Four Months Afoot in Spain Part 1

FOUR MONTHS AFOOT IN SPAIN.

by Harry A. Franck.

A FOREWORD

Yet another story of travels in western Europe, especially one having for its basis the mere random wanderings of a four-months' absence from home, may seem almost to call for apology. If so, it is hereby duly tendered. What befell me on this vacation jaunt is no story of harrowing adventure, nor yet a record of the acquisition of new facts.

But as I covered a thousand miles of the Iberian peninsula on foot, twice that distance by third-cla.s.s rail, and am given to mingling with "the ma.s.ses," it may be that there have filtered into the following pages some facts and impressions that will be new to the reader. Yet it is less to record these that I have written, than to answer a question that has often been put to me since my return:

"How can a man make such a journey on $172?"

THE AUTHOR.

CHAPTER I

A 'TWEENDECKS JOURNEY

Not the least of the virtues of the private schools of New York City is the length of their summer vacations. It was an evening late in May that I mounted to my lodgings in Hartley Hall, rollicksome with the information that I should soon be free from professional duties a full four months. Where I preferred to spend that term of freedom was easily decided. Except for one migratory "year off," I had not been so long outside a cla.s.sroom since my fifth birthday; and it seemed fully as far back that I had begun to dream of tramping through Spain. If the desire had in earlier days battened on mere curiosity, it found more rational nourishment now in my hope of acquiring greater fluency in the Spanish tongue, the teaching of which, with other European languages, was the source of my livelihood.

There was one potent obstacle, however, to my jubilant planning. When I had set aside the smallest portion of my savings that could tide me over the first month of autumn, there was left a stark one hundred and seventy-two dollars. The briefest of mathematical calculations demonstrated that such a sum could cover but scantily one hundred and twenty days. Yet the blithesome project would not be put to rout by mere figures. I had been well schooled at least in the art of spending sparingly; with a long summer before me I was not averse to a bit of adventure, even the adventure of falling penniless in foreign lands. A permanent stranding was easily averted--I had but to leave in trust a sum sufficient for repatriation, to be forwarded to whatever corner of the globe insolvency might overhaul me. Which, being done, I pocketed in express checks and cash the remainder of my resources--to-wit, one hundred and thirty-two dollars--tossed into a battered suit-case a summer's supply of small clothes and a thread-bare costume for s.h.i.+p wear, and set out to discover what portion of the Iberian peninsula might be surveyed with such equipment.

Thus it was that on the morning of June first I boarded the "L" as usual at One Hundred and Sixteenth street; but took this time the west side express instead of the local that screeches off at Fifty-third into the heart of the city. A serge suit of an earlier vintage and double-soled oxfords were the chief articles of my attire, reduced already to Spanish simplicity except for the fleckless collar and the cracked derby I had donned for the flight through exacting Manhattan. As for the suitcase that rocked against the platform gate as we roared southward, it was still far from a pedestrian's scrip. For with the ambitious resolution to rectify during the long sea voyage before me some of the sins of omission, I had stuffed into it at the last moment a dozen cla.s.sic volumes in Sixth-avenue bindings.

"Christ'fer!" croaked the guard.

I descended to the street and threaded my way to the ferry. Across the river Hoboken was thronged with luggage-laden mankind, swarthy sons and daughters of toil for the most part; an eddying stream of which the general trend was toward a group of steams.h.i.+p docks. With it I was borne into a vast two-story pier, strewn below with everything that s.h.i.+ps transport across the seas and resounding above with the voice of an excited mult.i.tude. Near the center of the upper wharf stood an isolated booth bearing a transient sign-board:

"SCHNELLDAMPFER.

PRINZESSIN ----."

Within, sat a coatless, broad-gauge Teuton, puffing at a stogie.

"Third-cla.s.s to Gibraltar," I requested, stooping to peer through the wicket.

The German reached mechanically for a pen and began to fill in a leaf of what looked like a large check-book. Then he paused and squinted out upon me:

Ah--er--you mean _steerage_?"

"Steerage, mein Herr; to Gibraltar."

He signed the blue check and pushed it toward me, still holding it firmly by one corner.

