and thin (colle mani e col piedi) that she was inno- cent ; so all he could do was to threaten to put her in irons and say, that the next time he would send her down into the hold to be gnawed by the rats. TKHomen's Cabin. 189 The young lady from Mestre, who had listened to all this without taking her eyes off the girl, repeated slowly to herself and in her Venetian accent, " E ben, cosa v'Jio facto f " And her eyes glistened with tears. The commissary had gathered some information about the girl and her family. She was from Le- vanto. Her father, who kept some kind of a shop, had not done well, and had determined to go to America, on the invitation of a relative there who was getting on ; but, as he had not a soldo, he was obliged to defer his departure for a year, while the daughter put by the money for the journey, centime by centime ; selling all her trinkets ; helping to nurse a sick German lady by night, and ironing at the baths by day. A large black mark which she had on one hand, and which was visible from where we were, was no doubt the result of a burn. At that moment, by chance, or otherwise, she raised her head ; and, seeing at once that we were talking of her, blushed deeply ; but, reassured by a kind look from the young lady, fixed her large blue eyes upon her and smiled. Then bending her head over her brother there was nothing of her to be seen but her golden tresses and her fair, blushing neck. The young lady touched the arm of the Graribal- dian with her fan ; and, pointing to the girl, said, in her sweet, sad voice, " That is virtue ! " This threw light for me upon the kind of talk these two held together and the usual outcome of it. IQO n Blue Mater. I was curious to see what effect she might have pro- duced thus far upon her interlocutor, and looked round to see his face ; but he had already turned away and fixed his gaze upon the sea; while the whole third class, rising on tiptoe as at the word of command, were doing the same, amid loud murmurs. There was a sail on the horizon to the risrht. The o officer on watch had signalled her some time ago. There was nothing to be seen but a little white spot, trapezium-shaped, and faintly colored by a ray of the sun in the midst of gray immensity. A far-off squall of rain, making a black background, gave it a wondrous whiteness, but made it look all the more piteous as if the fury of the ocean were threatening that ship alone. And it is impossible to describe the life, the sudden gayety which that little image of humanity aroused in the midst of our boundless soli- tude; as if all at once we had got back into in- habited regions. The officer sent for the fla^s of the ~ ~ nautical alphabet and focused his glass. When we were near, the sailing ship dipped her flag and the Galileo returned the salute. Then ensued between the ship and ourselves a hasty dialogue which the officer translated into words for us ; and which the emigrants followed with their eyes as if they understood. It was an Italian ship, becalmed near the equator. The first tiling she told us was the name of the O owner Antonio Pa^auetti. O Women's Cabin, 191 Then : From Valparaiso, bound for Genoa. How many days out ? Sixty. How many days becalmed? Eighteen. Quello pittin I (Qiiel poco ! ) " All that time ! " exclaimed the officer. Then the other : Pray report us to our agent at Montevideo. No damage all well. Need anything? No, thank you. Buon viaggio I Buon viaggio I How large, how swift, how cheerful our Galileo appeared compared with that little moveless ship, which had, perhaps, a crew of ten or twelve men, and was condemned to float there, like a dead thing, who knows for how long, beneath the terrible sun of the Equator ! With a kind of pity, we saw her grow smaller and smaller, become once more a white spot and then disappear below the horizon ; but our pity was a little selfish ; the kind of pity which first- class travellers in a thundering express train feel for a one-horse carriage floundering wearily along through the rain and mud. And from this little meeting alone there arose a current of good-humor from stem to stern, which lasted until evening. But this day was the day of events. At dinner, before sitting clown, the captain said, aloud, "Scignori, 192 Qn Blue Mater, we have another passenger on board." There were some that did not understand. "A fine boy," he went on, " only one hundred and ten minutes old." We all laughed and commented and wished the little fellow luck. From a slight blush that passed over the face of the young lady from Mestre, we per- ceived that the mother must be that peasant woman from her district. " He was born in the northern hemisphere," the captain concluded. " He will be baptized in the southern. We cross the Line to-morrow. CHAPTER XI CEOSSING THE LINE HE day after, from early morning on, nothing was talked of in the forward part of the ship, but the new baby and the crossing of the Equator ; the Aquatore, the Iqua- tore, the Quatore, the Quatuore, ; for they mangled the word in a as they called it hundred ways. It was the women, principally, who talked about the birth ; all most eager to know how the baby would be baptized ; who would be the godfather and the godmother gentle-folk, as usual, they sur- mised. Would the tall Neapolitan christen it, or one of the two clericals in the second cabin, or the friar. And where ; as there was neither chapel nor altar. And the presents. All these matters in the narrow life on board ship became as important as affairs of state, and I was told by the commissary that the peasant woman from Mestre was the marlc of im- 13 193 194 n JBlue TKDlater, mense envy on the part of those likely soon to follow her example ; for it is part of the code of sea-courtesy to pay special regard to lying-in women. The other ladies, therefore, seeing cups of broth and legs of fowls, and glasses of Marsala going about, could not but remember with some bitterness that no such good fortune would be theirs on land. " What it is to be lucky ! " they exclaimed. Some were really quite put out about it. As to the Equator, everybody talked of that. But in order properly to understand what impression the sea really made upon all these people, we must go back a little. In the first place it disgusted them. Ignorance has no admiration for the sea. It has no thought to inscribe upon that huge blank page, and mere immensity is without beauty save for those who think. I do not remember hearing so much as a single admiring exclamation about the ocean from O O a single emigrant. When they look on all that wa- ter they are invariably impressed by the first idea which it raises in every human being; they regard it as the element that drowns. I was able to assure myself, almost from the moment of leaving the Straits, that for the greater part of these people that mighty ocean was a fraud. They saw, namely, no wider a stretch of water than on the Mediterranean, whereas they had all supposed that, on coming out- side, their horizon would be indefinitely extended ; as happens when we go up from a hill to a mountain Crossing tbe %fne* 195 top. Nor for this reason alone. In the mind of the lower orders there is always connected with the sea a lingering trace of those old notions coming down from antiquity and from the Middle Ages; and though they may not have thought to see winged monsters, broken a mile in circuit, and singing fish, many did suppose they were to behold sea-serpents, huge polypi, fights between whales and sword-fish, and waves like mountains ; but finding calm water, and seeing never so much as the back fin of a shark in a fortnight's sailing, they shrugged their shoulders and said, " I don't see anything about this sea more than any other sea." As to feeling curiosity re- garding other matters connected with it or finding pleasure in them, they cannot. They either know nothing at all about them, or misunderstand what they hear, or simply do not believe. I noticed that the talk we held on the after-deck about the ocean, about navigation, about different countries, all naturally suggested by our geograph- ical position, and changing, so to speak, with the latitude, was passed from class to class and from mouth to mouth ; and found an echo, a day or two later, in the gossip of the forecastle just as happens in a city or village. The officers brought it back to us piecemeal as they chanced to hear it in passing. And it is amazing what strange transformations our accounts and scientific obser- vations underwent in this little tour. They spoke 196 n Blue Mater, in the third class of Atlantis, of which we were talking while in the latitude of the Sargasso Sea, as of a world that had disappeared not many years ago and which some of us declared we had seen. On the parallel of Seuegambia the talk was of negroes ; and the emigrants declared that the Galileo steamed at full speed to get by the coast where a tribe of terri- ble savages were in the habit of giving chase to ships in order to devour the passengers ; and sometimes succeeded. As to the Equator, there were those who predicted there a heat as of an oven by day ; a heat that was to melt all the candles and soften the wax on the letters ; a sun so hot as to boil the brains in the skull and bring on sunstrokes by the dozen. But strangest of all it was to find that this passing from one hemisphere to another, which might have con- vinced them of the rotundity of the earth, furnished many, on the contrary, with an argument against it, confirming them in their old unbelief; for did they not see with their own eyes that all was a flat plain ! And even those who were convinced that the world was round were disgusted to find that on passing the Line the ship did not, as they expected, begin to de- scend and move round the o^lobe like an ant around O an apple. In the course of the morning while the husband of the Swiss lady (gifted with what some erreat man calls the most incurable of all possible stupidity, that which is contracted from books) was explaining the Equator to a group of emigrants in "Explaining tbe Equator to a group of emigrants in iDiotically; scientific phraseology."" ig8 n Blue Mater. idiotically scientific phraseology which they could not understand : the electric heat generator of the globe, the evaporation register of the two hemis- pheres, the heart of the mighty main where blood is changed ; his hearers looked up and round and about with curiosity and interest; but not seeing anything unusual, glowered at him as who should say, " That 's enough, we are not fools ! " But what interested them most of all was that they had heard a day or two before how, on crossing the Equator, new stars would be seen, and that one of these, Alpha of the Centaur, was of all the stars the nearest to the earth. They thought perhaps it would be as big as the moon. From early morning of the much-expected day, and in full sunlight, men and women kept an eye on the heavens so as not to miss the miracles. One woman asked the commissary whether in the new world they were about to enter, the sun and the moon would be the same as they had been accus- tomed to. What was that line, that straight mark (riga), that divided the earth into two parts ? Was it true that no one would have the correct time there ? And was it true that in the year when one went to America a season was lost, and what became of that season ? The commissary tried to set the matter forth, but some paid no attention whatever to the ex- planation, they had asked for ; as if that were time lost ; or else brought the whole force of their / O Crossing tbe %tne. 199 minds to bear upon what he said in the hope of com- prehending it, but at last gave it up with a gesture of despair. The conclusion reached by most of them was a strong suspicion that all these wonders were nothing but a parcel of stuff got off by the sig- uori to make a show of learning ; or at all events that these explanations were made out of whole cloth by persons who knew no more about it than anyone else. A large majority would rather have believed in the three legendary monks of Asia who O */ have for fifteen hundred years been walking straight forward to find the place where the sun rises. It was not, indeed, inspiriting to reflect that a thousand per- haps out of those sixteen hundred citizens of one of the most civilized countries of Europe had no broader or more correct views about the earth and the heavens than an equal number of their own class would have had five hundred years ago ; and that, after all, it may be that in this world there is a certain irreducible quantity of ignorance which, though kept in bounds and shaped in a hundred ways, like a mass of water, cannot be lessened in amount. Be that as it may, the crossing of the Equator was a holiday for everybody ; that the more because of a special dole of three litres of wine per rancio which had been announced, and because the captain had given orders to open the hatches and let everyone get at his baggage. It was a great treat for them to have out some fresh things in place of their old rags, 200 n Blue Mater. so miserably used up by the rains of the tropics. And, more even than this, the announcement of fireworks put the boys and girls in a fever of expectation. The important operation of matutinal ablution was per- formed with unusual vigor; and at breakfast time the young women were seen with new kerchiefs on their heads and fresh ribbons on their bosoms ; the mam- mas with hair brushed much more sedulously than usual ; the men with amazing cravats, shaven faces, clean shirts, and a good deal of the dirt scrubbed off their necks. It was like a crowd on a holiday. The women out of respect to the new saint did not work, and most of the men, gathered in large talkative groups, gave premonitory tokens of the grand times they meant to have that evening with their wine. Many, meanwhile, were thronging round the caboose to make timely interest for some bits from the first- class cabin, and even in the third-class kitchen there was a movement, an unusual agitation, calculated to induce a suspicion that contraband traffic in eatables was going on. Two heavy showers that fell at an hour's interval only served to heighten the good humor of the multitude, for the sky cleared, and the sea, rolling in long, smooth billows, now blue, now violet, seemed to promise not to disturb the festivities. And there was feasting for us also commencing, for me, right after breakfast in the first officer's state- room, where I passed a delightful hour in company with two other officers and the Marsigliese, drinking good Crossing tbe 1/ine, 201 champagne thanks to a discussion about James Watt. For, speaking of the ill hap of inventors, the Marsigliese rashly remarked that Watt had died in poverty. The first officer denied this, saying that he had died wealthy and surrounded by illustrious friends. " Dans la miser e, monsieur ! Dans V indi- gence la plus aff reuse ! " " Rich ! I assure you, rich ! " " Sans le sou ! Sans le sou ! " So there was a bet ; settled beyond appeal by reference to U Histoire de la Machine a Vzpeur, a copy of which was on board ; written as chance would have it by a Marseillais. And the author most unceremoniously refuted his fellow-citizen. Good-natured originals, these three officers, not excepting the clever dark-complexioned hero of the telegraphic despatch. All younger in mind than might have been expected from their age, and of a certain hermit-like simplicity rarely seen even among hermits. Each had some study or some art with which to beguile the time on those long voyages. The first officer was studying German, the second was a marine painter, the third had lately begun to learn the flute ; and each had an endless fund of stories about his voyages, which he told slowly in a peculiar way ; recounting the most as- tounding things in the most natural way in the world as people do whose lot it is to pass their lives among the wildest and most adventurous of the human race, when exceptional circumstances afford these the full- est scope for thought and action. They had made 202 n Blue Mater, voyages full of incident when the record of births and deaths was constantly being added to ; they had been wearied of their lives because of quarantine ; " TTbe scconb officer wae a marine painter." they had stood watch in nights of storm fit to turn the hair gray ; they had seen suffering, intrigue, ter- ror; there had been on board families of gypsies; faces unlike any other faces. And very curious was the confusion or rather lack of connection in their ideas regarding the politics of the two countries be- tween which they were always passing. When they reached Genoa they were a couple of months behind hand in Italian matters ; and before they could catch up with these they set out again for the Argentine reaching it once more after a fifty-days fast from all its affairs. But strangest of all was their attitude toward their own families. The first officer amused us mightily, setting forth, glass in hand, how he had been married a year and a half, and was like one married a month or so before. He had left Genoa a week after the wedding. Since that time had seen his wife at intervals of two months, and that for such short periods that the two had had no time to become intimate ; so that when he went home he was received with emotion and treated with a sort of modest respect and delicacy, almost as if he were a stranger. The honeymoon never came to an end. He even showed us the likeness of his wife as if ex- hibiting, in confidence, the photograph of a young lady to whom he was paying court. " Type Genois! " said the Marsigliese as he looked at it. " But she is from Palermo ! " " Pas possible ! " What a roar ! Such a roar that this time he had to pretend he was jesting. All were in good spirits, though the captain had 204 n Blue Mater. given out that there was to be no ducking of the passengers who were crossing the line for the first time. A nuisance, he said it was, and always made trouble. Moreover, there were no persons who were proper subjects for that sort of thing. Even the Geno- ese stroked his clothes-brush beard with an air less bored than usual. He would stop, from time to time, one passenger after another, fix his single eye upon him and solemnly enunciate, "Chicken breasts in Madeira ! " He had extorted a whole batch of se- crets from the cook, and declared that there was to be a splendid dinner and speeches. The agent, with whom I took a turn or two, said the Marsiofliese O was to propose a toast he had heard him rehears- ing it in his state-room. And he told me, moreover, that the evening before there had been a scene. That viprous-tongued mother of the piano player, namely, having hinted to the so-called '" thief" that he would do well to contradict the slanders that were going about regarding him, this gentleman had been to the captain, loudly demanding to know what these slanders were, and threatening sword and pistol. But it seems that, on earnest entreaty, he had prom- ised to be quiet until we got into the next hemis- phere. We went on deck and found that detestable spitfire apparently much pleased at having at last succeeded in raising a disturbance. And we both O remarked an unusual animation in the dull face of her daughter, like the reflection of some secret com- Crossing tbe Xine. 205 placency ; but it was in vain that the agent, sus- pecting some more scissors' work, looked round for the cause with his long, searching glance. As we passed the pantry, there were the bride and bride- groom drinking rosolio and water. The agent bowed, and the young gentleman modestly remarked : " We are having a little celebration over the Equator." " H'm," said the agent rather sharply, " I think you have a little celebration over all the parallels," whereon the pair hastily concealed their faces in their glasses. Then we went to have a drop of Chartreuse at the door of the " tamer's " room. This lady received her friends with swimming eyes, she felt so kindly ; and declared she wished the trip would last a year ; such capital company, so well bred, so polite, so pleasant a whole string, in fact ? of honeyed phrases which had, I am afraid, their rise in the many many-colored glasses she had sipped during the day. Thence to the deck, where we found something new ; the Argentine lady, queen of the ship, with her court of admirers about her, in a vanilla-colored dress which set off her warm, florid, Creole complexion to a marvel, and all radiant as if she were glad to get back to her own half of the world ; and the Swiss lady promenading with her old friend, the deputy, though nobody had seen when or how she had managed to make it up with him. A half-hour of her bald, uujointed chat, all little rose-colored bits of nonsense and silly laughing, 206 n Blue Mater. hands full." Meanwhile the Bengal lights tinged all these faces with purple, with white, and with green ; and at every bursting rocket there arose a cry of Viva I 1 America! Viva il Galileo! and now and then, but rarely, Viva V Italia ! Above the crowd hats, handkerchiefs, and glasses were seen to wave ; babies, held up by their mothers, flung their little arms about all a true type of the people which could for a moment forget so much trouble in ~ thoughtless hilarity. At last the fireworks came to an end, and the ship, dark once more but full of feasting as ever, plunged amid songs and shouting into the blackness of the other hemisphere. But the causeless joy of that throng of people at the confines of a new world, on the lone ocean, and at night, was to me more pitiful than their sadness. It was like a sinister gleam that brought out their misery all the more. Unhappy exiled children of my country, blood drawn from the arteries of my native land, my ill-clad brothers, my starving sis- ters, sons and fathers who have fought and will fight again for the soil on which they could not, or cannot, longer live ! I never loved you as I did that evening, never as then, thought of your suffering and of the blind mistrust with which we sometimes regard you. We are not free from stain. We are to blame for the faults and shortcomings with which O the world upbraids you. Our hands are not clean in this matter, for we have not loved you or labored Crossing tbe %ine. 211 for you as we ought. Never did I feel such bitter- ness of regret as in that hour for having nothing but words to give you. The last dream of Faust was in my mind. To open a new land to thousands upon thousands, to see smiling harvests and happy villages upon the onward path of an industrious, free, contented people. For this only is life worth having ! You are our country, our world ; and so long as your mother earth sees you weep and suffer, so long will all our happiness be selfishness, and all our boasting, lies. CHAPTER XII LITTLE GALILEO FTER that day of frolic, as is usual iu such cases, a more leaden dul- ness than ever settled down upon the ship. The heat was dreadful and was enhanced by the sight of a repulsive-looking sea which gave an idea of what the ocean might become if no bounds were set to the multiplication of its inhabitants a hideous and pestilential char- nel of dead herrings and putrified codfish. Op- pressed by the monotony, and still quivering after the disorder of the day before, the greater part of the steerage people would not even move when the sail- ors, washing down the deck, as usual, with the hose, sent streams and spouts of water in every direction ; but just closed their eyes and let themselves be sluiced like worn-out dogs. For many hours the whole ship seemed plunged in profoundest lethargy, and even after an interval of time the remembrance SLittle Galileo. 