There was preaching and singing in the Sailors’ Home of Yokohama on the evening of my arrival. The white-bearded missionary styled the service a “mass meeting for Christ.” The beachcombers in attendance were not those to cavil at names. So long as they were permitted to doze away the evening in comfortable chairs, “holy Joe” might assign any reason he chose for their presence, though there were those near me at the back of the room who grumbled now and then at the monotonous voice that disturbed their dreams.

No such protest, certainly, rose to the lips of the herculanean Chilian with whom I had fallen in during the afternoon, for whatever his inner feelings, they were stifled by his deep-rooted respect for religious services. One by one, the beachcombers drifted out into the less strident night; but the South American clung to his place as he would have stuck to his look-out in a tempestuous sea. Had “holy Joe” been gifted with a commonplace sense of the fitness of things he might have held one hearer until the benediction. Late in the evening, however, he broke off his absorbing dissertation on the Oneness of the Trinity to assign a hymn, and, stepping down among us, fell to distributing pledges of the “Royal Naval Temperance Society.”

“Válgame Dios!” breathed the Chilian, as a pamphlet dropped into his lap. “He asks me to sign the pledge, me, who haven’t had the price of a thimbleful in two months! This is too much! Vámonos, hombre!” and, stepping over the back of his chair, he stalked to the door.

In the darkness outside, a cringing creature accosted us. Something in the whining Italian in which he spoke led me to look more closely at him. It was the Neapolitan half-caste; more ragged and woe-begone than ever, and smudged with the dust of the coal bunkers in which he had stowed away in Kobe harbor.

I told his story to the Chilian as we struck off together towards 484the park which I fancied must be our resting-place for the night. The South American, however, had not been three months “on the beach” without learning some of the secrets of Yokohama. He marched self-confidently down the main thoroughfare, past the German and American consulates, turned a corner at the European post-office, and, brushing along a well-kept hedge, stopped in the deep shadow of a short driveway. Before us was a high wooden gate flanked by two taller pillars, beyond which the thin moonlight disclosed the outlines of a large, two-story dwelling.

“Look here, friend,” I interposed, “if you’re going to try burglary—”

“Cállete la boca, hombre!” muttered the Chilian. “The patrol will hear you. Come on,” and, placing both hands on the top of the gate, he vaulted it as easily as if it had been only half its six feet in height. I followed, and the half-breed tumbled over after me, his heels beating a noisy tattoo on the barrier. Once inside, however, the Chilian seemed to lose all fear of the patrol and crunched along the graveled walk, talking freely.

“Lucky thing for the beachcombers, this war,” he said; “If there were peace we’d be sleeping in the park. Suppose the Czar knew he was giving us posada?” he chuckled, marching around to the back of the building. There was no sign of life within. Mounting to the back veranda, our guide snatched open one shutter of a low window. The half-breed was trembling piteously, though whether from hunger, fatigue, or fear, I could not know. One needed only to look hard at him to set his teeth rattling.

But I myself had no longing to be taken for a burglar.

“Here! What’s the game?” I demanded, nudging the Chilian.

“Why, man,” he replied, “this is our hotel, the Russian consulate,” and he stepped in through the open window.

My misgivings fled. Japan and Russia were at war; the consulate, therefore, must be unoccupied, and more than that, it was Russian territory, on which the police of Japan had no more authority than in Moscow. I swung a leg over the window sill.

“Ascolta!” gasped the half-caste, snatching at my jacket; “Ci sono gente!”

I paused to listen. From somewhere close at hand came a muffled snort.

“Come on,” laughed the Chilian. “It’s one of the boys, snoring. Several of them make posada here.”

485When we had climbed in and closed the shutter, he struck a match. The room was entirely unfurnished, but carpeted with grass mats so soft that a bed would have been superfluous. The Chilian pulled open the door of a closet and brought forth a candle, pipe, blanket, and a paper novel in Spanish.

“Of course it’s only the servants’ quarters,” he apologized, spreading out the blanket and lighting candle and pipe; “the main part of the house is tight locked. But there’s plenty of room for such of the boys as I have passed the word to,—sober fellows that won’t burn the place up.”

