  Produced by Al Haines. [image] Cover [image] Map showing the author's itinerary HARRY A. FRANCK FOUR MONTHS AFOOT GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC, COPYRIGHT 1911, BY THE CENTURY CO. ALL 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-class rail, and am given to mingling with "the masses," 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. CONTENTS CHAPTER
FOUR MONTHS AFOOT IN SPAIN 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 classroom 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 ship 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 classic 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 steamship docks. With it I was borne into a vast two-story pier, strewn below with everything that ships transport across the seas and resounding above with the voice of an excited multitude. Near the center of the upper wharf stood an isolated booth bearing a transient sign-board: "SCHNELLDAMPFER. Within, sat a coatless, broad-gauge Teuton, puffing at a stogie. "Third-class 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 passed since she was degraded to the unfastidious southern service. The steerage section, congested now with disheveled Latins and cumbrous 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-class promenade, above which opened the hurricane deck and higher still the wheelhouse and bridge. This space 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-class quarters, of which the forward was assigned 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-passengers, having preËmpted sleeping-space, 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 mÍo! È mÍo!" I returned to the central space. 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' È piÙ," he said; "GiÙ!" 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 athwartships 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 bass 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-anticipated 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 sunshine, 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 fashion, 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 passed many an hour during the journey. The mightiest was Antonio Massarone, 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! NicolÒ, 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. NicolÒ 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 appetite, 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 passages 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 piÈce de rÉsistance of the day, a half-grown loaf of bread, and a brimming cupful of red wine. Thus laden, each squirmed his way through the multitude and made table of whatever space 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 coarse 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 ship'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 multitude. 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 splashing of water, the tittering of jostled damsels, or the shouting for passage 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 entrÉe 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 passed. How little akin are anticipation 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 passenger, and weary already of this forced inactivity before the voyage was well begun. The first full day, to be sure, had passed 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 rÔles; but the watch below greeted me with that chill disdain accorded mere passengers, 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 prone on his back, when, had he employed a tithe 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 assembled third-class 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 fonÓgrafo," 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 DÍo! 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 fonÓgrafo, 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 È mÓbile," 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 ship'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. The announcement was superfluous; no one else could have sung the sprightly little lyric with such perfection. Bits of other operas followed, plantation melodies, and the monologues of witty Irishmen; but always the catholic instrument came back to "La donna È mÓbile," and one could lean back on one's elbows and fancy the dapper little tenor standing in person on the corner of the hatch, pouring out his voice to his own appreciative people. Thereafter as regularly as the twilight appeared the Calabrian with his "fonÓgrafo." The forward deck took to sleeping by day that the evening musicale might be prolonged into the small hours. Whatever its imperfections, the little black box did much to charm away the monotony of the voyage, in its early stages. But good fortune is rarely perennial. One night in mid-Atlantic a first-class passenger of the type that adds, by contrast, to the attractiveness of the steerage, his arms about the waists of two damsels old enough to have known better, paused to hang over the rail. Bonci was singing. The promenader surveyed the oblivious multitude below in silence until the aria ended, then turned on his heel with a snort of contempt. The maidens giggled, the affectionate trio strolled