"Thirty dollars and fifty cents," he rumbled.

I paid it and, ticket in hand, wormed my way to the nearer of two gangways. Here I was repulsed; but at the second, an officer of immaculate exterior but for two very bleary eyes, tore off a corner of the blue check and jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the steamer behind him. As I set foot on her deck a seaman sprang up suddenly from the scuppers and hurled at my chest a tightly rolled blanket. I caught it without a fumble, having once dabbled in football, and, spreading it out on a hatch, disclosed to view a deep tin plate, a huge cup, a knife, fork and spoon of leaden hue, and a red card announcing itself as "Buono per una razione."

A hasty inspection of the _Prinzessen_ ---- confirmed a suspicion that she would not offer the advantages of the steamers plying the northern route. She was a princess indeed, a sailor's princess, such as he may find who has the stomach to search in the dives along West street or down on the lower Bowery. At her launching she had, perhaps, justified her christening; but long years have pa.s.sed since she was degraded to the unfastidious southern service.

The steerage section, congested now with disheveled Latins and c.u.mbrous bundles, comprised the forward main deck, bounded on the bow by the forecastlehead and aft by an iron wall that rose a sheer eight feet to the first-cla.s.s promenade, above which opened the hurricane deck and higher still the wheelhouse and bridge. This s.p.a.ce was further limited by two large hatchways, covered with tarpaulins, of which a corner of each was thrown back to disclose two dark holes like the mouths of a mine. By these one entered the third-cla.s.s quarters, of which the forward was a.s.signed to "single men" and the other to any species of the human race that does not fall into that category. I descended the first by a perpendicular ladder to a dungeon where all but utter darkness reigned. As my eyes accustomed themselves to this condition, there grew up about me row after row of double-decked bunks, heaped with indistinct shapes. I approached the nearest and was confronted by two wolfish eyes, then another pair and another flashed up about me on every side.

My foresighted fellow-pa.s.sengers, having preempted sleeping-s.p.a.ce, were prepared to hold their claims by force of arms--and baggage.

Every berth seemed to be taken. I meandered in and out among them until in a far corner I found one empty; but as I laid a hand upon its edge, a cadaverous youth sprang at me with a plaintive whine, "E mio! e mio!" I returned to the central s.p.a.ce. A sweater-clad sailor whom I had not made out before was standing at the edge of an opening in the deck similar to that above.

"Qui non ch' e piu," he said; "Giu!"

I descended accordingly to a second bridewell below the water-line and lighted only by a feeble electric bulb in the ceiling. Here half the bunks were unoccupied. I chose one athwarts.h.i.+ps against the forward bulkhead--a wooden bin containing a burlap sack of straw--tossed into it blanket and baggage, and climbed again to daylight and fresh air.

At eleven the sepulchral ba.s.s of the steamer sounded, the vast pier, banked with straining faces and fluttering handkerchiefs, began slowly to recede, sweeping with it the adjoining city, until all Hoboken had joined in the flight to the neighboring hills. We were off. I pitched overboard the cracked derby and crowded with a half-thousand others to the rail, eager for the long-antic.i.p.ated pleasure of watching the inimitable panorama of New York grow smaller and smaller and melt away on the horizon. But we were barely abreast the Battery when three officers, alleging the impossibility of checking their human cargo on the open deck, ordered the entire steerage community below. When, long after, it came my turn to be released, my native land was utterly effaced, and the deck was spattering with a chilling rain before which we retreated and frittered away the remnant of the day with amical advances and bachelor banter.

In the morning the scene was transformed. Almost without exception my fellow-voyagers had changed from the somber garb of America to the picturesque comfort of their first landing in the Western world. The steerage deck, flooded with suns.h.i.+ne, resembled the _piazza_ of some Calabrian city on a day of festival. Women in many-hued vesture and brilliant _fazzoletti_ sat in groups on the hatches, suckling their babes or mirthful over their knitting. Along the rail lounged men in bag-like trousers and tight-fitting jackets of velveteen, with broad scarlet sashes. Jaunty, deep-chested youths strolled fore and aft angling for glances from winsome eyes. Unromantic elders squatted in circles about the deck, screaming over games of mora; in and out among them all raced sportive bambini. High up on a winch sat a slender fellow Turkish fas.h.i.+on, thumbing a zither.