He picked up the novel and was still reading when I fell asleep. Sunlight streaming into my face and the sound of an unfamiliar voice awakened me in what seemed a short hour afterward. The window by which we had entered stood wide open, and a Japanese in European garb was peering in upon us.

“What you make here?” he demanded, as I sprang to my feet. “Come out quick or I call the police.”

The Chilian stirred and thrust aside the jacket that covered his face.

“Go on way!” he growled, in the first English I had heard from his lips. “Go on way an’ leave us to sleep.”

“I call the police,” repeated the native.

“Bloody thunder, police!” bawled my partner, sitting up. “Go on way or I break your face.”

The Jap left hastily.

“Close the shutters,” continued the Chilian, in his own tongue. “Too early to get up yet. That fellow is from the French consul, who has charge of this place. He disturbs us every morning, but he can do nothing.”

Two hours later the Chilian stowed away his property. When the coast was clear, we climbed the gate and returned to the Home.

Life on the beach in Yokohama might have grown monotonous in the days that followed but for the necessity of an incessant scramble for rice and fishes. Out beyond the park were a score of native shops where a Gargantuan feast of rice and stewed niku—meat of uncertain antecedents—sold for a song. There were times, of course, when we had not even a song between us; but in the Chinese quarters nearer the harbor, queued shopkeepers offered an armful of Oriental fruits and the thin strips of roasted pork popularly known as “rat-tails” for half a vocal effort. Or, failing this, there were the vendors 486of soba, who appeared with their push-carts as dusk fell, demanding only two sen for a bowl of this Japanese macaroni swimming in greasy water, and the use of a badly-worn pair of chopsticks. The Chilian was versatile, I had been “busted” before; between us we rarely failed to find the means of patronizing at least the street vendors before retreating to Russian territory.

Never had I doubted, on the day of my stroll back from Tokyo, that the end of August would find me again in “the States.” By the time I had learned to vault the consulate gate as noiselessly as the Chilian, the Pacific seemed a far greater barrier. For shipping was dull in Yokohama; the shipping, that is, of white seamen. That day was rare in which at least one ship did not weigh anchor; but their crews were Oriental. His book might be swollen with honorable discharges, his stubby fingers nimble at making knots and splices; but plain Jack Tar from the western world was left to knock his heels on the long stone jetty and hurl stentorian oaths at each departing craft.

A “windjammer,” requiring a new crew, would have solved many personal problems; and there were three such vessels, two full-rigged ships and a bark, riding at anchor far out beyond the breakwater. But as far back as the oldest beachcomber could remember, they had showed no signs of life, and their gaunt masts and bare yards had long since come to be as permanent fixtures in the landscape as the eternal hills beyond. Moreover, rumor had it that the crafts were full-handed. Now and then a pair of their apprentices dropped into the Home of an evening; more than one of “the boys,” skirmishing for breakfast in the gray of dawn, had come upon the light of one of their crews on his beams’ ends in the gutter of the undignified district beyond the canal. But sober or besotted, not a man of them dreamed of clearing out; and “the boys” had long since given up all hope of being called to fill a vacancy.

I had, of course, lost no time in making known my existence at the American consulate. Captains were not unknown in the legation; not many moons since, a man had actually been signed on in that very building! Each interview with the genial consul was full of good cheer; yet, as a really satisfying portion, good cheer was infinitely inferior to a bowl of soba. Between pursuing that elusive substance through the streets of Yokohama and over her suburban hills, and wiping our feet on the mats of steamship offices of high and low degree, neither the Chilian nor I found cause to complain of the inactivity of existence.

487In one thing the South American was eccentric. He would not beg. Though, to tell the truth, there was small temptation to be overcome in that regard; for the Jap is an ardent believer in the old adage anent the initial dwelling place of charity. Twice we found work in the city, the first in the press room of one of Japan’s English newspapers, the second on the wharf. But if the price of living was low, the wage scale was even more debased; and there were others to partake of our earnings, for in Yokohama were at least a score of beachcombers with well-developed appetites, closely banded together in a profit-sharing company.