aft, and a moment later the cabin piano was jangling a Broadway favorite. When I turned my head the Calabrian was closing his instrument. "No, amici, no more," he said as protest rose; "We must not annoy the rich signori up there." Nor could he be moved to open the apparatus again as long as the voyage lasted. Amid the general merriment of home-coming was here and there a note of sadness in the caverns of the Prinzessin. On a hatch huddled day by day, when, the sun was high, a family of three, doomed to early extinction by the white-faced scourge of the north. Below, it was whispered, lay an actress once famous in the Italian quarter, matched in a race with death to her native village. A toil-worn Athenian, on life's down grade, who had been robbed on the very eve of sailing of seven years' earnings of pick and shovel, tramped the deck from dawn to midnight with sunken head, refusing either food or drink. Now and again he stepped to the rail to shake his knotted fist at the western horizon, stretched his arms on high, and took up again his endless march. Then there were the deported--seven men whose berths were not far from my own. One had shown symptoms of trachoma; another bore the mark of a bullet through one hand; a third was a very Hercules, whom the port doctors had pronounced flawless, but who had landed with four dollars less than the twenty-five required. With this single exception, however, one could not but praise the judgment of Ellis Island. The remaining four were dwarfish Neapolitans, little more than wharf rats; and the best of Naples bring little that is desirable. Yet one could not but pity the unpleasing little wretches, who had risen so far above their environment as to save money in a place where money is bought dearly, and whose only reward for years of repression of every appetite had been a month of misery and frustration. "Porca di Madonna!" cursed the nearest, pointing to three small blue scars on his neck; "For nothing but these your infernal doctors have made me a beggar!" "On the sea, when it was too late," whined his companion, "they told me we with red eyes should not go to New York, but to a city named Canada. Madre dÍ DÍo! Why did I not take my ticket to this Canada?" "You will next time?" I hinted. "Next time!" he shrieked, dropping from his bunk as noiselessly as a cat. "Is there a next time with a book like that?" He shook in my face the libretto containing a record of his activities since birth, lacking which no Italian of the proletariat may live in peace in his own land nor embark for another. Across every page was stamped indelibly the word "deported." "They ruined it, curse them! It's something in your maledetta American language that tells the police not to let me go and the agenzia not to sell me a ticket. My book is destroyed! Sono scomunicato! And where shall I get the money for this next time, dÍceme? To come to America I have worked nine, ten, sangue della Vergine! how do I know how many years! Why did I not take the ticket to this Canada?" On the morning of June seventh we raised the Azores; at first the dimmest blot on the horizon, a point or two off the starboard bow, as if the edge of heaven had been salt-splashed by a turbulent wave. Excited dispute arose in the throng that quickly mustered at the rail. All but the nautical-eyed saw only a cloud, which in a twinkling the hysterical had pronounced the forerunner of a howling tempest that was soon to bring to the Prinzessin the dreaded mal di mare, perhaps even ununctioned destruction. One quaking father drove his family below and barricaded his corner against the tornado-lashed night to come. An hour brought reassurance, however, and with it jubilation as the outpost of the eastern world took on corporate form. Before sunset we were abreast the island. An oblong hillside sloped upward to a cloud-cowled peak. Villages rambled away up tortuous valleys; here and there the green was dotted with chalk-white houses and whiter churches. Higher still the island was mottled with duodecimo fields of grain, each maturing in its own season; while far and near brilliant red windmills, less stolid and thick-set than those of Holland, toiled in the breeze, not hurriedly but with a deliberate vivacity befitting the Latin south. Most striking of all was a scent of profoundest peace that came even to the passing ship, and a suggestion of eternal summer, not of burning days and sultry nights, but of early June in some fairy realm utterly undisturbed by the clamorous rumble of the outer world. Two smaller islands appeared before the day was done, one to port so near that we could count the cottage windows and all but make out the features of skirt-blown peasant women standing firm-footed in deep green meadows against a background of dimming hills. As the night descended, the houses faded to twinkling lights, now in clusters, now a stone's-throw one from another, but not once failing as long as we remained on deck. For two days following the horizon was unbroken. Then through the morning mists of June tenth rose Cabo San Vicente, the scowling granite corner-stone of Europe, every line of its time-scarred features a defiance to the sea and a menace to the passerby. Beyond stretched a wrinkled, verdureless plateau, to all