213 of that day is as dismal as that of a dead face. I think I see now in the sultry afternoon the counte- nance of the Genoese as he comes to my stateroom and asks: " Shall we go and see them kill?" "Kill ! Kill what ? " I said. A steer of course. He always knew about it the day before, and went to look on and massacre the time. O ! the endless hours passed at the air-port, staring out at that sluggish, melan- choly sea. They say that time is money, and yet I would have given a whole century full of such hours for five centimes. Sea ! sea ! and still more sea ! That little Mediterranean yonder ! Why, I thought of it as a blue lake suffocated between mountains, and far away beyond the bounds of thought. Water, boundless water ! There half flashed across my mind a horrible suspicion that we had lost our way and were heading for the Antarctic Pole, to crash into the O eternal ice. Ah ! happy chance ! Ruy Bias came to rouse me. He gazed at me with a lack-lustre eye meant to suggest a night passed in aristocratic excess, and imparted some good news. The christening was fixed for four o'clock that afternoon. Everything was arranged. The baptism and the registration were to be held in the chart-room, near the wheel under the bridge. The Neapolitan priest was to administer the so-called private baptism, for which he must have been in great practice, since he had travelled during his early years over the lonely plains of farthest Argentina, where there were no 214 n Blue Mater. churches, and where the inhabitants, preserving rude tradition only of the Catholic religion, and hearing of a priest, would come hastening to him for the rite ; young fellows even sometimes demanding it as they sat on horseback. He had politely offered his ser- vices without question of patacones and a steward had seen him that morning get out a cope and stole which bore unmistakable signs of long and adven- turous service. The child was, as usual, to have the name of the ship ; and the Galileo had already a dozen homonymous children scattered about the world. The young lady from Mestre was to be god- mother. The captain had offered to be godfather; but had been induced to resign his place to the Argentine Delegate, that gentleman having cogently urged that the child ought to have, for sponsor and welcomer to the citizenship he was adopting, a repre- sentative of the Republic. This graceful act as I after wards learned, made his peace with the other passengers ; for they had before accused him and the rest of being rather distant with the Europeans, and of holding themselves aloof. I had, however, known them for several days, and had observed them with the liveliest curiosity ; for they were the first I had seen of a people which is, or ought to be, more important for an Italian to know than any other. The delegate was the oldest of the party and seemed to take the lead, as having the most level (quadra square) head among them all. OLittle Galileo, 215 Tall, with the fine, firm face of a man inured to the ways of the world and the strife of politics, he sent through his eye-glasses the bold conquering glance of one that swayed the votes of men, and the hearts of women. The husband of the blonde lady, was a light-haired little counsellor, secretary to some minis- ter plenipotentiary of his own country, with a pair of lively gray eyes, as sharp as bodkins, which seemed, when they looked at one, to pierce through brain and bosom, down to the very memorandum book. There were two dark youths, very elegant, and rather insignificant, who seemed to think of O ' nothing but the dainty white linen of which they made such show, and of their thick hair, so artist- ically built up : hair of that deep, sheeny, Argentine Andalusian black which is neither more nor less than a flout to grizzled heads. The most original of all was the fifth, a large fine man of thirty, with a bold face, and a rough voice ; type of the horse tamer, proprietor of a vast estancia, in the province of Buenos Ayres, where he passed two years out of three, among thirty thousand cows and twenty thou- sand sheep leading the life of the gauchoj going to Paris for a change ; and expending there each time a thousand head of cattle or so. A trait common to all was the fineness of the mouth and the smallness of the head ; which they always carried high ; but the hereditary habit which others have observed in the Argentines of coming O O 216 n 36lue Mater. being that was so soon to leave it. All looked for a moment at her alone, as with bent head she gazed into the baby face and gave token in her eyes of how great a treasure of motherly love was to be carried with her into the grave. The captain, in the curt tones of the Quartiere di Pre, and with the frown of one who is setting forth an indictment, read the birth certificate inscribed on the muster-roll of the ship : Before me, captain commanding the steamship Galileo, duly registered in the port of Genoa, this such and such a day of so-and-so, in the year eighteen hundred and so forth, at the hour of whatever it may have been, personally came and appeared so-and-so, doctor on board said steamer, accompanied by so- and-so, and so-and-so, did show to me a male child to which the woman so-and-so had just given birth. And a smile was on every lip as we heard him read out that the native place of that poor little baby was lat. 4 north ; Ion. west of Paris 28, 48' (26, 28' W. Greenwich). In witness whereof, the captain went on to read, we have drawn up this present statement in writing, and placed it on record upon the muster-roll of this ship. Signed by - And then the captain with two of his officers signed the record, and three certificates, one for the Italian Consul at Montevideo, one for the Recruiting Bureau of the port of Genoa, and one for the father. "last came one of the twins witb a bit of canole in bis bano." 228 n JSlue Mater. pronounced against a Neapolitan or a Sicilian these said, " Of course ! the other is your countryman ! " If he gave it against his own countryman all the north country people cried out : " Yes, yes, no doubt. Those creatures have ways such ways of making friends." It was useless to argue with them. " But listen, don't you remember how I decided in favor of one of your friends yesterday because she was in the right ? " No use. He had done so because she was pretty, or all alone, or because in short there must have been some other reason. And on both sides a chorus of growls : " I wonder if we are not Italian as well as they, though we don't speak Genoese. They are the ones to give orders now." And it was the more pity to see these people, so far from their own country, betray in every little dis- pute family rancor, race antipathy ; to hear with what devilish ingenuity they wounded each the other in his pride of citizenship, digging up old-time griev- ances and reproaches and nursing them back to life as it were, so as to carry them to America in their full vigor. After every dispute the parties sep- arated full of spite and enmity which they in- stilled into their friends and country people of both sexes when they went forward again. These grad- ually divided into two factions, which glowered at each other, and insulted each other moving out of 7 O the way as if from fear of vermin or making a great show of buttoning up their pockets so as not to lose H Sea ot tfire. 235 a wallet or a handkerchief. Alas ! alas ! The com- missary with all his diligence could not hear every cause, and with all his patience had sometimes to plant his teeth in the second joint of his forefinger. The tall Bolon Blue Mater, delle ladre) lie never spoke of any but women. " Thieves amonsr them ! of course there are ; what O do they expect? But if we refused to carry thieves we should not make enough to pay for coal Sink the whole set of them ! " As things stood, a serious scuffle might break out at any moment. The even- ing before, as soon as the christening was over, two women had had a fight in a corner of the cabin, quite quietly, like ladies. And this evening the poor bookkeeper came to worse grief still. Having ven- tured to remonstrate with a couple of emigrants who were making gestures behind the Genoese girl and raising much vulgar laughter, these fellows fell upon him and would have handled him very roughly had not the Garibaldian, passing that way, rescued the poor creature, but not before his neck-cloth was torn to pieces. " All due to the electric centres of the globe " said the commissary. " And," he went on to remark, " worse remains behind." The Garibaldian, when he had released the book- keeper, returned to the midship deck from which he had seen the disturbance and passed near me. I was inclined to ask for particulars, but his stern, cold look repelled, as usual, every advance. Dur- ing the first few days he had exchanged a word or two with me ; now he hardly made a sign by way of salute, sometimes he made no siorn. It seemed 7 O that the ever-increasing tedium of forced companion- ship in that life on board ship embittered still more H Sea of Jftre. 237 the aversion for his kind which he cherished in his heart. The more his familiarity, always taciturn and respectful, with the young lady from Mestre increased, the more solitary and self-contained he became for the rest of us, as if that gentle intercourse had made his philosophy more gloomy rather than more cheerful. He now spoke to no one. He would pass hours leaning over the taffrail looking at the wake of the Galileo as if it were an endless written scroll unrolled before his eyes to tell the history of the world. And his haughty bluntness had produced its usual effect upon the others; at first antipathy and a show of equal scorn ; then, when the steadiness of his de- meanor showed that all this was the effect of habit and in no way personal, there ensued a feeling of respect and awe which showed itself in the readi- ness with which the look of any fellow-passenger turned to the sea or the rigging when he cast his eyes upon them to see if they were contemplating him, and if so, how. It seemed as if a kind of sympathy had arisen for the haughty creature that not only did nothing to attract such a feeling but spared no pains to repel it. It was because sadness, joined with beauty and strength, has its own charm as indicating a noble scorn for the easy gratification which the one and the other can procure ; and because, moreover, there shone out of his eye that dark light which comes directly from the soul and gives token of the 238 n Blue Mater. virtue which is so much admired and feared cour- age. As for myself, the more I kept out of his way the more I desired to know him. I felt for him that affection, born of esteem and awe, which renders the carelessness of its object quite intolerable, and which would almost make a man debase himself so only he could overcome it. This the more on board ship where one must constantly be thrown in with the person, and where his indifference may be re- marked and commented upon to our disadvantage. When he was not by I tried to persuade myself that his soul and his life did not correspond with his aspect, or my idea of it ; and that, if I had known his inner soul, I should only have had one more delusion to add to the thousands out of which the history of our friendships is made up. But when I saw him again it was all in vain ; I could have sworn that the man could never have done a base thing, that he did indeed scorn all human vanities, and that even now he would be ready to give his life, at once and without a thought of ambition, for a generous idea. I submitted to his superior spirit as to a magnetic force ; and, while I felt a certain annoyance and even humiliation, I should have liked to let him see it or even to have confessed it frankly. But his face was a walled-up gate for every one. He seemed indifferent to the great shows of na- ture. I did not perceive even a gleam upon his countenance at sight of one of the most splendid H Sea of jftre. 239 and amazing sunsets that we had seen since entering the tropics. The sky was clear from east to west, and the sun just ready to dip his rim in a sea as of red-hot coals; and, huge, as if he had come a million leagues nearer to the earth, was streaked from side to o side with a single thin black cloud, which made him look divided as by miracle into two burning hemi- spheres. And there rose at the same time to an amazing height in the air eight wondrous rays, of veiled light but liveliest color, passing from white to rosy red and so to softest green, which lasted after his disk had disappeared ; and, covering a third part of the vault of heaven, seemed like an immense glowing hand that was to grasp the earth. But we wondered more when, turning round at a sign from the captain, we saw eight other rays over against and reflected from these upon the heavens; less bright, but with the same vanishing tints, as if it O ' O * were the dawn preceding a second undreamed-of sun that was to rise as the other disappeared. And the white sea took all the colors of the sky and glistened as if with millions of floating pearls. But that animal of an advocate he only never looked. He turned his back to the sunset, he never raised his eyes to the reflection. He hated nature, and wished to show it ; for that sun that went down into the sea was going into bad company, and he was not going to be answerable for either. In the midst of our admiring silence he was peevishly be- 240 Blue Mater, moaning himself to the first officer about the crim-i-nal carelessness of the company, which did not keep up with the life-saving inventions of the day. " Eighty per cent, of those who suffer wreck are drowned," he said, " through fault of the owners. Why did turnrt bis bach to the eun?et." not the company provide the proper number of life- preservers? Why were there but ten boats, hardly enough to save one passenger in four? Why were not the men exercised in improvising life rafts? Why were there no ' Gwyn ' pumps? Why not adopt Captain Hurst's double deck? Where were the Peake life-boats and the Thompson safety chairs ? They, the gentlemen of the company, drowned thou- sands of worthy men and let inventors starve, shrug- H Sea of ffire. 241 ging their shoulders and laughing in their avaricious sleeves at every new means that was proposed to save the pre-ci-ous life of man ! " This timorous little dotard knew a wondrous deal about such matters, and was a master of knotting. The agent, who found out everything, imparted to me his suspicions that the poor old man had some stupendous life-preserving machine in his room per- haps several ; keeping them in a huge chest which no steward had ever seen open. He himself, too, going there to make a little visit, had been rather abruptly refused entrance, and shrewdly suspected that the old fellow was at that moment trying on one of his amazing gutta-percha contrivances. Meanwhile the advocate was warming up, and going on more volubly than ever. "It is these companies," he said, " that give us to the sharks. The marine code is a farce. There ought to be something like a law enforced to send them off to rot in the galleys." The first officer objected ; and the advocate re- joined more hotly than before ; so that there soon was a little group about them, teasing and making fun of the poor scared valetudinarian, whom the hot night was quite driving from his propriety. But the talk was suddenly cut short by a cry from an emigrant on the upper deck " The sea is on fire ! " All turned towards the water. The ship was in- 16 242 n Blue Mater, deed sailing over a burning sea, splashing from her sides myriads of topaz lights, haudfuls of diamonds; and leaving behind her, like a street of molten gold, a long streak of liquid phosphorus which seemed to issue from her stern as from a flaming mine. Here O there was gold ; there there was silver; the luminous space extended far and wide, softening down into a whitish glow, making one think of what the Dutch call the milky sea, often beheld by sailors on the Pacific Ocean, in the Bay of Bengal, and among the Molucca Islands. But close by us the water lived and burned, a beauteous thing to see, a coruscation of intertwining flakes of fire, a quivering sweep of little stars and suns that rushed at the ship and tumbled back again, that leaped and fell but disap- peared not, giving the wave transparent splendor as if lighted from below by the fabled stars Pluto and Proserpina, that gleam at the centre of the earth. It was easy to imagine how this resplendent sea should have turned the brain of those mariners of old time who were the first to see it. The dazzled eye was fastened upon it and could not turn away ; as if all the riches of the universe were floating there. One O longed to thrust in a hand and draw it out full of pearls, to plunge down and come up again more re- fulgent than an Eastern monarch. We all were incited to say queer things, to make strange com- parisons ; the imagination seemed to wallow in that boundless surging flood of treasure which sparkled a Sea of if ire. 243 round us in tempting mockery. But what was our wonder when after an hour of this there came a school of dolphins, swimming and darting in the midst of this fire, and leaping around the ship as if to vie with us in joy. Then it was nothing but one whirl of sparks, of fiery foam and blazing spray, a dance of constellations, a madness of splendor, which made the emigrants shriek with delight as if they had been so many children. One man alone was ill at ease the husband of the Swiss lady. He made his appearance on the quarter-deck with flushed face and sullen mien. But he had brought it upon himself. He had gone up on the midship-deck among a crowd of peasants and had begun to set forth how all this phosphores- cence was occasioned by a mass of microscopic crea- tures called by some unearthly name ; in other words, that every one of these sparks was an animal. This time, however, he had piled it up too high, and his audience had scouted him. But now a new spectacle attracted our admiring gaze. The sky had cleared on every side and we saw for the first time on the horizon the four lovely stars of the Southern Cross, unknown to the " Lonely region of the North," and twinkling amid the black solitude of the Coal Sacks, those deserts of the Antarctic sky. On one side glowed the Alpha and the Beta of the Centaur, 244 u JBlue Mater. on the other that stupendous sun, Canopus, in the constellation of the Ship. The spacious firmament was cloudless, still, and brilliant. The Northern Pole Star had sunk beneath the ocean. CHAPTER XIV A BLUE SEA |j]T this point, the 17th day, I find noted on ray Berghaus map that we are to pass the famous line drawn by Pope Alexander VI. to divide the world between Spain and Portugal ; and then these O / words : " Fine weather in the house and out of doors." In fact, the humor of that multitude of emigrants did follow the changing complexion of the sea with wonderful fidelity. Just as when we are speaking with a powerful personage from whom we are asking a favor, and who can do us an injury, our countenance involuntarily reflects every expres- sion that passes over his, so the thoughts and the talk of all those people were bright or dark, yellow or gray or blue, according to the color of the sea. Most rightly do we talk of " the face of the waters," for its smooth or wrinkled surface, the shadows that glance over it, the pale or sombre tints that cover 245 246 n Blue Mater, it on a sudden, do resemble to a marvellous degree the movements of a human face in which are shown, as in a glass, the stirring of an unstable, treacherous soul. How many changes there are in a few hours, and yet fair weather all the time ! The ocean would look old and wearied out, and then in a few instants would grow young again ; a thrill of life would run through it, and change all in a moment ; then it would settle down once more, be thoughtful, pen- sive, tired of everything, go to sleep ; then up it would start as if disturbed, angry, affronted by that nutshell full of ants that was passing over it ; frown- ing as if it meant to strike, and then subside into scornful, smiling indifference once more, as who should say : "There, there, pass on ; I forgive you." And the aspect of the ship changed with these changes, as if those sixteen hundred persons had had one and the same nervous system. At ten o'clock, all lying about, speechless, and with the look of those who have nothing more to hope for in this life, they gave the Galileo the appearance of a floating hospital ; an hour later, by reason of a breeze that cleared the horizon, or a ray of sunlight that darted down upon the forecastle, all on foot, all in motion, amid such a hum of joyous talk as was amazing even to themselves. Then, too, their disposition towards us, and the reception they gave us in their