Shows how I came to America before My Time and was much shaken in Body and Soul
Then spoke der Captain Stossenheim
??Who had theories of God,
‘Oh, Breitmann, this is judgment on
??Der ways dot you have trod.
You only lifs to enjoy yourself
??While you yourself agree
Dot self-development requires
??Der religious Idee.’
— Breitmann’s Going to Church
THIS is America. They call her the City of Peking, and she belongs to the Pacific Mail Company, but for all practical purposes she is the United States. We are divided between missionaries and generals — generals who were at Vicksburg and Shiloh, and German by birth, but more American than the Americans, who in confidence tell you that they are not generals at all, but only brevet majors of militia corps. The missionaries are perhaps the queerest portion of the cargo. Did you ever hear an English minister lecture for half an hour on the freight-traffic receipts and general working of, let us say, the Midland? The Professor has been sitting at the feet of a keen-eyed, close-bearded, swarthy man who expounded unto him kindred mysteries with a fluency and precision that a city leader-writer might have envied. ‘Who’s your financial friend with the figures at his fingers’ ends?’ I asked. ‘Missionary — Presbyterian Mission to the Japs,’ said the Professor. I laid my hand upon my mouth and was dumb.
As a counterpoise to the missionaries, we carry men from Manila — lean Scotchmen who gamble once a month in the Manila State lottery and occasionally turn up trumps. One, at least, drew a ten-thousand-dollar prize last December and is away to make merry in the New World. Everybody on the staff of an American steamer this side the continent seems to gamble steadily in that lottery, and the talk of the smoking-room runs almost entirely on prizes won by accident or lost through a moment’s delay. The tickets are sold more or less openly at Yokohama and Hong-Kong, and the drawings — losers and winners both agree here — are above reproach.
We have resigned ourselves to the infinite monotony of a twenty days’ voyage. The Pacific Mail advertises falsely. Only under the most favourable circumstances of wind and steam can their under-engined boats cover the distance in fifteen days. Our City of Peking, for instance, had been jogging along at a gentle ten knots an hour, a pace out of all proportion to her bulk. ‘When we get a wind,’ says the Captain, ‘we shall do better.’ She is a four-master and can carry any amount of canvas. It is not safe to run steamers across this void under the poles of Atlantic liners. The monotony of the sea is paralysing. We have passed the wreck of a little sealing-schooner lying bottom up and covered with gulls. She weltered by in the chill dawn, unlovely as the corpse of a man; and the wild birds piped thinly at us as they steered her across the surges. The pulse of the Pacific is no little thing even in the quieter moods of the sea. It set our bows swinging and nosing and ducking ere we were a day clear of Yokohama, and yet there was never swell nor crested wave in sight. ‘We ride very high,’ said the Captain, ’and she’s a dry boat. She has a knack of crawling over things somehow; but we shan’t need to put her to the test this journey.’
. . . . .
. . . . .
The Captain was mistaken. For four days we have endured the sullen displeasure of the North Pacific, winding up with a night of discomfort. It began with a grey sea, flying clouds, and a headwind that smote fifty knots off the day’s run. Then rose from the south-east a beam sea warranted by no wind that was abroad upon the waters in our neighbourhood, and we wallowed in the trough of it for sixteen mortal hours. In the stillness of the harbour, when the newspaper man is lunching in her saloon and the steam-launch is crawling round her sides, a ship of pride is a ‘stately liner.’ Out in the open, one rugged shoulder of a sea between you and the horizon, she becomes ‘the old hooker,’ a ‘lively boat,’ and other things of small import, for this is necessary to propitiate the Ocean. ‘There’s a storm to the southeast of us,’ explained the Captain. ‘That’s what’s kicking up this sea.’
The City of Peking did not belie her reputation. She crawled over the seas in liveliest wise, never shipping a bucket till — she was forced to. Then she took it green over the bows to the vast edification of, at least, one passenger who had never seen the scuppers full before.
Later in the day the fun began. ‘Oh, she’s a daisy at rolling,’ murmured the chief steward, flung starfish-wise on a table among his glassware. ‘She’s rolling some,’ said a black apparition new risen from the stoke-hold. ‘Is she going to roll any more?’ demanded the ladies grouped in what ought to have been the ladies’ saloon, but, according to American custom, was labelled ‘Social Hall.’