appearances unpeopled, and falling into the Atlantic in grim, oxide-stained cliffs that here advanced within hailing distance, there retreated to the hazy horizon. All through the day the world's commerce filed past,--water-logged tramps crawling along the face of the land, whale-like oil tanks showing only a dorsal fin of funnel and deck-house, East Indiamen straining Biscayward, and all the smaller fry of fishermen and coasters. A rumor, rising no one knew where, promised that early morning should find us entering the Mediterranean. I subsidized the services of a fellow-voyager dexterous with shears and razor and, reduced to a tuft of forelock, descended once more to the lower dungeon. Long before daylight I was awakened by the commissario, or steerage steward, tugging at a leg of my trousers and screeching in his boyish falsetto, "GibiltÈrra! Make ready! GibiltÈrra!" It was no part of the commissario's duties to call third-class passengers. But ever since the day he had examined my ticket, the little whisp of a man who never ceased to regard me with suspicion, as if he doubted the sanity of a traveler who was bound for a land that was neither Italy nor America. Of late he seemed convinced that my professed plan was merely a ruse to reach Naples without paying full fare, and he eyed me askance now as I clambered from my bunk, in his pigwidgeon face a stern determination that my knavery should not succeed. Supplied with a bucket by a sailor, I climbed on deck and approached the galley. The cook was snoring in a corner of his domain; his understudy was nowhere to be seen. I tip-toed to the hot-water faucet and was soon below again stripping off my "ship's clothes," which the obliging seaman, having bespoken this reward, caught up one by one as they fell. The splashing of water aroused the encircling sleepers. Gradually they slid to the deck and gathered around me, inquiring the details of my eccentric plan. By the time I was dressed in the best my suitcase offered, every mortal in the "single" quarters had come at least once to bid me a dubious farewell. The commissario returned and led the way in silence along the deserted promenade to the deck abaft the cabins. The Prinzessin lay at anchor. A half-mile away, across a placid lagoon, towered the haggard Rock of Gibraltar, a stone-faced city strewn along its base. About the harbor, glinting in the slanting sunlight, prowled rowboats, sloops, and yawls, and sharp-nosed launches. One of the latter soon swung in against the starboard ladder and there stepped on deck two men in white uniforms, who seated themselves without a word at a table which the commissario produced by some magic of his own, and fell to spreading out impressive documents. A glance sufficed to recognize them Englishmen. At length the older raised his head with an interrogatory jerk, and the commissario, with the air of a man taken red-handed in some rascality, minced forward and laid on the table a great legal blank with one line scrawled across it. "T 'ird classy maneefesto, signori," he apologized. "Eh!" cried the Englishman. "A steerage passenger for Gibraltar?" The steward jerked his head backward toward me. "Humph!" said the spokesman, inspecting me from crown to toe. "Where do you hail from?" Before I could reply there swarmed down the companionway a host of cabin passengers, in port-of-call array, whom the Englishman greeted with bared head and his broadest welcome-to-our-city smile; then bowed to the launch ladder. As he resumed his chair I laid my passport before him. "For what purpose do you desire to land in Gibraltar?" he demanded. "I am bound for Spain--" I began. "Spain!" shouted the Briton, with such emphasis as if that land lay at the far ends of the earth. "Indeed! Where are you going from Gibraltar, and how soon?" "Until I get ashore I can hardly say; in a day or so, at least; to Granada, perhaps, or MÁlaga." "Out of respect for the American passport," replied the Englishman grandiloquently, "I am going to let you land. But see you stick to this story." I descended to the launch and ten minutes later landed with my haughty fellow-tourists at a bawling, tout-lined wharf. An officer peeped into my handbag, and I sauntered on through a fortress gate under which a sun-scorched Tommy Atkins marched unremittingly to and fro. Beyond, opened a narrow street, paralleling the harbor front and peopled even at this early hour with a mingling of races that gave to the scene the aspect of a temperate India, or a scoured and rebuilt Egypt. Sturdy British troopers in snug khaki and roof-like tropical helmets strode past; bare-legged Moors in flowing bournous stalked by in the widening streak of sunshine along the western walls; the tinkle of goat-bells mingled with the rhythmic cries of their drivers, offering a cup fresh-drawn to whomever possessed a copper; now an orange woman hobbled by, chanting her wares; everywhere flitted swarthy little men in misfit rags, with small baskets of immense strawberries which sold for a song to all but the tourists who tailed out behind me. Suddenly, a furlong beyond the gate, a signboard flashed down upon me, and I turned instinctively in at the open door of the "Seaman's Institute." I found myself in a sort of restaurant, with here and there a pair of