Diary of a Pilgrimage Part 3

"That's all right, my dear sir; don't you fret about that. We see how it is. We only wish we could do something to help you."

The poor fellow seemed happier and more resigned after that.

B. and I hurried on board at Dover, and were just in time to secure the last two berths in the boat; and we were glad that we had managed to do this because our idea was that we should, after a good supper, turn in and go comfortably to sleep.

B. said:

"What I like to do, during a sea pa.s.sage, is to go to sleep, and then wake up and find that I am there."

We made a very creditable supper. I explained to B. the ballast principle held by my seafaring friend, and he agreed with me that the idea seemed reasonable; and, as there was a fixed price for supper, and you had as much as you liked, we determined to give the plan a fair trial.

B. left me after supper somewhat abruptly, as it appeared to me, and I took a stroll on deck by myself. I did not feel very comfortable. I am what I call a moderate sailor. I do not go to excess in either direction. On ordinary occasions, I can swagger about and smoke my pipe, and lie about my Channel experiences with the best of them. But when there is what the captain calls "a bit of a sea on," I feel sad, and try to get away from the smell of the engines and the proximity of people who smoke green cigars.

There was a man smoking a peculiarly mellow and unctuous cigar on deck when I got there. I don't believe he smoked it because he enjoyed it.

He did not look as if he enjoyed it. I believe he smoked it merely to show how well he was feeling, and to irritate people who were not feeling very well.

There is something very blatantly offensive about the man who feels well on board a boat.

I am very objectionable myself, I know, when I am feeling all right. It is not enough for me that I am not ill. I want everybody to see that I am not ill. It seems to me that I am wasting myself if I don't let every human being in the vessel know that I am not ill. I cannot sit still and be thankful, like you'd imagine a sensible man would. I walk about the s.h.i.+p--smoking, of course--and look at people who are not well with mild but pitying surprise, as if I wondered what it was like and how they did it. It is very foolish of me, I know, but I cannot help it. I suppose it is the human nature that exists in even the best of us that makes us act like this.

I could not get away from this man's cigar; or when I did, I came within range of the perfume from the engine-room, and felt I wanted to go back to the cigar. There seemed to be no neutral ground between the two.

If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore.

It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-cla.s.s and then ride third--that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of the s.h.i.+p, and feel aristocratic and sick.

A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people--I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was--came up to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of the s.h.i.+p. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first voyage.

I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.

He replied: "Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night."

What it seemed to me was, that the s.h.i.+p would try to lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether.

And this is what he called being a "bit skittis.h.!.+"

Seafaring people talk like this, because they are silly, and do not know any better. It is no use being angry with them.

I got a little sleep at last. Not in the bunk I had been at such pains to secure: I would not have stopped down in that stuffy saloon, if anybody had offered me a hundred pounds for doing so. Not that anybody did; nor that anybody seemed to want me there at all. I gathered this from the fact that the first thing that met my eye, after I had succeeded in clawing my way down, was a boot. The air was full of boots. There were sixty men sleeping there--or, as regards the majority, I should say _trying_ to sleep there--some in bunks, some on tables, and some under tables. One man _was_ asleep, and was snoring like a hippopotamus--like a hippopotamus that had caught a cold, and was hoa.r.s.e; and the other fifty-nine were sitting up, throwing their boots at him. It was a snore, very difficult to locate. From which particular berth, in that dimly-lighted, evil-smelling place, it proceeded n.o.body was quite sure.

At one moment, it appeared to come, wailing and sobbing, from the larboard, and the next instant it thundered forth, seemingly from the starboard. So every man who could reach a boot picked it up, and threw it promiscuously, silently praying to Providence, as he did so, to guide it aright and bring it safe to its desired haven.

I watched the weird scene for a minute or two, and then I hauled myself on deck again, and sat down--and went to sleep on a coil of rope; and was awakened, in the course of time, by a sailor who wanted that coil of rope to throw at the head of a man who was standing, doing no harm to anybody, on the quay at Ostend.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 24TH

Arrival at Ostend.--Coffee and Rolls.--Difficulty of Making French Waiters understand German.--Advantages of Possessing a Conscience That Does Not Get Up Too Early.--Villainy Triumphant.--Virtue Ordered Outside.--A Homely English Row.

When I say I was "awakened" at Ostend, I do not speak the strict truth.

I was not awakened--not properly. I was only half-awakened. I never did get fairly awake until the afternoon. During the journey from Ostend to Cologne I was three-parts asleep and one-part partially awake.