part of the ship, would vary as phase succeeded phase upon the sea. In the morning, sour looks, backs rudely H JBlue Sea. 247 turned, words growled out that meant a rooted hatred of the signori. And then, in the evening of the same day, kindly glances, children bid make way, and even friendly words thrown out as if with a de- sire to get into conversation. And in this respect we of the after-cabin did just as they did. Some- times we would look at them with pitying eye, and say within ourselves : " Poor worthy creatures ! They are our blood after all. What would we not do to be of service to them ! How excellent and admirable to be loved by them ! " And when, a little later, the clouds shut down and the sultry air oppressed us, we would think : " Brutes ! They would strike us dead where we stand if they could. And, like idiots, we go and try to coax them ! " But that day the sea was blue, and through the moral transparency, so to speak, of these people's good-humor, there was many a new psychological observation to be made. For please observe ; be- neath the rough web of mere spite and hatred there had been woven in these sixteen days another, made up of sympathy, of love, of intrigue, far more intri- cate and far more highly colored than the first. The commissary was cognizant of everything, or almost everything ; and this either by direct evidence or from what was told him, whether he asked it or no, by fifteen or twenty gossips, who knew every bit of scandal, and who filled the same office in the steer- age that the mother of the piano player and the 24$ n JBlnc ' agent did in the after-cabin. It was a joy beyond price to hear this gentleman, as he stood on the bridge with his eye upon the throng, run over the gamut (sfilar la corwia) of the passions, and point out one by one the persons he alluded to, his speech slow and measured, like a justice of the peace ; and he most grave and reverend in appearance, but most comical in fact. The fore-deck, all black with peo- ple, was spread beneath like a vast roofless stage, fanned just then by a gentle breeze, in which the clothes hung out to dry, and the kerchiefs and caps of the women, were flapping to and fro. And he told us about it. There were not a few flirtations, and these, being forced to keep within the bounds of the strictest propriety, had burned and blazed up, if one may say so, visibly, as they never do in the city or in the country. There was no young woman, married or not, but had her wooers, some timid, some bold and pressing, all more or less in love, and all more or less encouraged openly or on the sly. This enforced continence and the constant propinquity of so many women, the disorder of their dress in the morning or during the long midday slumber, and the frequent exposure of maternity, had even roused passions for peasant women who had seen a half century of life, and who on land would hardly have been noticed at all. The young girls, if they were not absolute frights, had each her circle of adorers, some of whom, after a while, H jBlue Sea, 24$ grew tired, and went off to dangle after a new beauty, leaving place for somebody else, if he chose to occupy it, and so the groups were always changing. There were passing fancies and Platonic contempla- tions whose object was to kill the time ; and there were comic flirtations got up to amuse the company. But there were men who fell in love so seriously and so deeply that their brutal boldness almost de- fied the light of day and the regulations of disci- pline ; who were as jealous and resolute as Arabs; who would brook no rival; and who threatened rio-ht and left with naked knife. These had all O their posts of vantage, from which, during the day, when they were forced to be discreet, they sat glaring at the fair author of their pangs like falcons at their prey ; and even cursed and menaced those who passed in front of them. There were even some grizzled heads, some fifty -years-old plowmen, rhinoceros-hided, who might be supposed to have outgrown the passions of youth, and who were yet amorous. One of these, a North countryman, with a muzzle like a boar, had made a spectacle of him- self over the peasant woman of Capracotta, whose round face, like an ill- washed Madonna, flushing; ' O under the reflection of a rose-colored kerchief, proved attractive to many others ; her own tall, bearded husband to the contrary notwithstanding. The two singing girls, who went about all day laughing with everybody, and pulled about by everybody, seemed 250 <>n Blue Mater. to take a special pleasure in flirting with well-be- haved husbands. The women hated them with a perfect hatred, and apostrophized them without stint or measure before their faces and behind their backs, threatening to go to the commissary and have the place cleared of them. & 36lue Sea. 251 But these were not the only ones. There were cer- tain " bold-faced creatures from the city " who went about in a most shameless manner. The women hated above all others that ape of a negress that belonged to the Brazilians. She only came to meals and in the evening; but she had roused a perfect volcano of repulsive passion. " How on earth did she do it," they said, " with that flat nose and general ugliness ? " A couple of husbands had already come to blows about her. The wife of one had made a scene that was heard down in the engine-room ; and the wife of the other had given him a sounding backhander, for which, however, he had reimbursed heron the spot, undertaking to pay the interest when he got on shore. The big Bolognese, it is true, did preserve a certain decorum. "She wished," said the commissary, " to carry intact into another world her name of rac/aza unesta" It had got about rather freely that her heart had been touched by a Swiss emigrant ; she put on the dignity of an archduchess, all the more dignified and scornful as those face- tious surmises about the contents of her mysterious pouch grew more frequent and more insolent. There were at the same time many others who in love matters did set a good example ; girls well brought up, or at all events modest, properly courted by decent young fellows who did the bosom friend or the serious wooer in all form, and who, with languishing but respectful looks, spent the day tied 252 n Blue Mater* to the fair one's apron-string under the eyes of her parents. But gallantry in general took a tone and mien calculated to educate, rapidly and altogether badly, the crowd of young boys and of girls from ten to fourteen who were on board, and who in that pro- miscuous throng saw and heard everything. The lowest instincts, kept under at home by hard toil, or dormant in the quiet solitude of the fields, were awakened little by little like adders in the bosoms of all that crowded company, idle, and heated by the tropical sun. The result was vile in its form, but in substance it was much the same as is handed round and swallowed like gilded pills in many a highly respectable drawing-room and nobody shocked or scandalized. * * * Just as we were talking of him, my good crook- back came by with a flask of oil in his hand ; and, following perhaps the course of his own thoughts, he said to me : Scia sente ; V e pezo una bionda che sette brunne. " One blonde is worse than seven brunettes. But what now* ? " It was the boys on the bow that were clapping their hands, as the topsails, sky-sails, and spencers, fore and aft, were set, and the ship with her white wings spread, sailed through the blue sea in all the majesty of her beauty. At the same moment, as if to greet us, a flight of Brazilian water birds came, made three circles round the topsail yards, and then disappeared. The Galileo had never seemed so beau- H Blue Sea. 253 tiful. Huge she was and powerful, but the fine lines of her hull and her great length gave her the grace of a gondola. Her lofty masts with their network of cordage seemed trunks of gigantic branchless palms entwined with leafless vines, while the wide- open purple mouths of the wind funnels gave the idea of colossal flowers, attracted by America instead of by the sun. Her sides were rough and black with tar, her deck bristled with ironwork, a dense cloud of smoke hung over all, and the place looked like a vast manufactory ; but it was relieved by the pale blue boats made fast above the rail, by the white, swelling wind-sails, by the light bridge swaying against the sky, by a hundred gleams from metal, wood, and glass ; by a thousand objects, strange in shape, but every one a useful implement, an orna- ment, a power, an industry, a defence. And the jar of the engine, the dull stroke of the cranks, the plunge of the screw, the clanking of the rudder chains, the hiss of the log line, the dry rattle of the shrouds, the tinkling of glass and china in the racks, all made up a strange, vague sort of music which charmed the ear and entered into the soul like the mysterious voices of invisible beings that were hovering over us and urging us to labor and to strife. The deck rises and falls under our feet as if it were a body with life, the huge frame makes unexpected and incompre- hensible leaps, like the strivings of fear, rude un- graceful jumps, as if from vexation, and movements 254 n Blue Mater. of the bow like the shaking of an enormous wonder- ing head ; and then, for a long space scarcely seem- ing to touch the waves, will move so still and evenly upon the slow ground-swell that an ivory ball would hardly roll about upon the deck. But on she goes and never stops, through cloud and darkness, right against the winds and waves, with a whole people on her back, with five thousand tons within her bulk from one world to the other, guided without mistake by a little bar of steel that might serve to cut open the leaves of a book, and by a man who moves a wheel of wood, with a turn of the hand. We go over in thought the history of navigation, and as, rising from the log to the raft, from the canoe to the row galley, and so up through all the forms of the ship, with the improvement which centuries have given it, we stop before the last development to compare it with the early germ, our hearts swell with amazement and admiration, and we ask ourselves what marvel of human skill is greater than this. More wonderful is the ship than the ocean which she cleaves and leaves behind ; and to its ceaseless, unrelenting threats she replies with the tireless clank of her brazen joints : " You are vast, but you are a brute. I am little, but I am a genius. You separate worlds, I bind them together. You surround me, but I pass through. You are might, but I am knowledge." Alas for poor human pride ! While I was yet in H Blue Sea. 255 the midst of these reflections a thrill ran from stem to stern ; and, straightway, there were a hundred a wbccl of wood witb a turn of tbe barto." scared faces and a hundred eager voices in mutual inquiry. The ship was couiing to a stand-still. Many 256 <>u Blue Mater. rushed to the bulwarks and looked over, they knew not why ; some ran to the captain ; some ladies got ready to faint. The ship stopped. Impossible to describe the grim effect of this sudden quiet, and how like a broken toy seemed that enormous vessel im- movable and silent in the midst of the ocean ! How quickly did our confidence in the strength and power of man vanish away. And at the same time was re- vealed that evil trait in man's nature which delights O in another's suffering, as some passengers spread a tale of how the boiler was going to burst, and the keel was broken and the water was coming into the hold. The women screamed. The relieved firemen, coming on deck, stripped to the waist and black with coal, were surrounded and besieged with frightened in- ~ ~ quiries. The officers went about saying things which were lost in the outcries of the crowd. At last the reassuring news was known fore and aft that it was O nothing ; one of the bearings of the main shaft was hot it was being put right we would go on again in an hour. We all breathed again and some who had turned pale shrugged their shoulders and said they had thought so from the first ; but the greater part continued thoughtful, as after a wound or an ir- regular beating of the heart. That engine, which no one had noticed before, became the theme of talk for hundreds, all full of an anxious respect for it that was almost ridiculous. For after all it is the heart of the ship, is it not? The officers are the brains, H Blue Sea. 257 and if the brains go wrong the man may not die, but if the heart stop, good-bye. And what was the engineer's name. He looked like a clever, experienced man never spoke must have studied a good deal he would pull us through no fear. All praised him without knowing anything about him. But the mill-owner wore a pitying smile and shook his head as he swaggered about the deck with his great stom- ach. " Italian machinists ! Well that it was no worse ! American or English, yes ; but the national screwiness would not hear of them." Faltan pata- cones, said the priest. "Too poor." But in half an hour the conversation languished. That promised hour never would come to an end, and uneasiness supervened once more. " Does it take all that time to cool a bearing?" said many who did not even know what such a thing was like. " "What on earth are they about down there ? Did ever anyone see such a lot of good-for-nothing ! " Ah ! at last the machine gives sign of life, the screw turns over, the sea foams Heaven be praised, we are moving again ! And yet to me the most remarkable thing in this episode was a look exchanged by two persons. So true is it that the manifestations of the human soul constitute the most attractive spectacle which man can contemplate. At the very instant of the unex- pected stoppage, while yet no one knew the cause of it, and there was good reason to fear some serious 258 n Blue Mater. accident had happened and every one did fear it I happened to be on the piazzetta and saw my next- door neighbor below turn to look at his wife, who was above him, leaning on the rail of the poop-deck ; and she, as if she had expected his glance, fixed her eyes upon him. It was one of those looks which reveal the soul as the ray under the spectroscope reveals the chemical nature of the substance that yields the flame. It was not anxiety, it was not fear, not even a hesitating curiosity. It was a cold, tran- quil glance, which showed the utter indifference of each for the other, even in the face of an unknown danger which might end in death. Each had said to the other with the eyes: "I know that it would be nothing to you to lose me. You know that I would care just as little about parting with you." After which the wife moved from the rail and the husband looked another way. This would have been their last farewell if a mis- chance had separated them forever. But what could have come to pass between these two that they should hate one another thus and yet remain united ? This question kept coming back to my mind in spite of all that I could do. And I reached the conclusion that there must be children in the case that forced them to keep together ; most probably an only son, a bond more powerful than when there are several. That eternal, forced, almost trembling smile that she wore inspired everyone with more or less repug- H Blue Sea. 259 nance, although she, divining this sentiment, strove to give her countenance a look of kindly sadness as if she were in grief but resigned to misconstruction. He spoke with hardly anyone. He appeared em- barrassed and ill at ease, as are all those who know that their trouble is plainly enough to be seen, but are ashamed of it and angry at being pitied. One could see, moreover, by a certain fleeting expression in his eye and mouth, that he had been in times past of a frank, open disposition and inclined to cheerful friendliness perhaps even a really good fellow ; but that all the springs of his nature were broken or worn out in this long contest with an ad- versary stronger and more obstinate than he. It was easy in fact to see that he feared his wife and that she did not fear him. This was discernible in the uneasy glances which he cast around whenever he exchanged a few words with the Argentine or the Brazilian lady, with whom he was on those terms of sad and kindly respect which a man not happy with his own wife is apt to observe towards those of other men ; perceiving in each of them the image of a happiness, or at least a content, which cannot be his. And this shrinking as of an ill-treated child was all the more piteous when seen in a tall, strong man, who even yet bore in his countenance the traces of manly beauty. A close look at him showed that frequent trembling of the lip, usual in men accus- tomed to subdue anger, and the long, fixed look at 260 eatb on 3Boar&. 271 He declared, moreover, that instead of good soup they sent the man dish-water ; and that they had let him die without a pillow under his head. Moreover, cer- tain telltales whispered that evening how he had in- sinuated a suspicion that this was not the first death that had happened this voyage ; but that the others had been kept quiet, and the bodies thrown over- board at dead of night from the poop-deck. " But the day of reckoning will come," he loudly declared, and be with his hearers flashed such glances at me that I desisted from trying to hear more just then, and went to get news of little Galileo. I found the father at the door of the stateroom in the second cabin, seated on a box, with one of the twins between his knees, and a pipe in his mouth. "The lad is quite well," he said, with a smiling face; and then, with a wink towards the forecastle, whence voices were to be heard, he said in an undertone : Ghe xe dele teste calde " There are some hotheads there." And he went on in his northern dialect : " For my part, when once I am in the new world, why should I trouble my head because things go badly in the old ? " This question was a feeler. He wished to know whether I were a wron^-headed O signore, or such a one as could be reasoned with. But without any other answer from me than a nod of the head, he went on eagerly and frankly, as if my look had inspired confidence : Per conto mio de mi. " You gentlemen, saving your 272 n Blue Mater* presence, are wrong to spread such idle reports about America, and how they die of hunger there, and how they come back more miserable than ever, and how there is the plague there, and how the government is a set of traitors and despots (e cussi via) and so forth. What is the next thing ? The next thing is that when a letter comes from someone over there, how they are getting on and making (bessi) money, why nobody believes any more what the siori say, even when it is true ; they suspect that it is all a trick, that the contrary is true, and i parte a mile a la volta they go out by thousands." I told him he was quite right, and that if nothing but the truth were spoken it is probable that fewer would have gone over. " And you have pretty good prospects, I suppose ? " " Mi f " he answered. " This is the way I look at it. I can't find anything worse than I leave. The worst that can happen is to starve, as I did at home. Dighio ben f " Then, refilling his pipe: I ga un bel dir : No emi- gre, no emigre. " It 's no use their saying, Don't emi- grate, don't emigrate." The Cavaliere Careti made me laugh. [Who should this Cavaliere Careti be ?] ' You 're wrong,' he said, ' you 're wrong.' He told me that every emigrant who went over took four hun- dred francs capital with him. 'You are going,' he said, ' to produce and to consume out of your country. You do it wrong.' Cossa ghe par a lu! de sta maniera 'fit's no use tbeir easing, E>on't emigrate, fcon't emigrate." 274 n Blue Mater. di razonar, la me diga. I only ask you what you think of an argument like that. He said, too, I was wrong to complain of the taxes, for the "higher they were the more the contadino worked and the more he produced. Piavolce, la me scma, digo mi. All nonsense, saving your reverence, say I. I do not know anything about these things. I only know that I work the flesh off my bones and do not get enough food for my wife and myself. I emigrate to get something to eat. You advise me to wait un- til you have reclaimed Sardinia and the Maremma, put the Roman territory under cultivation, and opened co-operative banks and bakers' shops, and then the government will go right on to help agri- culture. But what if I have nothing to eat the while ? Oh crose de din e de dia ! How can a man wait if he is starving ? " Encouraged by my approval, he branched out a little, and began setting forth those general ideas with which everyone of his class has his head more or less confusedly filled as to why things go so badly ; everything spent to keep soldiers ; heaps of millions for guns and ships ; and then zo tasse, the taxes, the poor not considered at all ; the usual thing, but then it never sounds so true or so sad as when we hear it from one who has experience in his own trouble of its effects, and to whom we can offer no consolation, not even words. And while he told me how, after a day of toil, he found on the table noth- Beatb on Boarfc, 275 ing but onion broth, and was kept awake at night by hunger, and did not " venture " to eat lest he should take the bread out of the mouths of his chil- dren, who had not enough as it was, I reflected how little, had his case been rny own, I should have cared for historical necessity and the sacrifice of the pres- ent for the future, and for national dignity and all the rest of it. Society, which demanded such sacri- fices of him, had not even taught him to understand them ; and it would have been insulting his misery to try and explain. And I listened to him with that feeling of shame which is justly ours when we are told of the troubles of the poor ; for does not our own conscience tell us that this great injustice, though we cannot, even in imagination, devise a remedy for it, is nevertheless an inherited respon- sibility. " O, no," he said, shaking his head. Come che xe el mondo adesso, la xe una roba die no pol durar La ghe va massa mal a tropa zente. " Things can- not go on so. It is too hard upon too many people." And then he told me of misery that he saw around him ; pitiful stories which he heard in the steerage, so pitiful that his case seemed fortunate by com- parison. There were some who for years had not eaten meat ; who for years had not worn a shirt ex- cept on festa days ; who never slept in a bed ; and who yet toiled grimly all the while. There were some who when their passage was paid would reach 276 <>n Blue Mater. America with a couple of scudi ; and who every day put by a bit of biscuit in a bag that they might, on landing, if they did not soon find work, have a morsel to eat without begging for it. He knew, he said, not one but many who, that they might not be barefoot when they reached America, kept their one pair of broken shoes tied round their feet with strings, and slept with them under their pillow at night, lest they should be stolen. E la senta, he added, ghe xe de qitelli die i gN lia fato tanto cativa vita, dw i xe partii tropo tardi, e i va in America a farse sotemr " There are some who have led such evil lives that it is too late, and they are going to America only to be buried." Then he pointed out to me a peasant of about forty years old, a short dis- tance off, bareheaded, dripping with sweat, and holding his head in his wasted, trembling hands. O O He had a bad fever which never left him, caught in the rice fields, and he could keep nothing on his stomach. One night (but no one must know) he himself had seized the poor fellow when he was nearly overboard. He had tried to throw himself into the sea, and since then his wife never let him out of her sight. Poor woman. She was more to be pitied than he. La varda ela, die robete ! Just think of that ! All this he snid sadly, but without bitterness; not at all to propitiate me, but simply from that vague notion, partly religious, partly intuitive, but S)eatb on 3Boar&. 