England's soldiers at table, and a towsled youth of darker tint hanging over the bar. I commanded ham and eggs; when they were served the youth dropped into the chair opposite and, leaning on his elbows, smiled speechlessly upon me, as if the sight of an unfamiliar face brought him extraordinary pleasure. "Room to put me up?" I asked. "Nothin' much else but room," sighed the youth, in the slurring speech of the Anglo-Spanish half-cast, "but the super 's not up yet, an' I 'm only the skittles." I left my baggage in his keeping and, roaming on through the rapidly warming city to the Alameda Gardens, clambered away the day on the blistered face of the great Rock above. The "super," a flabby-muscled tank of an Englishman, was lolling out the evening among his clients when I reËntered the Institute. My request for lodging roused him but momentarily from his lethargy. "Sign off here?" he drawled. "Left the Prinzessin this morning," I answered, suddenly reminded that I was no longer a seaman prepared to produce my discharge-book on demand. "A.B., eh?" "Been before the mast on the Warwickshire, Glen--" "All right. A bob a night is our tax. But no smoking aloft," he added, as I dropped a coin on the table before him. "'Ow ye like Gib?" asked the half-cast, leading the way up a narrow stairway. "Like it," I replied. "Yes, they all does," he mourned, "for one day. But 'ow if you 'ad always to bask on the stewin' old Rock, like a bally lizard? Saint Patrick! If only some toff 'ud pay me a ticket to America!" He entered a great room, divided by thin wooden partitions into a score of small ones, and, tramping down a hallway, lighted me into the last chamber. Opposite the cot was a tall window with heavy wooden blinds. I flung them open and leaned out over the reja; and all at once, unheralded, the Spain of my dreams leaped into reality. Below, to one side, flowed the murmuring stream of Gibraltar's main thoroughfare; further away the flat-roofed city descended in moonlit indistinctness into the Mediterranean. From a high-walled garden a pebble-toss away and canopied with fragrant fruit-trees, rose the twang of a guitar and a man's clear voice singing a languorous air of Andalusia. Now and again a peal of laughter broke on the night and drifted away on the wings of the indolent sea-breeze. I rolled a cigarette and lighted it pensively, not in contempt for the "super's" orders, but because some transgression of established law seemed the only fitting celebration of the untrammeled summer that was opening before me. CHAPTER II FOOTPATHS OF ANDALUSIA Gibraltar rises early. Proof of the assertion may be lacking, but certainly not even a "Rock lizard" could recompose himself for another nap after the passing of the crashing military band that snatched me at daybreak back to the waking world. With one bound I sprang from cot to window. But there was no ground for alarm; in gorge-like Waterport street below, Thomas Atkins, a regiment strong, was marching briskly barrackward, sweeping the flotsam of civilian life into the nooks and crannies of the flanking buildings. According to the Hoyle of travelers a glimpse of Morocco was next in order. But with the absurdity of things inanimate and Oriental both the Tangiers steamers were scheduled to loll out the day in harbor. When "Skittles" had again stowed away my chattels, I drifted aimlessly out into the city. But the old eagerness to tread Spanish soil was soon upon me, heightened now by the sight of Algeciras gleaming across the bay. The harbor steamer would have landed me there a mere peseta poorer. Instead, I sauntered through the Landport gate and away along the shifting highway which the Holder of the Rock has dubbed, in his insular tongue, the "Road to Spain." It led me past the double rank of sentry boxes between which soldiers of England tramp everlastingly, and into bandit-famed La Linea. A Spaniard in rumpled uniform scowled out upon me from the first stone hovel, but, finding me empty-handed, as silently withdrew. I turned westward through the disjointed town and out upon the curving shore of the bay. Here was neither highway nor path. Indeed, were each Spanish minute tagged with a Broadway price-mark, the peseta would have been dearly saved, for the apparent proximity of Algeciras had been but a tricking of the eye. Hour after hour I waded on through seashore sand, halting now and then in the shadow of some time-gnawed watch-tower of the departed Moor, before me such a survey of the shimmering sea to the very base of the hazy African coast as amply to justify the setting of an outlook on this jutting headland. The modern guardian of the coast dwells more lowly. Every here and there I came upon a bleached and tattered grass hut just out of reach of the languid surf, and under it a no less ragged and listless carabinero squatted in Arabic pose and tranquillity, musket within reach, or frankly and audibly asleep on his back in the sand. Yet his station, too, was wisely chosen. The watch and ward of to-day is set for no war-trimmed galley from the rival continent, but against petty smugglers skulking along the rim of the bay. Nor could the guard better spend his day than asleep: his work falls at night. It was the hour of siesta when I shuffled up a sandy bank into Algeciras. Except