Though there was not one beside myself to whom that tongue was native, English was still the dominating language. Except for a handful of Greeks, the entire 'tweendecks company hailed from southern Italy or her islands. But force of habit or linguistic pride still gave full sway to the slang-strewn speech of east New York or the labor camp. There were not a few who might have expressed themselves far more clearly in some other medium, yet when I addressed them in Italian silence was frequently the response. The new world was still too close astern to give way to the spell of the old.

But it was in their mother tongue that I exchanged the first confidences with three young men with whom I pa.s.sed many an hour during the journey.

The mightiest was Antonio Ma.s.sarone, a vociferous giant of twenty, whose scorn was unbounded for those of his race who had pursued fortune no further than the over-peopled cities of our eastern coast. Emigration had carried him to the mines of Nevada, and it was seldom that he refrained from patting his garnished waistband when tales of experience were exchanging. But the time had come when he must give up his princely wage of three dollars a day and return for years of drudgery and drill at as many cents, or forever forfeit the right to dwell in his native land. When his term was ended he would again turn westward; before that glad day comes what a stalwart task confronts certain officers of the Italian army!

Nicol, too, expected to return. In fact, of all the steerage community a very few had resolved to remain at home, and for each of these there were a score who had emigrated a half-dozen times in the face of similar resolutions. Nicol was a bootblack, proud of his calling and envious of no other. Already there hovered in his day dreams a three-chair "parlor" in which his station should be nearest the door and bordering on the cash-register. Conscription called him also, but he approached the day of recruiting light of heart, knowing a man of four feet nine would be quickly rejected.

As for Pietro Scerbo, the last of our quartet, his home-coming was voluntary, for the family obligation to the army had already been fulfilled by two older brothers. Pietro had spent his eighteen months kneading spaghetti dough in the Bronx at seven dollars a week; and he physically quaked at the sarcasm of 'Tonio on the subject of wages.

Still he was by no means returning empty-handed. "To be sure, I am not rich with gold, like 'Tonio," he confessed one day, when the miner was out of earshot, "but I have spent only what I must--two dollars in the boarding-house, sometimes some clothes, and in the winter each week six lire to hear Caruso."

Thirty dollars a month and the peerless-voiced a necessity of life! I, too, had been a frequent "standee" at the Metropolitan, yet had as often charged myself with being an extravagant young rascal.

The steerage rations on the _Prinzessin_ were in no way out of keeping with her general unattractiveness. Those who kept to their bunks until expelled by the seaman whose duties included the daily fumigation of the dungeons, were in no way the losers for being deprived of the infantile roll and the strange imitation of coffee that made up the European breakfast. Sea breezes bring appet.i.te, however, especially on a faintly rippling ocean, and it was not strange that, though the dinner-hour came early, even racial lethargy fled at its announcement. Long before noon a single jangle of the steward's bell cut short all morning pastimes and instantly choked the pa.s.sages to the lower regions with a clamorous, jocose struggle of humanity as those on deck dived below for their meal-hour implements and collided with the foresighted, fighting their way up the ladders. Once disentangled, we filed by the mouth of the culinary cavern under the forecastlehead, to receive each a ladleful of the particular piece de resistance of the day, a half-grown loaf of bread, and a br.i.m.m.i.n.g cupful of red wine. Thus laden, each squirmed his way through the mult.i.tude and made table of whatever s.p.a.ce offered,--on the edge of a hatch, the drum of a winch, or on the deck itself.

Unvaryingly day by day boiled beef alternated with pork and beans. Then there was macaroni, not alternately, nor yet moderately, but ubiquitously, fourteen days a week; for supper was in no way different from dinner even in the unearthly hour of its serving. It was tolerably coa.r.s.e macaroni, but otherwise no worse than omnipresent macaroni must be when boiled by the barrel under the watchful eye of a rotund, torpescent, bath-fearing, tobacco-loving, Neapolitan s.h.i.+p's cook. For the wine we were supremely grateful; not that it was particularly good wine, but such as it was not even the pirates in the galley could make it worse.