277 common amongst his class, that the wretchedness of the masses is the way of the world, like pain and death ; that it is a condition necessary to the exist- ence of the human race, and that no social adjust- ment can change it. " Ah, well," he concluded, " God be good to us ! If I could only find in America such brava zente as I have found on board here ! For hark ye, sior paron, if that poor sick lass (putela) do not go to heaven it is because they do not let anybody in any more. Why, she sends broth to the nursing mothers, and money (bessi) to the poor people, and linen to those that have not any. She is a blessing to us all. Ma co ' glie digo mi che el mondo va mal. Un anzolo compagno, die tocara morir zovene. Did I not say that there was something wrong in the world ? An angel like that to die so young ! I 'in coming, chat- terbox," he cried turning to the stateroom. " Con parmeso, paron. My wife is calling me. La se varda, che a momenti se verze le catarate I Look out, we shall have a torrent of rain in a moment ! " And, sure enough, there came, all on a sudden, from the gray sky, a shower of huge drops as large as grapes, and then a roaring downpour of thickest rain, veiling everything as if the ship had sailed into a cloud. A crowd of passengers surged noisily into the covered way where I stood, and, driving me forward a dozen paces, surrounded and im- prisoned me, darkling, and in the midst of wet 27$ n Blue Mater, jackets and a strong smell of poverty. And then occurred a memorable scene. It was not ten minutes before a movement of the crowd and an outbreak of hooting and laughing bespoke a quarrel ; and, rising on tiptoe, I saw a hand in air falling with rapid and regular movement on the bowed neck of some in- visible form, like a sledge hammer on an anvil. " Who is it ? What is it ? " Everybody was clamor- ing ; nothing could be made out. A couple of sailors ran up, the commissary followed, the combatants were separated and led away amidst the shouts of the bystanders. Supposing, of course, that they would be taken to the "hall of judgment/' I ran there, too, and making a short cut through the third class reached the place just as the culprits did, and was amazed to see in these the father of the Genoese girl, panting with rage, and that poor little Modenese bookkeeper, hatless, exhausted, with a countenance that was a plainly written receipt for a merciless thrashing. A concourse of grinning faces followed them. The accused entered the commissary's room ; the crowd surged outside the door. It was thus. When the rain squall came the bookkeeper had run with the others into the covered way and had been packed in there by the crowd like a pilchard in a cask. It was his hap, good and evil at once, to find himself close behind the Genoese girl, his face against her hair, and just behind him, alas, unseen, another, the father-in-law of his dear- Beatb on JBoaro. 279 est dreams. The poor young fellow, dead in love these eighteen days, and tempted by the dark- ness, had lost the guiding lamp of reason, and had begun to imprint kiss after kiss upon the neck and shoulders of his idol, with such vehemence, such a frenzy of passion, that he did not even feel the first paternal man-handling that he received. At the second he had come to himself, as from delirium, and could hardly believe his head was on. The trial was too funny for human endurance. The father, beside himself with rage, was cursing and abusing him : " Mascarson ! Faccia de galea ! Porco d^uii ase I Ti veaggio rompe o muro I Raga- muffin, jail-bird, and so forth ! I '11 break your head against the wall ! " And out went the threatening hand again to seize him by the hair. The other was pitiful to see. He denied nothing ; said he had lost control of himself, bested for for- i OO giveness, declared he was honest, tried to show a letter from the syndic of his village (Chiozzola, I think) and, taking his head in his hands, wept like a beaver (sic) and made gestures of despair like Massiuelli in the holidays. " But I forgot myself I tell you. I acted like a brute. I give you my hon- or. ... I did not mean. . . . Kill me if you like." And under all his grief and shame shone out the not ignoble passion which had driven him to such extravagance : one of those violent enio- O . tions which do sometimes blaze up in such poor 2&> da faccia ! and tried to get at him again, whereon the other stretched out his arms disconsolate, as who should say, " Here I am, do what you like with me." And then he de- clared once more that he was an honest man and again presented the letter of his syndic. The commissary was greatly puzzled what to do. I saw in his eyes a smile which meant that, struck by the theatrical notion of a wedding on the spot, he was half inclined to propose it. But the father did not seem a man to be trilled with, so at last he got out of it by giving the young fellow a long lecture upon the respect due to women, and ordering him not to be seen on deck for a while. Then he soothed the other, saying that the " occur- rence" in no way prejudiced the reputation of his daughter, who was greatly respected by everybody and so on. Then he put them both out, desiring the father to go forward first. He did so, turning, however, to shake his fist and send back a few suit- IDeatb on iJBoarfc. 281 able Genoese adjectives, assorted. The young fel- low, left alone with the commissary, placed a hand on his bosom and said in a dramatic tone, " Believe me, Signor Commissary, on the word of a man of honor, it was my misfortune a moment of ' But here his heart swelled, his voice was choked, and, raising his eyes to heaven with an expression comi- cal, but most sincere, which told the whole story of his sea-sorrow, he exclaimed, " If you but knew ! " He could say no more ; and so departed with his head hanging down and the arrow in his side. The figure of that poor lovesick young fellow as he passed through the covered way is connected in my memory with the heavens in their new aspect after the clearing shower. Huge rifts of bluest sky fresh washed, swept over by flying clouds. The sea great tracts of green with long streaks of purest azure, looking like a mighty meadow with endless intersecting canals full of water to the brim. We seemed to have reached a region, half land half water, abandoned by its inhabitants by reason of an inun- dation ; and the eye sought on the far horizon towers and steeples as on the great plains of Holland ; and when the waters were a little ruffled, giving the green expanse a look as of larger vegetation, the illusion changed and I thought of that vast ocean O O tract covered with a carpet of seaweed which for twenty days entangled the ships and frightened the sailors of Columbus. Some white birds swept across 282 n JBlue Mater, the distant sky, the sun seemed reflected here and there from islands of sparkling emeralds, and in the air was balmy spring, the fragrance of the shore, speaking to the soul like an echo of far-off voices wafted to us upon the breeze of the pampas. But the emerald sea and the little episode of the unhappy lover lightened for a few moments only the gloom of that day on board the Galileo. The blonde lady alone carolled for joy as she paced the deck on her husband's arm, caressing him with voice and eye and face, like a seven-days bride, perhaps to make up for some grievous treachery she had in store for him, and of which there was a premonitory twinkle in the blue pupils of her childlike eyes ; while he, as usual, drooped his shoulders, made with the tongue's tip and half-shut eyes the light smile that seemed to mock himself, and her, and the rest of us, and all the universe, a sneer symbolic of his cool philosophy. On all the rest, the idea of the dead body we had on board and which was to be cast into the sea that night threw a shade of sadness; and eyes glanced forward from time to time as if in fear that the man would rise up and come out again to curse his hideous burial-place. The talk was all of him. It grew gloomier and gloomier, as if with coming darkness that body would grow longer, and at dead of nieatb on 3Boarfc. 285 the humpbacked sailor lightened them from below. There was the captain and the commissary and several first-class pass- engers ; farther on some sailors ; a dozen or twenty emigrants were crouched down alonor the canteen, and O ' one or two figures were dimly seen upon the forecastle. When the priest arrived, all moved so as to stand in semicircle, and on one side appeared the waxen face of the friar. At the same moment I heard a rustle near me and saw the young lady from Mestre with her aunt in the half- light under the bridge. Supposing that they would, as usual, launch the body from . IT the forecastle 1 was at a loss to imagine why they all stopped there ; but at a sign from the captain, two sailors opened the entering port in the bulwark, and I understood. one face of tbe fdav. 286 n Blue Mater, Meanwhile it seemed that the ship was moving more slowly, and in a few moments, to my surprise, she stopped altogether. I was not aware that the ship must not be in motion when the body is thrown over, lest it should be sucked under the screw. Then all were silent, and I marked the red, sleepy face of the captain, somewhat annoyed, it seemed, at having to get up and take part in this ceremony. He kept his eyes fixed upon a long plank at his feet right in front of the entering port. A voice was heard. All turned and saw three sailors come out of the steerage carrying a shapeless mass like a heap of bedclothes. All made way, and they came forward as if to place their burden crosswise upon the plank. The captain said in undertone, Per drito! bruttoi, " Longwise, you lubbers ! " They made the change, and softly arranged the body with the feet towards the sea. The huge bolts of iron, fastened to the heels, made a stern jar upon the deck. The body was wrapped in a white sheet sewed like a sack and covering the head, then laid upon the mattress, which was doubled round it and bound about with a cord. The iron bolts protruded from the wrapping. The whole had the piteous look of a bundle of stuff tied together anyhow for a hasty move. The body seemed so shrunken and shortened that I could have believed it a boy. From a rent Beatb on Boaro, 287 in the sheet, at one end, stuck out a naked toe. The hooked nose and the chin seen under the winding sheet recalled the eager expression the poor man had worn on my first visit to him in his berth when he was fumbling for that address of his son. Perhaps that son was at the moment asleep in some shanty of his railroad and dreaming that he was soon to see his poor old father. All kept their eyes upon that face as if they expected to see it move. The silence and quiet of all around was so profound that we seemed the only living beings in the world. " Now, your reverence," said the captain. The priest, dipping his hand in the dish the sailor was holding, sprinkled the body, and said the bene- diction. All uncovered ; some of the third-class people kneeled down. I looked round and saw the young lady on her knees in the darkness, her hands over her face. The priest began to recite in a hurried manner : De pj'ofundis clamavi ad te, Domine; exaudi vocern meam. Many responded, "Amen." The two lanterns held by the sailors cast a reddish light upon still, sad faces, with infinite darkness for a background. Amongst others I saw the Graribal- diau, and I was pained to see his face as hard and stern as ever ; not the faintest ray of pity, no more than if a sack of ballast were beins thrown over- O board. Could it be possible, I thought, that that 288 n JStue Mater. saintly creature yonder had made no impression whatever upon him, and was I once more shamefully deceived in supposing there was a great soul in that man, but not a heart ! The priest mumbled still more rapidly the remain- ing verses of the De profundis, and the Oremus Absolve. Then he sprinkled the body once more with holy water. At the Requiem ceternam all arose. " Over," said the captain. Two sailors took the plank by the ends, and softly raising it placed it on the sill of the entering port, so that about a quarter of the length projected over the water. As they raised it, I saw something move on the bosom of the corpse. It was the black cross which the young lady had been wearing. The lanterns were held up. The two sailors slowly raised the plank at the head, until the body began to slip downwards. Then I heard within me those despairing words of the poor dying wretch, as if someone had cried out with an exceeding great cry that reached the shores of ocean : Ohmefieul! OJi me pover Jleid ! The body slid off the plank and disappeared in the darkness with a hollow plunge. The sailors closed the port and dispersed like shadows. Before we reached the quarter-deck the ship was once more in motion, and we were already far away from the poor old man, as he pursued his solitary journey down through the gulfs of night. CHAPTER XVI. DEVIL DAY. F it be true that in the course of every long voyage there is a so- called " Devil Day,' 1 in which everything goes wrong and " the ship is made a hell of," I think the Galileo had her Devil Day on the morrow after the burial ; at all events, three- quarters of it, for, by the blessing of Providence, it did not end as it began. There were reasons for trouble in the death which had taken place on board, the knowledge that for two days we had not been making good time, and the constant sight of a sea, ugly and vast, like a huge sheet of platinum, which reflected a vault of colored clouds and on which sheets of fire seemed to rain down, as on the blas- phemers in Dante's Inferno. But even this was hardly enough to account for such a day as ours was ; and I fear I must adn*it some kind of mysteri- 19 289 2 9 o n Blue Mater. ous influence exerted by the Tropic of Capricorn, which we were to pass within twenty-four hours. No sooner was I awake than I became aware that the moral atmosphere was charged with electricity. The Genoese stewardess had broken out in such a passion of jealous fury that she screamed and railed upon the false Ruy Bias in the open corridor, calling him a hundred times by a name that was not nice at all, with no more consideration than if she had been in a back slum of Turin. The agent threatened to send for the captain on the spot ; and so succeeded, with some trouble, in stopping the flow of her abuse. I went out and found the captain himself given over to the furies ; brandishing a document, questioning the commissary, and threatening to go in person a piggiali ape in to cu the whole forty-seven of them. A letter, it seems, had been handed him a short time before, signed, after a fashion, by forty-seven steerage passengers, complaining of the food and demanding very particularly a "greater variety in the dressing of the meat-dishes," which was always the same, " and which," the paper writing went on to set forth, "should be discontinued " (sic). The protest was got up by that old Tuscan in the green jacket, and writ- ten out on a sheet of paper which betrayed an in- stinctive horror of the wash-hand basin on the part of all the signers. The captain was inconceivably exasperated by this nastiness ; and, suspecting it to have been done on purpose, declared he would give 2>e\>il S>a. 291 them a lesson they would remember. Meanwhile he ordered an inquiry. The commissary reported, moreover, that during the night some passenger had, out of pure spite, snipped with scissors the black silk dress of that poor lady already spoken of; and that this time the unhappy creature could bear it no longer, but had run to demand justice, sobbing, choked with grief and rage. How to find out the guilty party was the problem. Nor was this all. Some persons, not choosing to put their mouths to the fresh-water spigot, as the custom was, had smashed all the spigots of the tanks so as to force the men to give them their drink in cans. But the culprits were in a fair way of being dis- covered ; and the question was how to punish them. A bad beginning. I went on deck, and found there almost all the passengers looking like people who had passed a night of utter misery (sui pettini di tino), 1 and it was easy to see that reciprocal aversion had risen to a point where it was ready to pass the line which separates contemptuous silence from open abuse. They did not say " Good-morning," and they brushed against one another without any apology. The beast-tamer herself, she who had lived so many days in a kind of effervescence of maternal love for everybody, kept aloof as if all the Chartreuse of her secret repository were dead within her. The Genoese 1 " On tenter-hooks" is the parallel expression. 292 n Blue Mater, met me with a sour visage, and, fastening his single eye upon me, said : " Sir, do you know what the news is this morning? No ice ! The machine has O broken down, and the man in charge has smashed his hand. This is the second time ! It is outrage- O ous !" He was dreadfully put out, that is the fact. He was moving off, but turned round and, eyin^ o / o me askance, said with a sneer, " What do you think of that fry they put upon the table last evening?" and so departed. My friend of the next stateroom, too, was leaning against the mizzen mast, more woe- ' O ~ begone than usual, and with all the simis about him O of having passed the night on deck so as to get rid of his tormentor below. Even the bride and groom, sitting side by side on an iron bench, had a stolid look, as if, for the first time, that Procrustean bed on which they had been learning Spanish for a fort- night had been too much for them. The only ones O / who smiled were the Argentine lady, in a charming dark green dress, whose color was reflected, as by a mirror, in the face of the piano players mother; and the young lady from Mestre, who went round with a sweet, melancholy face and a paper in her hand to collect some money for the poor fever-stricken peas- ant and his wife, so that they should not reach America without clothes and shoes. And it was a pity and a shame to see what scowling faces were turned upon her, and with what scant courtesy the greater part of them at last wrote down their names. 