Passed in the twilight the chief officer — a dripping, bearded face. ‘Shall I mark out the bullboard?’ said he, and lurched aft, followed by the tongue of a wave. ‘She’ll roll her guards under to-night,’ said a man from Louisiana, where their river-steamers do not understand the meaning of bulwarks. We dined to a dashing accompaniment of crockery, the bounds of emancipated beer-bottles livelier than their own corks, and the clamour of the ship’s gong broken loose and calling to meals on its own account.
After dinner the real rolling began. She did roll ‘guards under,’ as the Louisiana man had prophesied. At thirty-minute intervals, to the second, arrived one big sea, when the electric lamps died down to nothing, and the screw raved and the blows of the sea made the decks quiver. On those occasions we moved from our chairs, not gently, but discourteously. At other times we were merely holding on with both hands.
It was then that I studied Fear — Terror bound in black silk and fighting hard with herself. For reasons which will be thoroughly understood, there was a tendency among the passengers to herd together and to address inquiries to every officer who happened to stagger through the saloon. No one was in the least alarmed,— oh dear, no,— but all were keenly anxious for information. This anxiety redoubled after a more than usually vicious roll. Terror was a large, handsome, and cultured lady who knew the precise value of human life, the inwardness of Robert Elsmere, the latest poetry — everything in fact that a clever woman should know. When the rolling was near its worst, she began to talk swiftly. I do not for a moment believe that she knew what she was talking about. The rolling increased. She buckled down to the task of making conversation. By the heave of the labouring bust, the restless working of the fingers on the tablecloth, and the uncontrollable eyes that turned always to the companion stairhead, I was able to judge the extremity of her fear. Yet her words were frivolous and commonplace enough; they poured forth unceasingly, punctuated with little laughs and giggles, as a woman’s speech should be. Presently, a member of her group suggested going to bed. No, she wanted to sit up; she wanted to go on talking, and as long as she could get a soul to sit with her she had her desire. When for sheer lack of company she was forced to get to her cabin, she left reluctantly, looking back to the well-lighted saloon over her shoulder. The contrast between the flowing triviality of her speech and the strained intentness of eye and hand was a quaint thing to behold. I know now how Fear should be painted.
No one slept very heavily that night. Both arms were needed to grip the berth, while the trunks below wound the carpet-slips into knots and battered the framing of the cabins. Once it seemed to me that the whole of the labouring fabric that cased our trumpery fortunes stood on end and in this undignified posture hopped a mighty hop. Twice I know I shot out of my berth to join the adventurous trunks on the floor. A hundred times the crash of the wave on the ship’s side was followed by the roar of the water, as it swept the decks and raved round the deckhouses. In a lull I heard the flying feet of a man, a shout, and a far-away chorus of lost spirits singing somebody’s requiem.
May 24 (Queen’s Birthday).— If ever you meet an American, be good to him. This day the ship was dressed with flags from stem to stern, the chiefest of the bunting was the Union Jack. They had given no word of warning to the English, who were proportionately pleased. At dinner up rose an ex-Commissioner of the Lucknow Division (on my honour, Anglo-India extends to the ends of the earth!) and gave us the health of Her Majesty and the President. It was afterwards that the trouble began. A small American penned half a dozen English into a corner and lectured them soundly on — their want of patriotism!
‘What sort of Queen’s Birthday do you call this?’ he thundered. ‘What did you drink our President’s health for? What’s the President to you on this day of all others? Well, suppose you are in the minority, all the more reason for standing by your country. Don’t talk to me. You Britishers made a mess of it — a mighty bungle of the whole thing. I’m an American of the Americans; but if no one can propose Her Majesty’s health better than by just throwing it at your heads, I’m going to try.’
Then and there he delivered a remarkably neat little oration — pat, well put together, and clearly delivered. So it came to pass that the Queen’s health was best honoured by an American. We English were dazed. I wondered how many Englishmen not trained to addressing their fellows would have spoken half so fluently as the gentleman from ’Frisco.
‘Well, you see,’ said one of us feebly, ‘she’s our Queen, anyhow, and — and — she’s............