The ensembled climax of this daily extravaganza, however, had for its setting the steerage "washroom," an iron cell furnished with two asthmatic salt-water faucets. To it dashed first the long experienced in the quick-lunch world, and on their heels the competing mult.i.tude.

The 'tweendecks strongholds housed six hundred, the "wash-room" six, whence it goes without saying that the minority was always in power and the majority howling for admittance and a division of the spoils. Yet dissension, as is wont, was rampant even among the sovereign. From within sounded the splas.h.i.+ng of water, the t.i.ttering of jostled damsels, or the shouting for pa.s.sage of one who had resigned his post and must run the gauntlet to freedom through a vociferous raillery. In due time complete rotation in office was accomplished, but it was ever a late hour when the last gourmand emerged from the alleyway and carried his dripping utensils below.

The _Prinzessin_ plowed steadily eastward. Gradually, as the scent of the old world came stronger to our nostrils, the tongue of the West fell into disuse. Had I been innocent of Italian I must soon have lost all share in the general activities. As it was, I had the entree to each group; even the solemn socialists, seated together behind the winch planning the details of the portending reversal of society, did not lower their voices as I pa.s.sed.

How little akin are antic.i.p.ation and realization! Ever before on the high seas it had been my part to labor unceasingly among cattle pens or to bear the moil of watch and watch; and the unlimited leisure of the ticketed had seemed always fit object for envy. Yet here was I myself at last crossing the Atlantic as a pa.s.senger, and weary already of this forced inactivity before the voyage was well begun. The first full day, to be sure, had pa.s.sed delightfully, dozing care-free in the sun or striding through the top-most volume in my luggage. But before the second was ended reading became a bore; idling more fatiguing than the wielding of a coal-shovel. On the third, I sauntered down into the forecastle more than half inclined to suggest to one of its inmates a reversal of roles; but the watch below greeted me with that chill disdain accorded mere pa.s.sengers, never once lapsing into the masculine banter that would have marked my acceptance as an equal. As a last resort I set off on long pedestrian tours of the deck, to the astonishment of the lounging Latins, though now and then some youth inoculated with the restlessness of the West, notably 'Tonio, fell in with me for a mile or two.

It was the miner, too, who first accepted my challenge to a bout of hand-wrestling and quickly brought me undeserved fame by sprawling p.r.o.ne on his back, when, had he employed a t.i.the of science, he might have tossed me into the scuppers. From the moment of its introduction this exotic pastime won great popularity. Preliminary jousts filled the morning hours; toward evening the hatches were transformed into grandstands from which the a.s.sembled third-cla.s.s populace cheered on the panting contestants and greeted each downfall with a cannonade of laughter, in which even the vanquished joined.

More constant and universal than all else, however, was the demand for music. The most diffident possessor of a mouth-organ or a jew's-harp knew no peace during his waking hours. Great was the joy when, as dusk was falling on the second day out, a Calabrian who had won fortune and corpulence as a grocer in Harlem, clambered on deck, straining affectionately to his bosom a black box with megaphone attachment.

"E un fonografo," he announced proudly; "a present I take to the old madre at home." He warded off with his elbows the exultant uprising and deposited the instrument tenderly on a handkerchief spread by his wife on a corner of the hatch. "For a hundred dollars, signori!" he cried; "Madre di Dio! How she will wonder if there is a little man in the box!

For on the first day, signori, I do not tell her how the music is put in the fonografo, ha! ha! ha! not for a whole day!"--and the joke came perilously near to choking him into apoplexy long before its perpetration.

A turn of the key and the apparatus struck up "La donna e mobile," the strikingly clear tones floating away on the evening air to blend with the wash of the sea on our bow. A hush fell over the forward deck; into the circle of faces illumed by the swinging s.h.i.+p's lantern crept the mirage of dreams; a sigh sounded in the black night of the outskirts.

"E Bonci, amici," whispered the Calabrian as the last note died away.