2>evnl Bag. 293 But few spoke, and those who did so made it plain by their venomous glances that they were speaking ill of somebody or something, as we are all apt to do when our nerves are upset. Amongst others, I heard the mill-owner, who audibly thought it was " rather strange that in a steamer like ours a man was per- mitted to come up on deck in slippers " ; and he glanced at the Neapolitan priest, who certainly was shuffling about in a regular pair of barges, and so could come up close behind one unperceived a thing which not everybody was disposed to take al- together kindly. The impudence of this renegade grinder of corn disgusted me; I turned my back on the whole tedious set of them, and went forward for a while. But here it was worse still. The closeness and the foul air had driven everybody on deck, and I never had seen so many people there. It was one dense crowd from the kitchen 1'i^ht forward, all o * uneasy, as if expecting something, all tousled and frowsy, as if they had not been to bed for several nights. It was easy to perceive that they had had more than enough of the sea, the kitchen, O / and the ship rules, and were ready to break out at the merest nothing. Nobody played cards ; no one sang. Even the light-hearted group of the midship- deck was mute ; the noseless peasant was asleep ; the encyclopaedic cook paced up and down alone ; the album, of the ex-porter was unread; the Venetian 294 n Blue Mater. barber only raised from time to time his moon-baying howl, as if to express in those doleful strains the general sentiment of the company. And the emi- grants crowding toward the stern looked at the doors of the saloon and at the first-class passengers with a fiercer eye than usual, as if they would have liked to offer something more than insolence ; for why did we take up so much of the ship, why should we, a hundred or so, occupy nearly as much room as they, a people? Didn't we eat up all those nice dishes that they saw carried across the piazzetta twice a day, and of which they got nothing but the smell. Did n't we have servants in black to do all this running about for us, while they had to rinse their pots and pans at the deck trough, and wait for their food at the kitchen door like beggars. Why should this be ? And they were not so much to blame, after all. We should have looked with equal perhaps with greater jealousy upon a superior first class of mil- lionaires, gorged with quail on toast, and tipsy with Johaunisberger. They were tired to death of this long-enforced contact with careless ease ; of feeling themselves crammed up with their own wretched- ness in that huge pen full of rags and evil smells. And as they could not fall foul of us they fell foul of each other. As early as eight o'clock the two peasants who were jealous about the negress had come to blows ; and the captain had sent them both 2>ev>il Dag. 295 to the lock-up under the bridge, forcing them to stand up face to face with their noses touching ; but as they could not keep their hands off one another so, they were confined separately. And then the Bolognese, offended at a rude remark on the part of the ship's baker, had given him a slap, one of those with a capi- tal S and was duly had up by the commissary. As always happens, moreover, example being conta- gious, there had been other difficulties and several women had scratched faces and torn hair. Then the boys began, fighting and tumbling about the deck eight or ten in a pile, while the parents ran to sepa- rate them, showered down blows and kicks unheeding where they fell, and heaped abuse on one another. The general irritation had penetrated the kitchen, where, owing to competition in contraband traffic, a fiery interchange of choice expressions was going on between the cook and his assistants, accompanied with a terrific clatter of saucepans. For us in the after-cabin things went wrong from the first. The breakfast was bad, and it was not im- proved by our silence, or by the truly tragical frown of the captain, who had on his mind an affair not the one of the forty-seven, but a really serious mat- ter. An hour before, the mother of the piano player had accosted him with much dignity, brandishing a O / 7 O protest in due form against the nocturnal meander- ings of the Swiss lady, who, at all sorts of impossible hours, passed her stateroom in the lightest possible 296 n Blue Mater. costume, to the great scandal of her daughter ; but this was better than many other things that she did. The whole poop-deck was talking about it, it could not go on, something must be done. The captain, touched on his weak point, had breathed out flame and fury, had promised, on his oath (in sozuamento), to say a soft word in the ear of that old horned-owl of a professor ; and even to the lady, if need were, and to some others too; and what did they take his ship for, and people must behave themselves, perdy, if he had to put sentries in the corridors; and he ended solemnly with his never-failing speech, Porcaie a bordo no ne vewjgio. There was to be a scene, evidently. All through the breakfast he darted Torquemada glances at the blonde lady, while others also looked and whispered ; but she was unconscious, wholly. Squeezed into a dove- colored dress, fresher and more sprightly than ever, she chirped and warbled in her husband's ear, smil- ing on all her friends with those sweet, thoughtless O O eyes, just like the windows of an empty room, and showing off in a hundred ways her white teeth, her little hands, her rounded arms, her amiable soul. After the meal, she be^an walking the deck once O O more, every now and then disappearing suddenly and reappearing unexpectedly, unconscious poor creature of the sword of Damocles that was hansr- o ing over her blonde tresses; in fact all the more gay and lively as the weariness around her grew greater, S)ev>il H)a. 297 and, like an ardent heroine who cheered the belea- guered defenders as they fainted at their task, seemed with her eyes to say that she did all she could for suffering humanity, and it was not her fault that she could do no more. But about three o'clock she went below and was seen no more ; and when this one joyous face was gone, gloom settled down upon the deck more blight- ingly than ever. The advocate helped us along a little by a comical adventure that befell him. Overcoming his instinc- tive repugnance to salt water, he had gone to have a bath ; and, stepping into the tub, had let it run full of water up to his breast ; but putting out his hand to turn the spigot, it did not work, or he turned it the wrong way, or broke it, or some- thing ; at all events he let on the stream harder than ever, a perfect spout of water that flooded him in a moment, soaked all his clothes, and inun- dated the room. We saw him fly across the piaz- zetta, shouting to the stewards to go and shut the deluge off before the ship filled and went down. But only five or six passengers had strength enough left to smile at this gleam of fun. The heat grew greater, the foul smells from the steerage waxed pestiferous, and the greater part of us dragged our worn-out bodies from the deck to the saloon, w T here we sank down at the tables, or round about on the sofas. Oh, what a tiresome set ! I knew every movement 298 n Blue Mater, of theirs, every gesture they would make, the tone of every yawn, the books which they had for a fort- night been pretending to read. It was like the hundredth time at a puppet show. It was not weari- ness, it was utter prostration of soul. Nothing to be seen but long faces, heads leaned upon hands, eyes filmy and motionless. The pianist played some funeral march or other. The Brazilian respectfully becked her to desist, as his wife was in her berth OO suffering horribly with nerves. The girl closed the piano with a bang, and went away. The agent said the plump lady was sobbing in her berth ; why, he did not know. The Tropic of Capricorn, he sup- posed. One young lady of the family in mourning was weeping. A sharp discussion arose between the Marsiidiese and one of the Argentines, the latter O O / observing, and correctly, that from the Observatory of Marseilles only two of the stars of the Centaur could be seen, the head and the shoulders ; while the other maintained that they were all visible. Tbutes les sept, Monsieur, touted les sept! "But that is absurd ! " Mais, Monsieur, vous avez -une fagon. . . . The captain, coming in and looking around with a ferocious glance for some one, cut this contention ~ short, and the silence of the tomb settled down upon the cabin. I could bear it no longer and went out to go up on the bridge. But I had not yet reached the end of the covered way when I heard a cry of terror and Devil 5>a. 299 saw a crowd of people rush to the foot of one of the deck-ladders. A child that had clambered to the topmost step had rolled down, striking its head on the deck. The mother, supposing it dead, had seized it in a frenzy, and, clasping it in her arms, began to cry out like a madwoman, Me lo jettano ammare! U peccirillo mio ! A criatura inia! " Ah ! my poor little darling, they '11 throw it into the sea ! " and with frantic gesture gnashed her teeth, drove back the throng, and defended, as it w r ere, the little body. The doctor came and took both mother and infant to the sick bay. This accident raised a great cry against the ship, which " was full of danger every- where," and against the captain for not posting guards at the ladders. The old fellow in the green jacket began to declaim most furiously, his forefinger up and his gray locks bare. But there had been trouble just before this. The poor little bookkeeper, whose credit was raised among those forward by his kissing escapade, which was looked upon by them with complacency as " a flout for the princess," had been besieged for a couple of days with mocking congratulations, as if the thing had really gone much farther. He took it seriously, denying everything with fury. At last, however, on receiving a congra- tulation more brutal than the rest, his blood boiled and he began to strike and kick, right and left, like a maniac ; but to no purpose, poor creature, for four or five got round him and held him while others 300 a. 301 longest day they had to live. But he was too late. Things had got to such a pass that I half expected to see, before evening, all that crowd grapple with and get piled on top of one another in a formless heap of heads and limbs, like one of Dore's battles, and then topple over the bulwarks into the sea. But instead of aversion I felt nothing but compas- sion for these poor people and their trouble, a kind of sad vearuino; over them ; for beneath the truculent / o looks of all these faces I seemed to perceive an abandonment, for some dreadful hours, of all hope, an utter weariness of life, a secret grief that broke out in anger. It was clear that they were suffering, and that they had an infinite pity, each for the other, and for himself. Those poor old peasants on the forecastle, man and wife, were the livino- imasje of / ' O O this state of mind, for even then they were sitting there, as usual, on the bitts, their arms upon their knees, and their heads upon their arms, in utter abandonment ; while their poor bare, wrinkled necks told of fifty years of unrequited toil. As I looked at them, a pregnant woman fainted upon the glazed and grated cover of the companion-way, her white face falling amidst the outstretched arms of the women near her. There was a cry from a hundred voices, "She is dead, she is dead!" and I came away. Where should I go ! It would not be night for six endless hours. I went back to the saloon and be^an o 302 n Blue Mater. turniug over the ship's album. But it was full of commonplaces, of nonsense, and of lies. As a last resource I went to my stateroom and tried to sleep. But the room was smaller, more confined, more chok- ing, more detestable than ever I had known it. The passengers seemed all to have retired like myself, but not a sound was heard, as if those hundred rooms contained nothing but corpses. Not a sound save the doleful ditty of the negress, like a solitary chant in a street of the city of the dead. And I seemed weighed down, not by my own weariness only, but by all the tormenting dulness, the bitter memories, the bruised affections, and the sad fore- bodings crowded together above there on deck, o O among those sixteen hundred children of Italy who were going to seek a new mother beyond the sea. It was useless to reason with myself, to analyze my state of mind, and try to be persuaded that there was no good reason why, on that day, I should feel, like the rest, a horror of great darkness, while on other days, unlike the rest, I found all bright and smiling. My sombre thoughts, kept for a few moments at bay, came rushing back the instant I slackened in my effort to repel them and overflowed the inmost recessesof mv soul. I do not know how lon<* / o I was a prey to these imaginings, but at last I fell asleep, and dreamed a horrible dream. I was in my own house, and it was night ; it was a confusion of lights and of faces that I did not know; someone Devil S>a#. 303 with the death-rattle on him, in some room of which I could not find the door ; then, in a flash, a change of scene, a fearful cry of " Save yourselves I 1 '- and all the mad disorder of a foundering ship. At this moment there was a great noise and I awoke. I don't know whether I had slept three hours or five minutes. A ray of light gleamed in the stateroom. The noise above increased. There were voices of people calling one another by name, there was a sound of hurrying feet and of confusion as at a sudden cry of danger. I sprang out of my stateroom, while from all the others the inmates came running, and hastened up on deck, where was already a crowd of people. Looking forward, I perceived that every living thing from every hole and corner of the ship had come out into the light, the ship was black from stem to stern with people, and everyone rushed to the starboard side, clambering on the bul- warks, the cattle pens, the benches, the shrouds, and looking out over the sea. I saw nothing ; a rampart of backs concealed the horizon. I questioned two passers by ; they rushed on and took no notice. Then I went up on the bridge. Ah ! blessed sight ! What a lovely thing I saw ! A huge black smoking steamer, covered with flags and crowded with people, was coming majestically toward us under the clear sky, her high bows cleaving the blue sea, her sails swell- ing, all festive, all gilded with the sun like some wonder-creature that had started out of the bosom 304 n Blue Mater. of the ocean. It was the Dante of the same line, coming from the Plata River, bound for Italy, and full of emigrants returning to their own country. It was the first larsre steamer we had met since com- O ing out of the Straits, and it was a sister ship. At every puff from her huge bestarred funnels she grew larger, and the thousand forms that covered her stood out more and more distinctly. The two throngs of men each crowded forward and looked at one another, in silence, but all trembling. The Dante came so close that an unexpected surge made us roll violently. When she was at her nearest and showing us the whole length of her magnificent side, there was a frantic waving of hats and handkerchiefs ; and a great shout, long suppressed, broke out at once from the two crowds, a long-drawn cry of good wishes and of adieux in strangest accents, different from any cry I had ever heard coming from a throng of men; an outburst of loud quivering voices in which the sorrows of the voyage, the yearning for home, the glad expectation of seeing it again, the hope of one day beholding it once more, and kindly joy at meeting brothers and hearing the voice of Italy away out there upon the Atlantic were con- fusedly mingled. But only for an instant. In a few moments the Dante was but a black spot upon the blue, hardlv roughened at the edsres by the thousand ' O / heads of her crowding passengers. But that rapid vision had changed evervthinsf on board the Galileo. 306 <>u Blue Mater. had reawakened hope and courage, had aroused the song and the laugh, had brought us all back once more to kindly feeling and to life. " Signore ! " I heard a voice say, near me. I turned. It was the young lady from Mestre, who touched the Garibaldian with her fan. He turned towards her, and the girl, with a face illumined by a flash from her inner soul, pointed to the vanishing ship, and said, in her sweet voice, "Our country." CHAPTER XVII IN EXTREMIS HE next morning all met on deck with the same cheerful greet- ing : " Three days more ! Almost run out (Siamo agli sgoccioli) \ Day after to-morrow ! " Strange enough. This unusual kindness among the passengers arose in great measure from the thought that they were, before long, to get shut of one another for good and all. The weather was fine, the air soft. The forecastle w r as like a village on a holiday. On the way thither I met the old hunchbacked sailor with a pair of shoes in his hand and deep thought on his countenance. He stopped and said, softly, E donne. Te brutto quando demean, ma Pe pezo quando rian. " These women ! It 's bad when they cry, but it 's worse when they laugh." And he explained me his idea, which was founded upon experience. Whenever there was, namely, as yesterday, great cheerfulness on board, there almost 307 308 remember what my thoughts were ; but after two or three hours, as I conjecture it, the fury of the storm increasing beyond all measure, my brain was stunned, and I can tell but little of what was pass- ing in in}" mind. I remember the tremendous tones of the sea, more strange and frightful than any ima- gination can conceive, a voice as of all human crea- tion crowded together, mad and shrieking ; with this the yells and howls of all the beasts of earth, the crash of toppling cities, the hurrah of countless ar- mies, whole peoples bursting into savage, mocking laughter ; then the whistling of the gale among the rigging, a long, sonorous, most discordant wail, as if every rope were a demon's harpstring ; maddened screams of terror and despair, as of captives in a flaming prison-house ; heart-chilling hisses, as if a thousand furious serpents were twining about the masts. The ship rolled and pitched and lurched as if she would overset ; at every surge that struck her 3i 8 n Blue Mater. she would quiver from deck to keel as if she had run upon a rock, while plank and timber groaned and cracked again, and the senses thrilled as at the graze of a falling axe or the wind of a ball that cuts the hair away. At every plunge it was as if the stroke of a vast and monstrous paw had torn a piece out of the ship. Thud after thud there came as a hundred tons of water ruined down upon the deck like a cataract from on high, and then the rush of a hundred streams from side to side, like so many hordes of vengeful pirates. What the ship would do next I could not tell at all. She was a helpless creature, cuffed and kicked ; she was a ball thrown one way and struck another by a resistless Titan's hand. The engine had its pauses, as if stricken with paralysis ; the shaft would bang and struggle ; the screw, hove out of water, would race madly for an instant, and then plunge down again with a blow that shook the vessel like an earthquake. And, in the pauses of the greater uproar, were heard, above, the rushing of eager feet, the whirr of the electric bell, weird cries and shouts that sounded strange as O echoes from a snow-filled valley, wails from the staterooms, retchings choked, strangled, agonized, as if all within were coming up. Then, suddenly there came an upward blow so violent that the water jug flew out of the rack, and was dashed to pieces against the deck above; whereon be^an a still more fiendish O orgie of the unchained elements, the ship gave leap flu Ejtremis. 319 after leap, and I was as if hurled from peak to peak across a measureless abyss. Every plunge seemed as if it would be the last. Again and again I said, "It is all over!" I could not believe but that the deck was split open above my head, the floor burst- ing up beneath my feet, the ship's great ribs twisted, her knees torn from their fastenings, her keel snapped short across, her bolts and nails drawn shrieking out her whole frame dismembered. "What, not yet? The next time then she '11 never stand another ! " Then came a chaos of ideas, memories of old times and things of yesterday, a giddy whirl of faces and of places, all confused and distorted as by a fever of the brain, and all aglow with livid light ; a fierce, disordered stream of sighs, of weeping and lament, of prayers without any words, of caresses, and of re- morse, and all this swept back and forth as by the breath of the dreadful wind outside. From time to time a stupor, a lull in the thoughts like that produced by chloroform ; a short relief, and then again, more frightful than before, the grim reality as if two tremendous hands had shaken me by the shoulders, and a terrible voice had shouted in my ear : " It 's you ! It 's you, and no one else ! Here you are, and you must die ! " Alas ! how vain the thought that comes in tranquil moments, that it is all one how we pass away ! Oh, to die with a bul- let in my heart ! Oh, to die upon my bed with dear ones around me, and loving friends to care for me ! 320 u Blue Mater. Oh, to be laid in my little bit of earth, and have my children come and say above me, " Here he lies " ! At times these thoughts would cease, and it seemed for a moment as if the fury of the tempest were re- laxing, but another surge would come, and a giddy whirl of the screw, as the vessel's stern sprang out of water, swept the flattering unction from my soul. I remember, too, an invincible horror of looking at the sea, a shuddering aversion like that of the victim for his assassin, as if in that dread hour I could per- ceive a live ferocity, a hatred of man in the sweep of the crested billows, and see hideous faces grinning horribly at me through the glass of the air port. I could not look ; I turned my eyes away at the first glimpse of those Cyclopean walls, those black, rolling, thundering mountains, as they fell and dashed each other into spray ; and as the volleyed lightning streaked with fire those threatening heaps of murky cloud, it was a liiHit that seemed to be neither night 1 O O nor day not a gleam of earth but the glare of a dream landscape where our own sun is not. All sense of time was lost. I could not tell how lou^ O the storm had lasted, or guess how many hours it would endure. It seemed as if it must last for- ever, for I could not conceive what there might be that should put an end to so tremendous a convul- sion. Impossible I thought that the gulfs of night below were not stirred up. Impossible to believe that certain fathoms down in the great deep there flu fijtremis. 3 21 was tranquil water ; that on the dry land there were peaceful people and there was quiet business. A lull ; an instant's respite, as I thus reflected, and then another roller dashed its sur^e against her side O O with a shock as of a cannon-ball ; the ship bounded like a harpooned whale, her timbers groaned, her planks creaked, her bolts and nails shrieked once more, and a fresh sense came over me of ray hideous peril, of death standing in the very doorway. This is the last of earth, I thought ; and the anguish of a year was crowded into a moment. How long, O, Lord, how long ? It was many hours, seven or eight it may have been, when my ever-passing, still-recurring idea that the o^ale was blowing; itself out seemed to stay longer O O / O as it came back ; it changed into a hope that the soul hardly dared cherish, but which the senses gradually confirmed. The ship still rolled and dashed with fury, but that hateful, angry howling in the rigging seemed quieted a little, and the beating of the sea, if not less fierce, yet certainly less fre- quent. It was a good sign that I felt how bruised and tired my body was with those acrobatic feats to which I had been forced for so many hours. Until now I had noticed nothing; of the kind. And 1 had O a little curiosity as to what was going on around me. Through the groaning of the timbers and the roaring of the sea I heard the wails of the Brazilian baby, and childlike sobs and cries that must have 322 n Blue Mater, come from women. Feeble voices called out here and there for the stewards. Bells jingled. Trunks and boxes still went raging up and down the cor- ridors like so many wild beasts broken loose. But, choosing well my time, so as not to break my head against the wall, I made a dart and seized the jamb of the doorway to look out. I saw certain human forms with wild hair and clothes in disorder dragging themselves about and staggering like drunken men. Among these was the Marsigliese with all the marks in his face of a deadly fright which was pass- ing off but would not leave him altogether. And in fact a new lurch of the ship from time to time, and a fresh cracking of her poor strained ribs, drove me back to hold on with both hands to my berth as if the fiendish dance were to go on with more fury than ever. Between one recrudescence and another, I strained my ears to hear whether in the next state- room the anguish of a common danger had not slack- ened somewhat the high-strung cords of hatred. I was amazed to catch sounds as of a reconciliation, but soon changed my mind as an evil voice hissed out distinctly, " Ah ! you hoped it was all over, did you ? " There was no reply. The first note of real encouragement was a general laugh from the direc- tion of the Argentines. From the door opposite I heard the voice of the tenor attempting a shake. The sound was cut short by a dull thump that seemed uncommonly like a collision between a hu- flu Ejtremis. 