for a cur or two that slunk with wilted tail across the plaza, the town lay in sultry repose. I sat down in a shaded corner of the square. Above me nodded the aged city tower, housing the far-famed and often-cursed bell of Algeciras. Recently, which is to say some time during the past century, it was cracked from rim to crown; and the city fathers have not yet taken up the question of its replacement. Meanwhile, it continues afflictingly faithful to its task. At quarter-hourly intervals it clanked out across the bay like the suspended hull of a battleship beaten with the butt of a cannon, a languid sigh rose over the drowsing city, and silence settled down anew. As the shadows spread, life revived, slowly and yawningly at first, then swelling to a contrasting merry-making that reached its climax toward midnight in the festooned streets beyond the plaza. Algeciras was celebrating her annual feria. Somewhere I fell in with a carpenter in blouse and hemp sandals, whose Spanish flowed musically as a woodland brook, and together we sauntered out the evening among the lighted booths. The amusement mongers were toiling lustily. Gypsy and clown, bolerina, juggler, and ballad-singer drew each his little knot of idlers, but a multitude was massed only around the gambling tables. Here a hubbub of excited voices assailed the ear; an incessant rain of coins fell on the green cloth, from the ragged and the tailored, from quavering crones and little children. The carpenter dived into the fray with his only peseta, screaming with excitement as the wheel stopped on the number he had played. Within an hour a pocket of his blouse was bulging with silver. I caught him by the sleeve and shouted a word in his ear. Wild horses could not have dragged him away, nor the voices of sirens have distracted his eyes from the spinning trundle. A half-hour later he did not possess a copper. "If you had listened," I said, when we had reached a conversational distance, "you would not have lost your fortune." "What fortune!" he panted. "All I have lost, seÑor, is one peseta, and had an evening of a lifetime." I caught the morning steamer to Gibraltar and an hour later was pitching across the neck of the Mediterranean on board the Gebel Dersa. Third-class fare to Africa was one peseta; first-class, ten; and the difference in accommodation about forty feet,--to wit, the distance from the forward to the afterdeck. One peseta, indeed, seemed to be the fixed charge for any service in this corner of the world. My evening meal, the night's lodging, the boatman's fee for setting me aboard the steamer had each cost as much. It would be as easy to quote a fixed selling-price for mining-stocks as to set the value of that delusive Spanish coin. The summer's average, however, was close upon sixteen cents for the peseta, of which the cÉntimo is the hundredth part. There are at large, be it further noted, a vast number of home-made pesetas worth just sixteen cents less, which show great affinity for the stranger's pocket until such time as he learns to emulate the native and sound each coin on the stone set into every counter. It was while we were skirting the calcined town of Tarifa that I made the acquaintance of Aghmed Shat. The introduction was not of my seeking--but of the ingratiating ways of Aghmed I need say nothing, known as he is by every resident of our land. At least I can recall no fellow-countryman whose visiting-card he did not dig up from the abysmal confusion of his inner garments. To that host of admirers it will bring grief to learn that Aghmed was most unjustly treated aboard the Gebel Dersa on that blistering thirteenth day of June. Yet facts must be reported. It chanced that the dozen Anglo-Saxons sprawled ungracefully about the after-deck composed, at such times as composure was possible, a single party. As all the world knows, it is for no other purpose than to offer the protection of his name and learning to just such defenseless flocks that the high-born Moroccan gentleman in question has been journeying thrice weekly to the Rock these thirty years. Yet the bellwether of the party, blind to his opportunity, had chosen as guide an ignorant, vile, ugly, utterly unprincipled rascal whose only motive was mercenary. True, Aghmed and the rascal were outwardly as alike as two bogus pesetas. But surely any man worthy the title of personal conductor should be versed in the reading of character, or at least able to distinguish between genuine testimonials from the world's Élite and a parcel of bald forgeries! Worst of all, the leader, with that stiff-neckedness congenital to his race, had persisted in his error even after Aghmed had recounted in full detail the rascal's crimes. Small wonder there was dejection in the face of the universally-recommended as he crossed the pitching plank that connected the first-class with the baser world, his skirts threshing in the wind, his turban awry. At sight of me, however, he brightened visibly. With outstretched hand and a wan smile he minuetted forward and seated himself on the hatch beside me with the unobtrusive greeting: "Why for you travel third-class?" The question struck me as superfluous. But it is as impossible to scowl down Aghmed's spirit of investigation as to stare him into believing