At Ostend, however, I was sufficiently aroused to grasp the idea that we had got somewhere, and that I must find my luggage and B., and do something or other; in addition to which, a strange, vague instinct, but one which I have never yet known deceive me, hovering about my mind, and telling me that I was in the neighbourhood of something to eat and drink, spurred me to vigour and action.

I hurried down into the saloon and there found B. He excused himself for having left me alone all night--he need not have troubled himself. I had not pined for him in the least. If the only woman I had ever loved had been on board, I should have sat silent, and let any other fellow talk to her that wanted to, and that felt equal to it--by explaining that he had met a friend and that they had been talking. It appeared to have been a trying conversation.

I also ran against the talkative man and his companion. Such a complete wreck of a once strong man as the latter looked I have never before seen.

Mere sea-sickness, however severe, could never have accounted for the change in his appearance since, happy and hopeful, he entered the railway-carriage at Victoria six short hours ago. His friend, on the other hand, appeared fresh and cheerful, and was relating an anecdote about a cow.

We took our bags into the Custom House and opened them, and I sat down on mine, and immediately went to sleep.

When I awoke, somebody whom I mistook at first for a Field-Marshal, and from force of habit--I was once a volunteer--saluted, was standing over me, pointing melodramatically at my bag. I a.s.sured him in picturesque German that I had nothing to declare. He did not appear to comprehend me, which struck me as curious, and took the bag away from me, which left me nothing to sit upon but the floor. But I felt too sleepy to be indignant.

After our luggage had been examined, we went into the buffet. My instinct had not misled me: there I found hot coffee, and rolls and b.u.t.ter. I ordered two coffees with milk, some bread, and some b.u.t.ter. I ordered them in the best German I knew. As n.o.body understood me, I went and got the things for myself. It saves a deal of argument, that method.

People seem to know what you mean in a moment then.

B. suggested that while we were in Belgium, where everybody spoke French, while very few indeed knew German, I should stand a better chance of being understood if I talked less German and more French.

He said:

"It will be easier for you, and less of a strain upon the natives. You stick to French," he continued, "as long as ever you can. You will get along much better with French. You will come across people now and then--smart, intelligent people--who will partially understand your French, but no human being, except a thought-reader, will ever obtain any glimmering of what you mean from your German."

"Oh, are we in Belgium," I replied sleepily; "I thought we were in Germany. I didn't know." And then, in a burst of confidence, I added, feeling that further deceit was useless, "I don't know where I am, you know."

"No, I thought you didn't," he replied. "That is exactly the idea you give anybody. I wish you'd wake up a bit."

We waited about an hour at Ostend, while our train was made up. There was only one carriage labelled for Cologne, and four more pa.s.sengers wanted to go there than the compartment would hold.

Not being aware of this, B. and I made no haste to secure places, and, in consequence, when, having finished our coffee, we leisurely strolled up and opened the carriage door we saw that every seat was already booked.

A bag was in one s.p.a.ce and a rug in another, an umbrella booked a third, and so on. n.o.body was there, but the seats were gone!

It is the unwritten law among travellers that a man's luggage deposited upon a seat, shall secure that seat to him until he comes to sit upon it himself. This is a good law and a just law, and one that, in my normal state, I myself would die to uphold and maintain.

But at three o'clock on a chilly morning one's moral sensibilities are not properly developed. The average man's conscience does not begin work till eight or nine o'clock--not till after breakfast, in fact. At three a.m. he will do things that at three in the afternoon his soul would revolt at.

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances I should as soon have thought of s.h.i.+fting a man's bag and appropriating his seat as an ancient Hebrew squatter would have thought of removing his neighbour's landmark; but at this time in the morning my better nature was asleep.

I have often read of a man's better nature being suddenly awakened. The business is generally accomplished by an organ-grinder or a little child (I would back the latter, at all events--give it a fair chance--to awaken anything in this world that was not stone deaf, or that had not been dead for more than twenty-four hours); and if an organ-grinder or a little child had been around Ostend station that morning, things might have been different.

B. and I might have been saved from crime. Just as we were in the middle of our villainy, the organ-grinder or the child would have struck up, and we should have burst into tears, and have rushed from the carriage, and have fallen upon each other's necks outside on the platform, and have wept, and waited for the next train.

As it was, after looking carefully round to see that n.o.body was watching us, we slipped quickly into the carriage, and, making room for ourselves among the luggage there, sat down and tried to look innocent and easy.

B. said that the best thing we could do, when the other people came, would be to pretend to be dead asleep, and too stupid to understand anything.

I replied that as far as I was concerned, I thought I could convey the desired impression without stooping to deceit at all, and prepared to make myself comfortable.