323 man head and the side of the ship. Then for a space I heard no more voices. The groaning of the ship and the roar of the sea were still enough to stun the senses, and the rolling fit to break four legs, not to say two. But it was possible to get out. Swinging myself from one support to another, and calculating every step, I managed to reach where the corridors crossed. What a sight ! The doors of the staterooms were slamming to and fro, and one could mark an indescribable raffle of trunks and pillows and clothes and boots ; heads danijrlino; over basins ; O O * bodies lying as if dead ; garments in disorder ; jugs and pitchers rolling about the floor. Still the mo- tion was less violent, so I moved on and met the Genoese, who with bandaged head was bumping along the wall and using exceedingly bad language. " What is the matter I " I asked. He swore, but proceeded to explain. Perishing with hunger, he had crawled down to the pantry for a bit of ham, a biscuit, or something, and a roll of the ship had flung him against the sideboard, cutting his forehead open. Then came a clear voice from the stateroom of the Argentines : Hijo audaz de la llanura Y guardian de nuestro cielo . . . The rogues were hymning the pampero to which they owed those eight hours in the jaws of death. But the gale had blown itself out, though there was still a high sea running. Haggard faces looked 3*4 <>n Blue Mater. out of the doorways with inquiring air and quickly drew back. A voice which I took for that of the first officer called from the head of the stairs, u It 's over, good people ! " And answering exclamations from the staterooms : " Thank God ! thank God ! Oh ! can it be true ? Laudate Domimnn! We 're well out of that ! " But a thrill of life ran through the place as in a cemetery where the buried dead begin to rub their eyes and stretch their limbs. Someone touched me on the shoulder. It was the agent, in a dressing-gown, a bruise upon his chin, but joyous. " Ah ! what a scene ! " he said ; " I heard it all." He was speaking of the bride and bridegroom. In the midst of the peril they had fallen to praying, he said, then they had exchanged farewells, sobbing ; he had begged her to forgive him for having brought her on that voyage ; then a last kiss a good many last kisses, in fact. " A k! Kin a inia ' r " Ah! moe povco Genmo? And more last kisses, you know, but no Spanish grammar. So saying, he disappeared, but straightway returned, devious, and beckoned me to come quickly, for there was something worth see- ing. I followed him as best I might. He stopped before the open door of the advocate's stateroom, and, bursting Avith laughter, bade me look in. Such a creature was never seen ! I hardly recognized hu- manity in the formless thing that I saw stretched upon the floor, and from which came such wailings as Ernesto llossi utters when, in his part of Louis flu Ejtremis. 325 XL, he is struck down by Nemours. It was the ad- vocate, flat on his face. Dressed in some English or American life-preserving garment or other, stuffed with cork, he had a hump on his back and a hump on his breast covered with a cuirass of stout cotton- cloth, and round his chest there was a string of in- flated bladders that made him look like some strange mammal which, with much swollen glands, had fallen senseless to the earth. This outrageous load of ridi- cule awakened an infinite compassion for the poor crushed and unhappy man. The agent bent over him to try and bring him to his senses, and I left him to his pious task. With difficulty I reached the saloon, where there were already many passengers, the Marsigliese, the Tuscan, the mill-owner, the French commercial trav- eller, the tall priest, and others. Not one lady. The lightning still flashed from time to time, but the thunder was infrequent and far off. The sea was high and black, and no one could keep his feet. Strange nature of man ! It was already plain to be seen from the bearing of these people that the very tempest was a thing agreeable to their self-love, as if their not going to the bottom had somehow been the effect of every man's own conduct, and that they were having even then a foretaste of the pride with which in after years they would tell how they had fearlessly faced that dreadful peril. Amazing to see the coolness with which more than one whom I had 326 n JBlue Mater. seen as pale as the dying put on the look of courage before those to whom he had exhibited not long be- fore the most evident signs of abject terror. Some would pace back and forth from table to table, show- in 2; off their sea le^s as O it were, and laughing O O at every remark with lips that were still bloodless. The Mar- sigliese re- marked: "Je me svis enonnemetit am- line."' 1 The mill-owner pretended to read the cabin album ! Meanwhile the stewards brought the news from on deck. The sea had carried away some boats, had damaged the turkey coops a good deal, had drowned two bullocks, and stove in a dead eye forward. A sailor, hurled against the foremast, had been badly cut in the head. The canteen was a good deal shattered. But the mighty hull of the Galileo had suffered no further harm, and Hn Extremis. 327 had not stopped moving for an instant. At this last bit of news the flashing eyes of everyone gave token that human pride, but now humiliated, was set up once more, with bold faith in the work which the science and the industry of the race had made ; a work against which the full force of the mighty ocean had been vain menace and nothing more, hardly noticed and already forgotten. Yet, all the same, when opened doors gave us permission to go out, not one but heaved a sigh of satisfaction, as if only then as- sured that it was all over. Ah ! Formidable monster ! There you are again, and we are looking one another in the face once more ! Ugly and threatening, still, he was. Huge O / black rollers, crested with foam, rushed on in their dark tumult, shutting in the horizon on every side, and canopied by a gloomy vault of clouds, broken here and there with gray rifts of twilight, while there rolled beneath a mass of vapor in rapid and ill- boding motion, as if the strife were about to begin once more. The ship was soaking wet as if for those eight hours she had been under water. Every- where were dirty running streams and spreading pools. The deck houses, the masts, the boats were dripping with the sweat of battle. Aft and forward the men were hurrying about in their huge boots, drenched from head to foot, their wet hair plastered on face and neck, their bodies beaten out with fatigue. We met in the covered way the captain, 328 n ffilue Mater. panting, perspiring, red in the face. He passed on without notice. And so, tumbling against both sides of the gangway, wading through the coal- colored slush, and, jostled by the busy sailors, we reached the forecastle. Here were many persons come out of the cabins and holding on to the life-lines stretched across the deck for the use of the crew. They presented the doleful appearance of a throng that has been fleeing for days before an invading army. The commissary, who had repeatedly gone down into the cabin, de- scribed scenes fit to wring the heart and upset the stomach. He had seen down there tangled heaps of human bodies lying across each other; breast to back, feet thrust into faces, clothes in disorder, legs, arms, dishevelled hair ; sprawling, rolling on the un- clean deck in the tainted air ; with sobs and wails and cries of despair, and callings on the saints re- sounding in every direction. Women on their knees in groups, with heads bent down, telling their beads and beating their breasts. Some in loud voice were making vows to go to a certain sanctuary if ever they saw their native land again ; for others nothing would do but they must confess themselves, and weeping they begged the commissary to bring the friar, who was, the while, exercising his office among the men. Several women had passionately prayed for permission to take leave of their hus- bands before they died ; others again to go on deck flu Extremis, 329 one instant only, and cast into the sea some saintly image or some crucifix to calm the waves. There were those who adjured him in God's name to turn the ship around and go back. One of the most frightened was that counterfeit lioness of a Bologuese, who sobbed and tore her hair, and called upon the saints like an actress on the stas;e. And he told one O or two cases of the most naive terror. A poor old woman had called him to her berth, and, placing in his hand seventy francs in silver, had begged him, in a voice choked with sobs, to see that this money reached her brother at Parana, since they all were to go to the bottom ; as if it were a law of nature that, whatever happened, the officers and crew would reach their destination. A poor peasant woman fulling from her berth had had a miscarriage ; others had lost their speech from fright, and could only gesticulate and rave. Even then there were many who would not believe that the peril was over, but still clung convulsively to their berths and refused all comfort. These women, poor creatures, excited the more compassion because they had no pride to make them conceal their feelings. Those already on deck, all dazed and exhausted, and some with bruised faces and bandaged heads, looked at the sea with that eye which is said to be natural in the Green- landers ; petrified, as it were, by gazing all the while upon dismal gloom ; and gave a dolorous idea of the 33 n Blue Mater. condition to which those below had been reduced. The talkative vivacity which usually succeeds an escape from peril had not yet supervened. All were yet so shaken that at every roller larger than the rest, at every deeper lurch, they crowded back from the bulwarks ; and, ready once more to fall into the old terror, would look at the bridge as if to get an encouragement from the faces of the officers. They only then began to grow a little calm when they saw the relieved fireman's watch, stripped to the waist, with crimson faces and bathed in sweat, come up from below, proud of their exertions and their vic- tory, and right glad of a little rest ; for during the gale they had all been on duty, those who were shovelling coal held firmly by the rest lest they should be dashed against the boilers or hurled into the burning furnaces. But as the first stars came out, light-hearted care- lessness returned, and there arose a cackle as if all the sixteen hundred passengers were talking at once. Everybody was telling about it ; and there were descriptions excited, interminable, a dozen times repeated of all sorts of trifling occurrences, exag- gerated in each one's imagination until they grew to be events worthy of history or poetry. The half of these people, forgetting or denying their own abject fear, jeered at, pretended to despise, and, perhaps, really did despise the other half for the abject terror they had shown. fln JEjtremts. 331 After supper the forward part of the ship was vocal with singing and tipsy shouting. And at our table, too, there was mirth and jollity. We all fed like wolves for joy of being alive, and we set the terrors of the sea at nought. The feast wound up with a toast from the Marsigliese to the intrepidite froide of the captain, pronounced with the knowing air of one who has been there before. The advocate did not appear. And, to the great sorrow of all, the young lady from Mestre also was not in her place. She had been much shaken by those eight Lours of terror and fatigue, and had been attacked with bleeding at the lungs. CHAPTER XVIII. TOMORROW ! HE next morning sea and sky were lovely, and the whole popu- lation of the Galileo was early in motion ; for, if the good weather held, we were to reach America the next evening, perhaps early enough to land ; and it was time to get things ready, to consult with friends and relatives as to what was to be done. The most important matter was regis- tering having their names put down for going ashore; deciding, that is to say, whether or no they were to go to the commissary and be enrolled as in- tending to avail themselves of the Argentine Govern- ment's offer to pay the expense of landing to such immigrants as should ask it, giving board and lodging for five days and a free journey to those who meant to go up into the interior. This act of inscribing or not inscribing their names was called by the immigrants being or not being "of 332 tTo/IDorrow ! 333 the immigration" No doubt the advantages were great; but they mistrusted also greatly lest this generosity on the part of the Government, if it was a Government, should conceal a snare; and that to accept it would bind them in some way as to their choice of place to work and condi- tions of contract. Nevertheless the greater part accepted ; and there was a continual procession to the commissary's room, which was as if turned into an agency. They went in, and after giving their names, mangled the one defenceless word they had to say in a hundred ways : Write me down for the emigration. I accept the immigration. I go with the ^/immigration. Or else, bluntly and curtly : So and so, migration. Many, moreover, went there without having made up their minds just as one goes to consult a lawyer, and then said no. The women were the most perplexed. They stopped to bethink themselves once more at the very door, scratching their foreheads as if the destiny of their lives were at stake ; and some, after giving their names and going away, came back to take them off the list again, saying they had heard that the Govern- ment was treacherous. Besides these, there was a crowd of emigrants who came to inquire about the custom-house, whether this article or that had to pay duty, and whether by favor or cleverness they might get out of it. And it was pitiful to hear what 334 n JSlue Mater. small matters they all were ; poor little presents they were bringing to their friends and relatives in America; a bottle of special wine, a cheese, a sausage, a pound of cakes from Naples or Genoa, a quart or so of oil, a box of dried figs, even an apron full of beans, but from their own place, that corner of the garden which their friends would be sure to remember so well. And they asked whether a fife, or a bagpipe, or a blackbird, or a chest full of old pots and pans would be subject to duty. They all seemed full of terror at the idea of the custom-house at Montevideo and at Buenos Ayres, of which they had heard the most horrible tales; and they spoke of it as of an accursed forest, where / JL were outlaws who would leave them but the bare shirt. The most to be pitied were the invalids and some lonely old people who feared that their sickly look would catch the eye of the American doctor as they went ashore, and they be sent to the lazzaretto. Others again were tormented by the dread lest their brothers or their friends should not, as promised, get on board in time to answer for their subsistence ; as the Argentine law allows no useless mouths to land. They all came to the commissary to ask what would happen to them in such or such a case, and then went out, sadly shaking their heads. And still the commissary wrote and wrote ; and saw pass before him, one after another, the pro- ZIoflDorrow ! 335 testers of the " Mountain " whom he had repri- manded, the young girls who had made undesired love to him, the mothers who had disgusted him with their jealousies, the quarrellers whom he had had to separate and punish, the impudent lovers, the mischievous gossips. Each of these he recog- nized ; and had a smile, a nod of the head, or a good word for all of them. As I sat by his side I was never tired of looking at that little room, full of lists and registers, and thinking over the endless tales of wretchedness, the romantic lies of young damsels, the sobs of women, and the fierce words of dis- putants he had listened to. More than all, how- ever, the post-bags, tied, sealed, and heaped in a corner, attracted me. For these were snatches of the great dialogue between the two worlds. Who knows how many letters there were here from women for the third or fourth time beseeching news of a son or husband who had given no sign for years ; prayers that these would return or send for them ; supplications for aid ; announcements of sickness or death ; pictures of girls which their fathers would not recognize ; despairing complaints addressed to faithless lovers; shameless lies from faithless wives ; latest counsels from the old ; all this, mingled with bankers' letters bristling with figures; amorous notes from ballerinas; circulars from dealers in vermouth ; bundles of newspapers for Italian colonists eager after news of their coun- 336 insult well-conducted girls. As she was near America she did not speak 337 of her relatives in the journalism. The commissary cut her short (la rim- becco} but without losing his temper ; promised as soon as the inscription was over he would see her righted ; and turned short round to a couple of angry peasants who came to have their names taken off the list, for they did not want to fall into the hands of those hangman thieves (boia de lade?') who offered to land emigrants gratis so as to be the first to plunder them and make up to their women. They had evi- dently picked up some- thing fresh and hot in ~ their part of the ship, where agitators were working to excite them. I went forward, and there, sure enough, was the old fellow in the green jacket haranguing .< Ube big 338 n 3Blue Mater, away to a larger audience than usual ; and leaning, from political sympathy, perhaps, on the anchor, which was painted red, and shaking his loose gray locks. The short work which the captain had made of the Forty- " twranguing awa? to a larger airtfence than usual." seven Protest had not intimidated him in the least, and he had threatened to write to the papers. His nearness to the land of liberty emboldened him all ! 