an American a Spaniard. By the time the valleys of the African coast had begun to take on individuality, I had heard not only the full story of his benevolent life but had refused for the twentieth time his disinterested offer of protection. Nature, however, made Aghmed a guardian of his fellow-man, as she has made other hapless mortals poets; and her commands must be carried out at whatever sacrifice. Gradually, slowly, sadly, the "souvenir" which "americano gentlemen" were accustomed to bestow upon him with their farewell hand-clasp fell from twenty shillings to ten, to five, to three, then to as many pesetas. It was useless to explain that I had trusted to my own guidance in many an Arab land, and been fully satisfied with the service. When every other argument had fallen lifeless at his slippered feet, he sent forth at regular intervals the sole survivor, cheering it on with a cloud of acrid cigarette smoke: "Si el seÑor"--for his hamstrung English had not far endured the journey--"if the gentleman has never taken a guide, this will be a new experience." In the end the sole survivor won. What, after all, is travel but a seeking after new experience? Here, in truth, was one; and I might find out for myself whether a full-grown man tagging through the streets of a foreign city on the heels of a twaddle-spouting native feels as ridiculous as he looks. We anchored toward noon in the churning harbor of Tangiers and were soon pitched into the pandemonium of all that goes to make up an Oriental mob lying in wait for touring Europeans. In a twinkling, Aghmed had engaged donkeys to carry us to the principal hotel. I paused on the outskirts of the riot to inform him that our sight-seeing would be afoot; and with a scream of astonishment he reeled and would, perhaps, have fallen had not the street been paved in that which would have made such stage-business unpleasant. "Pero, seÑor!" he gasped. "You do not--you--why, people will say you have no money!" "Horrible!" I cried, dodging a slaughtered sheep on the head of a black urchin in scanty night-shirt that dashed suddenly out of a slit between two buildings. Aghmed, myopic with excitement, failed to side-step, and it was some distance beyond that his wail again fell on my ear: "O seÑor! Americano gentlemen never go by this street. I cannot guide without donkeys--" "You can perhaps run along home to dinner?" I suggested; but he merely fell silent and pattered on at my heels, now and again heaving a plaintive sigh. For the better part of the day we roamed in and out through the tangled city. In the confusion of donkeys, bare legs, and immodesty, the narcotic smell of hashish, the sound of the harsh guttural tongue once so familiar, memories of more distant Mohammedan lands surged upon me. Yet by comparison Tangiers seemed only a faded segment of the swarming Arab world set aside to overawe European tourists, Arabic enough in its way, but only a little, mild-mannered sample. Late in the afternoon I rounded the beach and, falling upon the highway to Fez, strolled away out of sight and sound of the seaport. Aghmed still languished at my heels. To him also the day had brought a new experience. As we leaned back against a grassy slope to watch the setting of the red sun, he broke a long hour's silence. "SeÑor," he said, "never have I walked so much. When we had come to the Socco I was tired. When we had seen all the city my legs were as two stone pillars. Yet I must keep walking." "Why?" I asked. "Because you must be protected! Ah, seÑor, you do not know how dangerous is Tangiers; and here in the country alone you would before now be dead, or carried off by bandits. Perhaps this much walking will make me sick. Or if I have been seen by my friends or a gentleman tourist! Allah meskeen! They will say I am no longer a gentleman guide, but a donkey boy." When her night traffic had taken on its wonted swing, my stone-legged protector called at the inn for the purpose of proving that the far-famed naughtiness of his city was no mere conceit. The demonstration was not convincing. Two hours or more we ambled from wineshop to cafÉ cantante, enduring a deal of caterwauling and inane vulgarity by no means superior to a Friday-night performance on the Bowery. The relieving shepherd's crook, moreover, being nowhere in evidence, I fled the torture and retired to bed. To my infinite relief, Aghmed was on hand in full health next morning to bid me farewell at the end of the pier and to receive his specified "souvenir." He was profuse, too, with the hope that I might soon revisit his land; but I caught no hint of a desire to add my card to his collection. The steamer plowed her way back to Europe, and by mid-afternoon I emerged from the Sailor's Institute face to face with a serious problem. The most patient of men, which I am not, would hardly set off on a tramp across the Iberian peninsula carrying a forty-pound suitcase, even of unread classics. To have dumped the books in the first alleyway would have been easy, yet painful, for there runs a strain of Scotch in my veins. I dropped in on the nearest bookseller to inquire whether he could see his way clear to accept at a bargain a batch of novels newly imported from New York. But the eager glow quickly faded from his features as