When work failed, the blanket in the cupboard netted one yen. That gone, there were a few odds and ends of wearing apparel in my bundle to be offered up. The Chilian owned two pair of shoes; an extraordinary amplitude of wardrobe that smacked of foppishness. He felt more comfortable when the extra pair had been transferred from “holy Joe’s” keeping to the sagging line above the pawnshop door. When the shoes had been eaten, intercourse with the broker lapsed. Except for my kodak and our pipes not a thing remained but the clothes we stood in.

Then came the legacy from “Frisco Kid.” The “Kid” was one of the few Americans among us. On the first evening that we were forced to retreat “sobaless” to the Home, he drew me aside for a moment.

“You know,” he whispered, “the Pliades is going out to-night? I’m going to have a try at sticking away on her, an’ the washee man has a few of my rags.”

He thrust into my hand a wooden laundry check.

“If I don’t turn up in the morning, the stuff’s yours. So long. I’ll give ’em your regards in the States.”

At nine next day he had not returned, and, having satisfied the laundryman with a few coppers borrowed from the missionary, we feasted royally on the contents of the bundle,—a khaki uniform and two shirts.

It was on Saturday, nearly two weeks after my return from Tokyo, that the first prospect of escape from Japan presented itself,—a promise from the consul to speak in my behalf to the captain of a fast mail steamer to sail a few days later. Therein lay the last hope of completing my journey in the fifteen months set, and I took care that the consul should suffer no lapse of memory.

Early the following Monday, the last day of July, I turned in at 488the consulate just as two men, absorbed in conversation, emerged. One was the vice-consul; the other, a man of some fifty years, stalwart of figure and of a meditative cast of countenance rendered more solemn by thick-rimmed spectacles, a Quakerish felt hat, and long black locks. I set him down at once for a missionary, and, with a seaman’s instinctive aversion for the cloth, stepped aside to let him pass. The vice-consul, however, catching sight of me as he shook the stranger’s hand, beckoned to me to approach.

“By the way,” he said, addressing the stranger; “here is an American sailor who has been hanging around for a couple of weeks, and he has not been drunk once—”

Obviously not; it takes money even to buy saki.

“Can’t you take him on, captain?”

Captain, indeed! Of what? The mail steamer, perhaps. I stepped forward eagerly.

“Umph!” said the stranger, looking me over. “On the beach, eh? Why, yes, I am none too full-handed. But it’s too late to sign him on; my articles have been endorsed.

“Still,” he went on, “he can come on board and I’ll set him down as a stowaway, and sign him on when once we’re clear of port.”

“Good!” cried the vice-consul. “There you are! Now don’t loaf and make us ashamed to ask a favor of the captain next time.”

“Here’s a yen,” said the captain. “Go get something to eat and wait for me on the jetty.”

I raced away to the Home to invite the Chilian to a farewell luncheon; then returned to the appointed rendezvous. The day was stormy, and a dozen downpours drenched me as many times during the seven hours that I waited. Towards nightfall the captain drove up in a ’rickshaw and, without giving me the least sign of recognition, stepped into his launch. As he disappeared in the cabin below, I sprang to the deck of the craft.

Ten minutes later I should have given something to have been able to spring back on the wharf. The launch raced at full speed out across the harbor, past the last steamer riding at anchor, and turned her prow towards the open sea. Where in the name of Father Neptune was she bound? I wiped the water from my eyes and gazed in astonishment at the receding shore. The last tramp was already far astern. The higher waves of the outer bay caught the tiny craft as she slipped through the mouth of the breakwater and sent me waltzing about the slippery deck. Had the long-haired lunatic in the cabin chosen a launch for a sea voyage or—? Then all at once I understood, and gasped with dismay. Far off through the driving rain appeared the towering masts of the sailing vessels, and that one towards which we were headed had her sails bent, ready for departure. That blessed vice-consul had sentenced me to work my way home on a windjammer!

The Russian consulate of Yokohama, in which we “beachcombers” slept

Japanese types in a temple inclosure

489Dusk was settling over the harbor when the launch bumped against the ship’s side. The rain had ceased. Several seamen, sprawling about the forward deck, sprang to their feet as I poked my head over the bulwarks.