339 tbe more, and not only did he not lower his voice when one of those suckers of the people's blood passed by, but rather raised it, rude and harsh as it was, like the sound of a tin horn, while the veins of the neck swelled fit to burst the skin. He spoke as if he were not making the voyage for the first time ; said they must look out for the Argentines, the Italian agents, the consuls, the go-betweens of every color, who were all in swindling league together to get fat out of the immigration. They were to look after their things as they went ashore, or they would be robbed outright ; they were to have an eye to their wives and daughters. Dreadful things had been done by the government people in the face of day before the very eyes of fathers and mothers. And as for shelter, tumble-down sheds ; the rain came through the roof on to the beds ; there was either nothing to eat or else they put something into the soup which made a man too stupid to put two and two together, and then the rascals came and made a contract with him. " Look out,figliuoli" he shouted ; " Look to it or you will be skinned [assassinati] worse than in the old country. He is a gone man that trusts them ! " But he was not the only one to hold forth. Other groups here and there were hanging on the words of other orators who had started up that morning. On the midship-deck was the professor ex-cook, the player on the ocarina. He had been everywhere 340 n Blue Mater. and done everything, had advice to give to every- body into whatever part of America they were going, just as if he had lived there many years, and had plied every trade in every quarter of the globe. He spoke of the snares laid for emigrants when they had a little money ; lands, far-away lands sold for a song, fertile, well watered, where they were to be- come rich in ten years' time ; and the poor gulls, when they reached the spot with empty pockets, found sandy deserts, fever in the air, the Indians all around them, lions on the prowl by night, and ser- pents five yards long crawling through the houses. And fleeing from starvation they had to go afoot hundreds of miles before finding a habitable spot, drenched with rain for weeks at a time, or scourged with hideous gales, which swept away cows and dogs like dried leaves. At this many of his hearers suspected some exaggeration, shrugged their shoul- ders and went away ; while many more swallowed it all and stood there with their eyes upon the deck. But in other groups the optimists had the floor. A new world no more taxes no more military ser- vice no more tyranny. The soil teemed as soon as touched by the plough ; meat at fifty centimes the kilogramme (five cents the pound) ; tracts with four thousand inhabitants where the sour face of a signore was never seen. And they told of quick fortunes, overflowing granaries ; of field laborers who had private tutors for their children. America forever ! Sangue cTun cane! Will you hold your tongues, you calamity howlers ! In the uiidst of all this preoccupation it was evi- dent that immortal woman had taken, for the present, a back seat, that many attachments would have to be thrown over. No more were seen those steady eyes that watched the fair one hour by hour for the chance of putting a word in her ear or a black and blue mark on her arm. But this very preoccupa- tion left the few faithful ones only the more free. Amongst these last I marked the poor Modenese bookkeeper who had gone back to his old contem- plation, a little farther off than before but more dead in love than ever; as if the rough handling he had received, the boxed ears and the disgrace he had suffered, poor wretch, had only enhanced the love- liness of her for whom he had gone through so much. o O I looked at him from the bridge for a long time. He never moved his head or bent his neck or turned his eyes for a single instant from the girl. She was in her usual place, knitting, with her little brother at her side, her fair form more upright, sweet, and fresh than ever. Her face, clouded for many days, was placid again ; and I was not long in perceiving that all this lowly and unwearied adoration from the poor, lonely, scorned young fellow had awakened a sisterly feeling of pity and kindness which perhaps she thought it was due to him to let him perceive ; for as I was on the point of moving away I saw her 342 n Blue Mater, usual quiet, indifferent look as she cast it around her, fixed for an instant, perhaps not for the first time, upon his face with a lovely expression of kindness and sympathy. Ah ! Ye Gods ! The fellow lighted up like a mirror when the sun falls upon it ; he shook all over, he heaved a sigh and passed a hand over his forehead as if astounded that the whole ship should not be aware of the wonder that had come to pass. But no one took any heed. And this general pre- occupation gave me the chance to move about freely for a while among the crowd and catch, flying, many a bit of talk. The expectation of landing soon had aroused in almost all of them some curiosity about the cities and the regions they were to live in. They asked the officers about them, or the more educated of their fellow-passengers ; pulling out old creased letters from their kinsfolk and acquaintance, gesticulating over them, re-reading them or handing them about with that extraordinary reverence which your illiterate always shows for a written docu- ment, which he supposes, and naturally enough, capable of various subtle interpretations. I heard mention made of many farm colonies with names dear to my soul, Esperauza, Filar, Cavour, Garibaldi, New Turin, Candelaria. But, gracious Heaven ! what it was to see the dense ignorance in which they almost all were plunged ; their utter lack of any ideas about States or bound- 343 aries, as if South America were an island a hundred miles or so in circuit, where the provinces were within gunshot of one another Buenos Ayres, Tucuman, Mendoza, Assumption, Montevideo, E ntre Rios, Chili, the United States, all forming in the niinds of the greater part an inextricable mass of confusion ; so that the keenest and most patient man in the world would have been at a loss where to begin to get order out of the chaos, or throw light on any part of it. And to think that many even of the youngest had been to school and had learned to read and write ! It was hopeless. Here and there little family groups were discussing ways and means : " So, five for the landing, three for the inn ; we '11 say so much for the first day." Farther on : Vapu- rino pe Rmario, quatto pezz' e ineza mi muorz" 1 e pane pe 1 u viaggio ; restano cuiclie ducate, senza cunta e scarpe pe Ciccillo. " The tender up to Rosario, four dollars and a half and a mouthful to eat on the way ; there '11 be five ducats over without counting little Dicky's shoes." I heard among other things that there was bad news of the young lady from Mestre, upon whom nearly all of them were depending for advice and patronage. They seemed to think she had had a fall ; and even supposed she might be dying, but that it was kept secret because the captain was somehow (they had not the slightest idea how) in fault. The Mestre peasant anxiously inquired about her. All his family 344 n Blue Mater. were once more crouched in the old nest between the turkey pens and the great hogshead, under an awning of diapers put out to dry, beneath whose shade young Galileo, red as a boiled lobster, was having his little dinner like a calf. " Ah, povareta ! " cried the peasant, u that such a thing should happen to an angel like that ! She is too good, she cannot live long ! " And the wife added : " Tell her that we will pray to our saint for her, God bless her ! " The father was going to trust the Government; had put his name down for the amigmzion, he was not going to believe all the clown's chatter (panta- lonae) which those idiots on the forecastle got off. Then he asked me if it were really true, what the ex-cook, the wiseacre of the midship-deck, had told them, that from the equator on, the water was fit to drink (la gera bona da beva/'J, because the great American river drove back the waves of the sea. But he interrupted himself to exclaim : " Here are our new (paroni) masters ! " It was the five Argen- tines in company with the Neapolitan priest, who came forward for the first time to have a look at their guests. The priest must have been discus- sing some financial matter; for he said loudly, moving his hand like a fan : " Si se encontmran los accionistas para un gi-an banco agricola-colonizador" And I joined them, urged by a stronger sympathy in those last days for the children of the land where so many of my fellow-citizens were to have their lot Uo/lfcorrow ! 345 in life. And I searched their faces to find what impression was made ; but they looked on and said nothing. Nevertheless, their eyes and their every movement betrayed the proud satisfaction they felt at seeing all those people who were come to seek hospitality in their country, the greater part for life, and whose children would grow up citizens of the republic, would speak its language and not their own, and would perhaps be, as often happens, ashamed of their foreign origin. Perhaps in looking at the emigrants the gentle- men saw in imagination all these clodhoppers ( mangiatori di terra) and Ligurian traffickers at work, beheld loaded barks glide down the waters of the Parana and the Uruguay, and saw the new railways of the tropics stretch across the forest, the sugar-cane rise on the plains of Tucuman, the vine upon the slopes of Mendoza, the tobacco plant upon the Gran Chaco, saw houses and palaces rise by hundreds and by thousands, and leagues upon leagues of desert glow and blossom under the sweat- rain of their hard toil. There came surging into my mind so many things to say to them : " You will re- ceive all these people kindly will you not ? They are hardy volunteers who have come to swell the ranks of that army with which you are conquering a world. They are worthy men, believe me ; they are industrious, as you will see ; they are sober, they are patient, they do not emigrate to get rich, but to find 346 <>n Blue Mater. bread for their children, and will easily grow fond of the country that feeds them. They are poor, but not because they have not worked ; they are un- taught, but not from any fault of theirs ; proud of their country, but it is because they have a vague sense of its bygone glory ; sometimes they are quick in quarrel, but you, descendants of the con- querors of Mexico and Peru, are you not also some- times quick in quarrel ? Let them love and boast of their far-off country, for if they could have the heart to be false to its memory they could not become attached to your soil. Protect them from dishonest middlemen, do them justice when they require it, and do not make them feel, poor creatures, that they are tolerated intruders. Treat them gently and kindly. We shall all be so thankful to you for it. They are our blood ; we love them. Into your hands we commend them and with all our hearts ! " I do not know what stupid and worse than stupid, cowardly reserve it was that held me back from saying all this. They would have listened with amazement, no doubt, but they might have been moved ; perhaps not without being a little softened. The sea was so lovely. It seemed as if it ought to be reflected in every bosom. Since morn- ing many sailing ships and steamers had been seen bound for the Plata lliver, and flights of birds had O come around the Galileo to bid her welcome. 347 As soon as the bustle of inscription was over, every- thing had quieted down and people were inclined to be good-natured. Some emigrants, who had got leave to come into the after-cabin to get up a raffle for a silver watch and an engraving of the Madonna, on behalf of a poor family, were very successful in- deed at sixty centimes the ticket. The drawing, as the prospectus set forth, was to take place on the morrow, " with the necessary guarantees," behind the butcher's shop. Not a quarrel arose after dinner. The emigrants were treated to a dish of braciole and potatoes (Irish stew) that softened many a heart. Our repast too was such as to make the single eye of the Genoese gleam with satisfaction, and had an additional flavor from the idea of that "something to follow" which Brillat-Savarin says is necessary to the perfect success of a dinner. This "something" was the thought of what the ship would look like on the morrow when the land hove in sight. The talk, under the attraction of America, all ran upon the countries we were approaching, as if we had been there before. In three days we shoidd hear Polyeucte at the Colon Theatre ; and at the Solis, Crespino e la Comare with Baldelli. The plan of the new Square at Buenos Ayres and that of the new Italian Hospital at Montevideo were discussed. The presidents of the two republics were dissected joint by joint, and many heated comments made upon 348 n Blue Mater. those newspapers which were opposed to or in favor of Italian immigration. The Garibaldian alone said nothing, and the veil of sadness on his face was deeper than usual. My two next-door neighbors were silent too, but on their faces there was an unusual expres- sion; the look of hate, of course, but now animated by a new thought, the expectation of something to happen, which each hoped would decide their contest unfavorably to the other. They did not look at one another, but there seemed to be a grim, silent fight between the two, as if they were secretly stabbing one another beneath the table-cloth. They both reached out at once for the salt, but perceiving in time that their hands would touch, drew back and took no salt. The mere thought that I was soon to reach America and have that miserable spectacle before my eyes no longer, was enough to cheer me. Suddenly I remarked that the lady of the Char- treuse and the mother of the piano-player were missing ; and as I could not suppose they were sea- sick at that late day, I asked the agent, who was between me and the advocate, what the matter was. " What ! You don't know ! You are in America already one would think ! A regular scene ! " For some days the " tamer" had had hints that the other was speaking ill of her and had shrewd notions what it was about. She had seen it in the faces of some of the passengers, who would look at her and smile, at certain hours, and would peep into her tlo/IDorrow ! 349 stateroom as they passed. That morning, however, her maid, set on to watch had found out all about it. Our serpent in petticoats had declared she was getting delirium tremens ; was giving horrid accounts of her stateroom, where indeed she had been several times to taste her Maraschino di Zara, and was saying that it was a perfect liquor shop, with bottles under the pillows, sticky glasses all over every where, and a large collection of all sorts of mineral waters powders, and pastilles, to repair in the morning the damage done by drinking overnight. But now she said it was no use trying to repair it ; the thing had gone too far, and the doctor had remarked that the gentlemen had better not go too near her with their lighted cigars. The fat lady had heard all this exactly at the moment when she had been having a fresh nip,had gone straight to the dear creature's state- room, and, meeting her in the corridor when two or three people were by, had said in an uncommonly distinct voice three words to her not more than three, but spoken with the look and tone of her profession, and of that kind which good old, mellow Chartreuse, the true authentic article made by the well-deserving Friars, and taken in suitable doses, is alone capable of inspiring. The other, undaunted, had answered with a single word of three syllables (one in English), worth her adversary's three to- gether. Then but then the stewardesses ran up, and the contestants in a paroxysm of rage had retired, 35 n Blue Mater, storming, each to her own stateroom, where half an hour afterwards they fainted. But as he said this the agent suddenly bethought himself and seemed to be trying to intercept glances between two persons at the table who were at a distance from him. And, sure enough, I heard him the next moment singing to himself Hamlet's long cry in the little Theatre of the Palace (sic) : " O-o-o-o-h ! my prophetic soul ! " Straightway he seized my arm and confided to me his amazing discovery. " Look ! " he said, " but don't let them see you doing it." And I did look and was not lonsj in seeing what he meant. ~ ~ Every two or three minutes the fair, blue, vacant eyes of the blonde lady would rest for an instant on the captain ; and his hard red countenance would gleam for an instant with a smile half concealed by his bushy eyebrows and bristling mustaches, like a bit of blue that shows through a rift in the O clouds, and then is covered ; but the blue eyes looked again, and the rift appeared again. Not a doubt about it, the little game went on regularly ; there was an understanding between the fair blonde crown and the rough red poll. The siren had sung, the rugged bear had listened ; the Galileo was brought to. " Ah ! now I understand," said the agent, in a rage, " why there was no l scene ' Ah ! Porcaie a bordo no ne veuggio, forsooth ! U 'gh ! You old sea Tartuffe ! This is too much ! " All the same he was not ill pleased at being relieved from the in- UoflDocrow! 35 1 cubus of an unsolved mystery. And as we went on deck he rubbed his hands. " One more Now what we have to do is to find out whom yonder young lady will next snip with her scissors, if indeed there be another to snip." So he and the others laughed with all their might as they nodded and looked at the round back of the professor, who leaned over the rail and discoursed with the Neapolitan priest about the constellation of Orion. It was a charming night and a smiling augury of a good end to the voyage. To the west, among myriads of stars, arose the zodiacal light, in form of a huge whitish pyramid, the apex almost reaching the zenith and the circuit embracing a O O quarter of the horizon. The track of the Milky Way, between the Scorpion and the Centaur, and the four flaming diamonds of the Southern Cross, stood out clear and vivid. The Magellan Clouds, those vast, solitary nebulae which made the heart of Huniboldt beat and his pen blaze, formed around the Southern Pole two wondrous white spots, which shaded off into the infinite. Falling stars, seeming larger than with us, from the pure atmosphere, were seen on every side like shooting rockets which streaked the sky with silvery red and blue and golden light. So clear was the sky, that the ship with every black spar and shroud and rope was sharply drawn upon it ; and, looking from the piaz- zetta, there were stars among the yards, the lifts, 352 n Blue Mater. the braces, and stars reflected by the glassy sea; so that we seemed to move along in an airy bark amid the splendors of the firmament. Yet scarcely any one looked at all this. Each of those seventeen hundred living atoms had some hope or fear or re- gret within him, compared with which these mil- lions of worlds were of no more importance than the dust which his foot strikes out of the earth. In the forward part of the ship there was indeed a busy hum of conversation, but more steady and intense than on other evenings. No singing, no shouting. It was clear that all were talking of serious matters. At the moment of separation be- tween the men and the women there could be heard many a " Good-night ! " full of meaning and " To-morrow, then ! " in a hundred rino-in^ tones. " It O O is the last night ! We land to-morrow ! Twenty- four hours and we are in America !" And even when they had been below some time there floated up through the hatches a sonorous murmur as of an excited crowd. It was the tide made in a sea of souls by a world as they drew near to it. CHAPTER XIX. AMERICA. HAT a pleasant awakening ! Those words ! " To-day we shall be on shore," which expressed the sen- timents of everyone, had a fresh sound and renewed power for us all. And one felt, in saying them over, the physical pleasure which is had in throwing the arms around a good solid granite column. With- out taking other reasons into account, we were most anxious to get on shore, because in a long voyage a man grows tired, exasperated beyond endurance at that perpetual reeling and staggering, that bending and dodging to which he is forced by the motion of the ship and the narrowness of everything ; that con- tinual salt smell, that constant odor of wood and of tar. What pleasure to see the streets, to snuff the country air, to sleep between four walls that stay upright and not feel that the house we are in is thrill- ing with a special life and one on which after all 2 3 353 354 <>n Blue Mater. our own depends. It did so happen that we passed the Canaries and the Cape Verdes at night ; and for the same reason we had missed the little Brazilian island of Fernando de Norouha, which everyone had longed to get a glimpse of, so as to break for a mo- ment the interminable monotony of the sea. Not a hand's breadth of land for eighteen days since we passed the Straits of Gibraltar. I should have liked to hold a clod of earth in my fingers for the pleasure of feeling it and smelling it, like forbidden fruit. And at last, at last, we were to have enough of it : a couple of pear-shaped pieces, namely, covering to- gether thirty-eight millions of square kilometres, and each equal to about seventy Italics. As we expected to reach Montevideo by daylight, there began at dawn of day among the emigrants a general scrubbing, hasty and unsparing, for they desired not to compromise the national honor by making their appearance in America as savage and slovenly beggars. Fresh water was served out freely, since it was the last day ; and they began to wash furiously", like so many coal miners just come up. There was a plunging of heads into basins and a puffing and a sluicing and a splashing ; while the water ran about the decks as if it rained. Many were dragging combs through capillary forests, virgin since Genoa; others, barefooted, were polishing up their shoes with moistened rags. They overhauled their creased and threadbare clothes,they brushed and Hmerica. 355 they beat them. The Venetian barber, imitator of dogs, had set up an open-air shop near the bulwark on the port side, where the to-be-shaved ones, seated in long rows like Turks at Constantinople, awaited each his turn, scraping their cheeks with both hands and chaffing one another. Arms and shoulders of naked babies, and of women in their petticoats gleamed by hundreds everywhere. Some brushed each other's hair and thinned out the too flourishing population of the boys' heads. Others hastily patched and darned their jackets and their stockings, pulling over tattered old bags and valises for fresh clothes and linen. Joyful anticipation had reawak- ened cordiality ; families helped one another with little services and spoke their mutual thanks loudly and heartily. A thrill of young life was awakened everywhere. And above the lively murmur of the throng was heard from time to time the cry " Viva 1' America ! " or the high shrill falsetto with which the people of North Italy finish the verses of a song. At breakfast, enlivened by the notes of fife and bag- pipe (piffero, za/mpogna), a special ration of biscuit was served out. Everyone filled his pockets, and the canteen man poured out endless glasses of ruin, like a regimental sutler on the day of battle. After all which the passengers sat down quietly or leaned over the rail, awaiting the appearance of the New World. But the hours went by and the land did not heave 35 6 n Blue Mater. in sight. The sky was covered with clouds, but the horizon was clear, and the sharp blue sea line was unbroken by a shade of promise. After eight bells, the passengers began to show symptoms of weariness. They that had so much patience for three weeks had hardly a crumb left for the last few hours. Many complained angrily : " Why did we not see land ? Was the reckoning wrong ? We should have seen it long ago. Now we shall not get there by daylight. The Lord knows when we shall get there. Italian steamers ! There 's the whole story. Lucky if we get there in a year." And they glowered and made cutting remarks when an officer passed by. Some, too, feigning to give up all hope of getting there, shrugged their shoulders, turned away from the sea, and pretended to busy themselves with some- thing else. But, all the same, every time the signal officer who had charge of the watch looked through his glass, as he stood on the bridge, they fixed their eyes on him in breathless silence, and not a murmur was heard until the careless air with which he lowered his instrument destroyed hope. But he did not move from his post, which showed that he expected every moment to catch sight of something. The peasant with the abbreviated nose, bent on being the first to announce America, stood halfway up the ladder, ready to catch the first indication from the officer and cry out ; and every time the glass was levelled he gave the crowd a majestically comic sign Bmerica. 