“Hooray!” bellowed a stentorian voice, “A new shipmate, lads. Turn out an’—”

The rest was lost in the resulting uproar. Sailors in every stage of undress stumbled out of the forecastle; pimple-faced apprentices bobbed up from amidships; even “Chips” and the sailmaker lost their dignity and hurried forward, and in the twinkling of an eye I was surrounded by all hands and the cook.

The “doctor” gave me leave to dry my uniform in the galley, and I retired to the forecastle to spin my yarn to the excited crew. A general laugh greeted the account of my meeting with the captain.

“A stowaway, is it!” cried one of the seamen. “There’d be more truth in sayin’ you was shanghaied. That’s a favorite game with the old man to cut down expenses an’ square ’imself with the owners. Sign you on! Of course ’e could if ’e’d wanted. No damn fear! An’ ’im five ’ands short. Hell, if this was a civilized port not a clearance paper would ’e get until ’e’d signed on the crew the articles calls for. Howsomever, ’ere you are, an’ it’s no use kickin’ after you’re ’ung. But it’s a ragged deal t’ ’ave t’ work your passage ’ome on a windjammer.”

“This tub?” he went on, in answer to my request for information. “Aye, when I’ve lighted up, I’ll gi’ you ’er story in a pipeful. She’s the Glenalvon, square-rigged ship an’ English built, as you can see wi’ your eyes shut, 1927 tons, solid enough, being all iron but ’er decks an’ the blocks; but that’s all’s can be said for ’er. This crowd shipped on ’er out o’ Newcastle two year ago with coal for Iquique, loaded saltpetre for Yokohama, and she’s bound now for Royal Roads in ballast—to load wheat for ’ome, like ’nough. With a cargo she’s a good sailor, an’ ’as made the States in twenty-four days; but with only mud in ’er bottom an’ foul wi’ barnacles there’s no knowin’. Maybe a month.”

490“Countin’ yourself there’s thirty-three on board, one of ’em a woman an’ two of ’em goats. To begin with, there’s the skipper. Ten t’ one you took ’im for a ‘Christer.’ They all does ashore, but ’e’s a hell of a way from bein’ one afloat. He’s a bluenoser named Andrews, an’ the biggest —— that ever come out o’ Halifax. Mind you don’t fall foul of ’im.”

“The mate’s a bluenoser, too, bit longer ’n a belayin’-pin, with no ’air under ’is cap, an’ no sailorman. Oo ever seen a bald-’ead as was? ’E ain’t been caught ’igher aloft these two year ’n the spanker-boom.

“Second mate’s a Irish lad, just got ’is papers an’ a good seaman, but hazin’ the boys like all these youngish chaps. The doctor’s a Swede, Chips comes from the same island, an’ Sails is a Dutchman. Then there’s seven men in the port watch an’ five in the second mate’s, ten apprentices amidships, only three of ’em big enough t’ be more ’n in the way, an’ ‘Carrot-top,’ the cabin boy. The skipper’s wife—if she is—is a scrawny heifer you wouldn’t be seen walkin’ down the Broomielaw with; a bluenoser, too, some says, but there’s no knowin’, for not a ’and ’as she spoke these two year. An’ there you ’ave the outfit, four less ’n when she shipped ’er mud-hook—after losin’ one off the Horn, two clearin’ out in Chilly, an’ plantin’ my mate in the English cementery up there on the Bluff.”

By the time my clothes were dry the second mate came forward to assign me to the starboard watch, and I turned in with my new messmates. That we were not called until dawn was a sure sign that the day of sailing had not come. After breakfast four apprentices rowed the captain and his wife ashore, and we spent the day painting over the side.

Once turned in again, it barely seemed possible that I had fallen asleep when there came a banging on the iron door of the forecastle and a blatant bellow of:—

“All hands! Up anchor, ho!”

With only five minutes’ grace to jump into our clothes, we tumbled out precipitately. Twenty-two men and boys, their heads still heavy with sleep, grasped the bars of the capstan on the forecastle-head just as five bells sounded, and for four hours we marched round and round the creaking apparatus. One man at a steam winch could have raised the anchor in ten minutes, but here everything was entirely dependent on man-power; the Glenalvon had not so much as a donkey-engine.