357 for silence, like a tribune of the people at a moment of crisis. Among us also in the after part of the ship there was expectation. The ladies were seated facing the west, the men were strung about the O poop much excited. The young lady from Mestre was in her usual place, be- tween the Garibal- dian and her aunt, paler in face and feebler in look than ever before, but not more sad ; indeed her eyes were brighter than we had yet seen them, and in her counte- nance there was a wondrous sweet- Ubc & * n * 1 fficer - ness, as if a fresh beauty had come there since her attack of bleeding. For the first time she was O all in black, and the translucent clearness of her complexion was set off so strikingly by the dress she wore that it was like the sight of a living face O O under a sable pall. She, with her aunt, appeared to be delicately folding up little packets of some- 358 n JBlue Mater. thing upon her lap. There also were the mother of the piano-player, and the plump lady, seated on the opposite side of the deck ; the former with an hysterical face showed fine white teeth and looked more venomous than ever ; the latter with her great round countenance, seemed steeped in alcoholic beati- tude, and thought, as it would seem, of nothing at all. The other ladies, sitting about in their light dresses, made masses of brilliant color, like a row of flags hung out on a holiday. But here too there were signs of impatience. Little feet patted the deck ; hands switched fans about with nervous abruptness; heads were tossed; the conversation took a bilious turn, and though they did not utter the cross nonsense that the third-class people did about the officers, it was in the minds and flashed from the eyes of all of them. But now the young lady rose, leaning on her aunt's arm, and the two, with their little parcels, went towards the third class. On the piazzetta they were joined by the Venetian servant, who was waiting for them with other matters in her hands. As this was to be the lady's last visit to the forward part of the ship I was anxious to see what she did ; so I ran through the second-class gangway and gained the biidge. She had probably chosen that time so as to be less observed, the attention of all the passengers being fixed upon the horizon. From the bridge I could Hmerica. 359 follow all her movements in that crowd of people, and was amazed to see how many she knew and how much good she had done in those few days. She gave the poor peasant, ill of fever, and his wife, the fruit she had got together; gave clothes to another family near the foremast ; to another she gave letters and papers. Then she approached the Genoese girl, and though I could not see well for the crowds around, I thought she slipped a ring on the girl's finger. The boys gathered around her from every side ; some of the smallest followed her about, and she patted their cheeks with one hand and gave them sweetmeats with the other. She went to speak with the family from Mestre and kissed young Galileo. Several men came up to her, hat in hand, and seemed to ask advice. Here and there she shook hands as if to take leave. Her white face and faded hair would be lost for an instant in the throng and then appear again. She passed within the forecastle, then came out once more at the canteen, went down to the sick bay, and I saw her next by the capstan, in midst of a group of women who thrust out their little babies for her to touch. Wherever she went, grinning faces were composed, loud voices lowered ; all moved out of the way and faced round towards her. Her face showed mortal weariness, but wore throughout the same sweet smile, while a faint o / tremor in her pale lips and filmy eyes, where all her life seemed centred, was like the last gleam of the 360 n Blue TIQater. sun upon a fair white rose already declining to the earth. When she reached the covered way to go aft again, she stopped and panted with a hand upon her breast. The peasant woman from Mestre came up at this moment, fervently kissed the sleeve of her dress, and then ran hastily away. The lady moved on slowly. And the land did not heave in si^ht. But I felt no O impatience. I was half angry with myself, because the idea of reaching that America so much longed o o for raised in me no more emotion. It was another moral phenomenon like what I had felt during the first days of the voyage on reaching the Yellow Sea ; a kind of syncope, a total abeyance of curiosity and of pleasure. As if not one of the ardent louo-in^s L O O with which I had come on board were left with me, the idea of this new land awakened only miserable forebodings of the annoyance there would be on landing, and then I had a disagreeable taste in O 7 O my mouth from a bad cigar. Even the excitement of the others disgusted me ; fools, to wish to go back to every-day troubles, as if these last three weeks had not been one of the pleasantest periods of their lives. So much so, that to get out of their way I went and sat down in the commissary's room and positively fell to reading over an old number of the Caffaro, cursing, between one column and another, books, travellers, tales, lectures, the press, which make us familiar with foreign countries and amerfca. 361 preclude all possibility of first impressions. Great Heaven ! it is a fact and I ought to be ashamed to confess it ; but here, a few miles only from the shores of America, I cudgelled my brains over a ridiculous charade in a Genoese newspaper, a cha- rade of which I could not guess " my second " : " My second is always in motion," and I pervaded in thought the realms of nature to find the secret, while the old hunch-backed mariner, as indifferent to America as I, polished the brass handle of the door, droning out a Ligurian ballad : " Gh' oa na votta na baslla figgia Once I saw a pretty maid " in a cracked and nasal tone which finally sent me to sleep. All at once the song ceased as if the old fellow's attention had been suddenly attracted elsewhere, and I heard from the bridge a long, long, endless, doleful cry : " Land ho ! " A thrill ran through me. It was like the announce- O ment of a great unexpected event, the wide, formless vision of a world, which reawakened at once within me curiosity, wonder, enthusiasm, joy, and made me spring to my feet with face suffused. Another cry, the cry of a thousand voices, answered the first, and at once the ship rolled heavily to star- board as the crowd all rushed that way. I ran on deck and searched the horizon. For a 362 n Blue Mater. things in order, chatting and talking without any regard whatever. And when at daylight the stew- ards and stewardesses, after wrangling for half an hour in the passages, came into our staterooms with the coffee, they found everyone on foot, washed and brushed and with the expected gratuity ready to hand over. Kuy Bias, as he presented the tray, wished me a long and happy sojourn in America, and his air was as correct as the air of any valet on the boards ; but his voice was so languid and his eye so utterly fishy that any child could perceive how broken down he meant to have it understood that he was at the prospect of parting with that mysterious creature who possessed his affections. While I was absorb- ing the coffee, he was looking at the sky through the airport ; biting his underlip as if to repress the ut- terances of a wounded heart ; and then, as he ac- cepted my little offering, he tempered the humility of that act with a bow full of elegance and dignity. Slipping out immediately after him, I saw him enter the stateroom of the priest, whose big voice I straightway heard counting slowly Dos, tres, cinco, seis ; francs, as I surmise, which Ruy Bias had to receive with open hand like a beggar, but quivering with shame as he thought of the queen of his soul. On deck I found the captain and officers on duty. A gallooned official of the port of Montevideo and a doctor had come on board ; the former a great big tbe Plata IRivet, 371 man with a thread of a voice, the latter a little man with a voice like a bass drum ; and, having inquired into the sanitary condition of the passengers, the two went forward to count the crew. All the third- class passengers, the while, were being assembled on the main deck in order to pass in review before the Uruguayan official, that he might number them, and before the doctor that he might set aside suspected cases. From amidships they were to pass one by one over the bridge which spans the piazzetta, and then, leaving the deck by the starboard ladder, go forward again. Upon the ample midship deck there w r as not one square foot of empty space ; a crowd as dense as a regiment in column covered it from one end to the other ; all silent, save for a slight murmur. The sky was cloudy ; the enormous river of a yellow mud color. The far-off city of Monte- video appeared like a long whitish streak upon the brown coast, rising at the western end upon the solitary Cerro, the hill of Garibaldi : a simple and majestic landscape which silently awaited the com- ing of the sun. In the distance could be perceived the smoke of two or three small steamers that were coming out to us. I went on deck to see for the last time my sixteen hundred fellow-travellers. The captain, the officers, the ship's surgeon, and the Uruguayan official with the doctor came up a moment afterwards and the sad procession commenced. Sad, not only in itself, 372 n Blue Mater. but because, counting that throng like a herd of animals without care for any name, gave the idea that the poor creatures were told off for sale ; that we saw not citizens of a European state, but victims of a raid of kidnappers upon the shores of Africa or Asia. The first passed slowly, but seeing that the port official showed impatience, the captain made a sign and the rest moved on more rapidly, filing by almost on the run. Families passed together ; the father first, then the women with their infants in their arms and leading the older children by the hand ; the old people came last. Almost all had with them bundles of property too precious to be left in the cabin. Many were neat and clean ; dressed in good clothes which they had kept for that occasion. Others were worse off than when they set out; ragged, and soiled with all the uncleanness to be gathered by lying about for three weeks in every corner of a crowded ship. There were unshaven beards and bare necks. There were some with toes out of their shoes ; some even hatless ; and more than one holding together with both hands a buttonless jacket to conceal the hairy nakedness of his breast. Pretty girls, bowed old men, striplings of twenty years old workmen in blouses, long-haired priests, Calabrese peasant women with their green corsets, North Lorn- bardy pipers,Brianza women with the radiating crown of long pins stuck in their hair, and women from the mountains of Piedmont with their white caps. bavbor Steamer an!> 36arge. 374 <>n Blue Mater. All these came on in endless procession, each one stepping in the other's tracks, as on a scaffold at the back when the flight of a whole people is to be rep- resented on the stage. Some skipped along as if to show how light-hearted they were ; others passed with grim faces, looking at no one, as if offended at this exposure that was made of them. The bour- geois and the middle-class women, who yet had about them some signs of former prosperity, went by with heads down, all ashamed. The slow old people and the encumbered women were shoved aside or driven brutally on by those who came behind ; the child ren cried for fear of being trodden on ; those who were jostled cursed and swore. How many faces that I knew well did I see go by ! There is the man that sent the telegram to his wife, his face full of jolly wrinkles and looking as if he believed us yet. There is that old orator in the green frock, running by with his gray head bare as usual, and casting a look of hate and defiance at the first-class O passengers on the deck above. There is the tattooed mountebank ; the two slatternly choristers ; the fam- ily from Mestre, with young Galileo, who takes his breakfast as he goes along ; there is the ex-porter with his pictures ; the fair Genoese, who goes by with blushing cheek and eyes cast down ; the large Bolofrnese crossing the bridge with imperial walk, O O O A her inseparable satchel at her side ; the Madonna of Capracotta, the barking barber, the putative homi- {Plata 1Ri\>er. 375 cide of the forecastle, and the poor widow of the murdered man. As they filed along, all the sad and comical inci- dents of that strange life of twenty-two days passed through my mind ; the varied feelings of disgust and of sympathy, of kindness and of mistrust, which those people had raised in me ; all now lost in one deep sentiment of sorrowful and tender pity. And still they went by as if their number had been doubled in the night. Family after family, chil- dren and yet more children, city faces, country faces, from Northern Italy, from Southern Italy; good honest creatures, brigands, invalids, ascetics, old soldiers, beggars, rebels, passing ever fast and faster, as if urged by the dread of not reaching America in time to get their bit of bread and their strip of earth. What a procession ! Endless, most pitiful ! And at the back of all this grievous misery, imagination held up to me, as in mockery, the patriotic rejoicings of the idle, the prosperous, and the unthinking, as they shout with holiday enthusiasm in the banner-dressed and glittering squares of Italy. I felt a humiliation which made me shun the regard of foreigners who O O were in the ship with me and whose affected excla- mations of pity and surprise were only so many reproaches to my country. And still those ragged garments, those white hairs, those withered women, those children without a country, that nakedness, that shame, that misery kept filing on. The spec- 376 n Blue Mater, tacle endured for half an hour, which seemed a whole eternity. At length the friar with his face of wax, his hands buried in his sleeves, went slowly by ; then came the little band of Swiss with their red caps, and at last, at last there was an end of it. From the first tender that reached us there came on board a tribe of people, friends and relatives of the passengers ; who, running through the ship, sought for the faces and called out the names of those they were to meet. Then began the greetings, the embraciugs, and the kissings. Three gentlemen approached the one we had called the " thief," and while we were waiting to see them take him into custody, uncovered, and profoundly bowing addressed him as Monsieur leMinistre. There ! That is what it is to judge of a man by what one can see. But we had not time to be properly astonished, for our attention was straightway drawn to a painful scene. A young gentleman, well dressed and handsome, but repellent of look, came rushing towards my two neighbors of below, who ran to meet him exclaiming " Attilio ! " But at a couple of paces off they stood still, waiting for him to select one for the first em- brace, as if that choice were to be his final judgment of the past and their sentence for the future. The youth hesitated for a moment, looking at them both but wholly without emotion ; then flung himself into the lady's arms. She clasped him to her breast with what would have seemed deep tenderness had it Plata TCix>er. 377 not been belied by a Satanic look of triumph which she cast in that very moment at her husband. He turned as pale as death and seemed about to fall to the deck, but he controlled himself with an effort and looked around him with a smile most dreadful and most piteous to see. The young gentleman, leaving the mother, approached him and pressed upon his pale cheek a cold kiss which the father seemed powerless to return. All turned their eyes away with horror, as if from the sight of murder; and I myself hastened forward without daring to cast another look upon the unhappy man. And here another piteous scene awaited me. A knot of old people, men and women, surrounded the commissary ; frightened, anxious, and begging with trembling lips for comfort and advice. These were the solitary sexagenarians who could not land with- out some relative to answer for their subsistence. But the relatives they expected had not appeared ; and naturally enough, for the landing was to be made at Buenos Ayres ; but, confounding Uruguay with Argentina, they gave themselves up for lost. What was to become of them ! Imagine the despair and agony of these poor creatures, who, having left Europe, found themselves, as they supposed, rejected from America like useless human carcasses, not even good for fertilizing the ground, and frantic already with the idea of returning to a country where they would find no one to love them, no house to live in, 378 n Blue Water, no bread to eat. The commissary tried to persuade them that they were in Uruguay and not in Argen- tina, that their friends were to meet them in Buenos Ayres, on the other side of the river which they saw before them, that they were tormenting them- selves about nothing, that they should take courage. But they would hear no reason, they were stunned with fright, and seemed only the more miserable and unhappy in the midst of the joyous and noisy young fellows who jostled them at every moment, crying out: " Courage, old fellows! Long live the Republic ! Viva I'America ! Viva la Plata ! " I managed to get the commissary aside for a moment, and in taking leave of him gathered some final news of the poor young bookkeeper. In despair at seeing the last of his fair Genoese, who landed O ' at Montevideo, he was in convulsions and was up- setting the whole cabin. Then I went to shake o hands with the other officers, whom I was to see two months later at Buenos Ayres, after their return from Italy once more. And I wished also to see my poor old hunchback. I found him at the door of the kitchen with a saucepan in his hand. " Oh ! at last ! " he exclaimed, with a si^h of satisfaction. 7 O " Twelve days without any women ! " " Yes," I said, "and I suppose you will end by taking a wife." Ml! he answered, touching his bosom with his fin- O ger. Piggm mofjge ! a I a wife ! " Then, speaking Italian with a queer declamatory accent, " That will Ube flMata 1Rix>er. 379 never be " ; and he whispered joyously in my ear " Twelve days ! " But seeing the captain coming, he squeezed my hand and hurriedly saying " Scignoria, bon viaggio ! " he turned his poor crooked back and was seen no more. Meanwhile some more tenders had come along- side and one was at the after gangway. I went on deck again to say good-bye to the passengers who were getting into her in a confusion of baggage and a turmoil of hand-shaking and mutual good wishes. Here, too, was another proof of how difficult it is to know much about people on a voyage. Some passengers, with whom I had been all the time on terms of intimacy almost friendly, went off without saying so much as " Go to the deuce ! " (Crepa !J, or at most with a tip of the hat, as if they had forgotten me. Others, with whom I had not exchanged a word, * o / came to take leave with an affectionate sincerity that amazed me. And the same thing happened to other people. The Marsigliese was cordial. He said over and over again that he was fond of Italy, because men like himself were superior to the jealousies of governments, and that he was going to do his best to make Italians and French get on with one another in Argentina. r lacliez d'enfaire autant parmi vos compatriotes. Quant 1 a moi, on me connait dans les deux colonies. On salt, he con- cluded with a solemn gesture, que fapporte la paix. Adieu! The agent presented himself to take leave 380 <>n Blue Mater. of the young couple who were embarrassed by their just dread of a Parthian shot. " I imagine," he said, that you will not have any more difficulty with the language in America after so much practice you know." And they ran down the ladder. Then he set upon the poor advocate, who was just de- scending with a round roll of something, probably a life preserver, under his arm. " Avvocato," he said, " I suppose you feel now that all your troubles are over." But the other, eying the water askance, growled out : " There 's no knowing ; sometimes this beastly river is worse than the Atlantic Ocean " and down he went, with all possible precaution, taking no notice of anybody. The blonde lady and her husband passed down, then my neigh- bors with their sou, then the " beast tamer," the pianist with her mother, the Frenchmen, the priest, the second-class passengers, and others. When all were off and seated on the little quarter- deck, the agent gave me a nudge with his elbow, exclaiming "Eureka!" Following his eye, I looked to the right and saw on the deck of the Galileo, leaning against the bulwark in the correct attitude ~ O of a thoughtful and afflicted lover, Ruy Bias, his regards fixed upon the tender. They pointed di- rectly at the little piano-player, pale and impassive as ever, but with her eyes fastened upon him and giving no uncertain promise on the first occasion of one of those mad letters, those rash outbreaks of Ube Plata 1Rtx>er. 381 writing, in which she worked off from a distance her morsels of suppressed passion. "Ah poor little Maria of Neubourg," said the agent, "Queen of dead cats ! " But the tender was moving off. All waved their hands. The plump lady blew a kiss to the Galileo with an ardent gesture. I saw once more my poor neighbor seated at a distance from his wife and son. A fresh life of misery and torture was beginning for him. And I caught flying as it were a queer salute from the Swiss lady, who, not knowing which to select from the many friends who were looking at her from above, took in with one wide glance of sweet gratitude the whole of the Galilee? s quarter-deck. The last one that I marked was the professor seated next her, his back bent, smiling with half-shut eyes and his tongue in his cheek, as if in mockery of his wife, her lovers, the Atlantic Ocean, the old continent and the new. Then all these faces melted away and were lost to my sight forever. Meanwhile there came alongside another tender, which was to take off the Argentines, the Brazilian family, and all the rest. But from delicacy no one would go down before the young lady from Mestre, who as was well known w r ould have to be carried and who had not yet appeared on deck. The cap- tain shook his head when asked about her. All were waiting in double line at the door of the saloon. First came out the Garibaldian, who, taking 382