491Dawn found us still treading the never-changing circle in time to a mournful dirge sustained by long-winded members of the crew. The sun rose and the sweat ran in streams along the bars. Hunger gnawed us inwardly. The skipper turned out for his morning constitutional, a steamer slipped by us, at every revolution I caught myself gazing regretfully across the bay at the flag-pole of the Russian consulate.

Then all at once the second mate, peering over the side, raised a hand.

“Belay all!” bellowed the skipper, from the poop. “Lay aloft, all hands! Shake ’em out! Man the wheel!”

The crew sprang into the rigging. We loosened a dozen sails and, leaving a man on each mast to clear the downhauls, slid down on deck again and sheeted home the topgallants and the lower topsails. Then came a more arduous task,—to hoist the upper topsail yards. Every human being on board except the captain and his wife tailed out on the rope; even then we were not enough. The massive iron yard rose, but only inch by inch, and every heave seemed to pull our arms half out of their sockets.

Seamen, like Arabs, work best in unison under the inspiration of music. “Sails,” the Glenalvon’s acknowledged leader in vocal productions, burst out in a rasping shriek:—

“As I was walkin’ down Ratcliffe Highway.”

All hands caught up the chorus in a roar that the distant cliffs threw back at us:—

“Blow! boys! blow the man down!” heaving together at each repetition of the word “blow.”

“Sails” continued:—

“A pretty young maid I chanced for to meet.”

“Oh! give us some time to blow the man down!”

“Says she, ‘Young man, will you stand treat?’”

“Blow! boys! blow the man down!”

“‘Delighted,’ says I, ‘for a charmer so sweet.’”

“Oh! give us some time to blow the man down!”

The yard rose a bit faster but by no means rapidly. The skipper paced the poop, cursing us all for blunderers.

“Steward!” he roared, “bring a bottle of grog!”

The “doctor” let go the rope as if it had suddenly turned red-hot, and ran for the lazaret. A smile of anticipation flitted along the 492line of perspiring faces. A promise of double wages for all hands would have been less effective. The resulting heave took me so by surprise that I was carried off my feet.

The cook appeared on the quarter-deck, and the skipper snatched the bottle he carried and examined it attentively. We were too far away to hear their conversation; but the yard was moving skyward by leaps and bounds. Then suddenly the lord and master of us all turned and pitched the bottle into the sea.

“My Gawd!” ran a horrified whisper along the rope. “E’s threw it overboard. ’E thinks we’re sodgerin’.”

But for the tenacity of a few of us the yard must have come down by the run.

Inspiration came again, however, for the cook ran off and returned with a second flagon. The first, it turned out, had a tiny hole in the bottom and was empty.

The topsail was quickly sheeted home and I lined up with the rest before the galley-door to drink my “three fingers” of extremely poor whiskey. Then, breaking up into smaller groups, we hoisted the “fore-and-afters,” and, when we turned in for breakfast an hour late, weak and ugly from hunger, the Glenalvon was carrying every stitch of canvas but the three royals and her cross-jack.

“At least,” I told myself, rubbing my aching arms between mouthfuls of watery “scouse,” “we’re off, and the worst is over.”

Which proved only how little I knew of the vagaries of “windjammers.”

Tokyo Bay, shaped like a whiskey bottle with the neck turned westward, is so nearly land-locked that few masters of sailing vessels attempt to beat their way out of it. When we had begun to heave anchor a fair wind promised to carry the Glenalvon straight out to sea. By dawn, however, it had shifted and before grog had been served it blew from exactly the opposite point of the compass. Nothing was left but to tack back and forth against it. A bellow summoned us on deck before breakfast was half over, to go about ship. A few more mouthfuls and a short pipe and we wore ship again. But it was no use. The head wind increased, the bay was narrow; on the third tack the skipper ventured too close ashore, lost his head, and roared out an order:—

“Let go the anchor!”

The “mud-hook” dropped with a mighty roar and rattle of cable; the fore-and-aft sails came down with a run; ropes screamed through 493the blocks; the topsail yards fell with a crash; the topgallants bellied out and s............