I laid the volumes before him. "Why, sir!" he cried. "These be old books, out of date. I thought had you something New York is reading this summer--" In which attitude his two rivals also dismissed me, even though I sought the good will of the last by squandering the bulk of a bright gold sovereign for Baedeker's "Spain." As I turned down to the harbor, a thought, or more exactly the sight of a sergeant's uniform under the fortress gate, struck me. The wearer stiffened like a ramrod when I halted before him. "Have you a library in the barracks?" "Ah--certainly, garrison library. But I hardly fawncy the commander would allow--" "Of course not," I interrupted, tossing the books into his arms; "but I am off for Spain and if you have any use for a few novels--" "Ah--er--well, thank you most kindly, sir!" bawled the officer after me. Though the fact may never be called to his attention, the sergeant had heard the last phrase of English that passed my lips in many a week. As a personal experiment I had resolved not to speak a word of my native tongue within the kingdom of Spain, even to myself; though this latter proviso, to be sure, necessitated the early acquisition of a few Spanish terms of double voltage. The forerunner of evening was descending upon Algeciras as I mounted through her now all but voiceless fiesta and struck away over a grass-patched hillock. The further slope was skirted by a dusty highway that wound off through a billowy country pregnant with the promise of greater heights to come. But the trend of the road was west rather than north. Over the hills ahead two male voices were bawling a sort of dialogue of song. I mended my pace and had soon overtaken two peasants rollicking homeward from the festival. When I inquired if this were the highway to Madrid they fell suddenly silent, after a word of greeting, and strode along beside me exchanging puzzled glances. "Well, then, to Honda, seÑores?" I asked. "Poresta carretera?" "No, no, seÑor!" they answered quickly. "Por aquÍ no! You must go on the railroad." "No, I am traveling on foot." "Perfectamente, seÑor; and to walk to Honda you must take the railroad." There was nothing in the mien of either to suggest the practical joker. Yet so far as my experience carried there was not a corner of Europe where two steps on the right of way was rated less a crime than arson or housebreaking. We reached the line not far beyond, the highway diving under by a stone-faced cutting and bearing the peasants away with it. Over the next rise their dove-tailed duet rang out again and, melting in volume and rendered almost musical by distance, filtered back to me from the deepening valleys a full quarter-hour longer. I climbed the embankment not without misgiving. Sure enough, a track there was, beside the broad-gauge rails, covered with cinders and scarred with many imprints of donkey hoofs. A mile along it demonstrated how poor a walking kit is even a half-empty suitcase. I sat down to take stock of the contents. In the jumble was a blue flannel shirt past its prime. I fished out thread and needle and sewed a Jack-Tar seam across the garment below the armpits, amputated sleeves and shoulders with a few, slashes, and behold! a knapsack that might bear my burdens through all the kingdom of Spain, and hold its own in any gathering of shoulder-packed wayfarers. When I had stuffed my possessions into it there was still room to spare for such odds and ends as find their way into the baggage of the least acquisitive of travelers. Then pitching the suitcase spread-eagle over the bordering hedge, I cut a stick in a neighboring thicket and struck off again at the regular stride so indispensable to any true enjoyment of tramping. Night fell soon after. A fall it was indeed; no half-hearted settling down of gloom as in our northern zone, but a descendant flood of obscurity that left the eyes blinking in dismay. To right and left, where had been rolling uplands and heathered fields sharp-cut in smallest detail, nothing--a sea of inky blackness; and ahead, the stony-blind unknown. The cinder path held firm, but only a foot rubbing along the rail guided my steps, until such time as sight resumed its leadership. An hour or more I marched on into the summer night. Then out of the darkness ahead stole a feeble point of light, an increasing murmur of human voices, and the end of the first day's tramp was before me. Beside the way a stone building stood open, an oil torch twilighting a cobble-floored room heaped at one end with a Spanish grocer's wares. An unshaven man of fifty, a red handkerchief bound brigand-fashion about his head, bulked forward through an inner doorway. "You furnish lodgings?" "SÍ, seÑor; and your burro?" "I am walking. Is supper to be had?" "Claro, hombre! Choose from the baskets and the seÑora shall cook it for you in a twinkling." All through the following day the path continued parasitic to the railway. The roadbed was thickly covered with crushed stone, with nowhere a hint of the existence of section-gangs. On either hand rolled away a landscape stamped with the features of an African ancestry, all but concealed at times by the cactus-trees of a willow's height that hedged the track. At rare intervals a stuccoed station serving some hamlet hidden among the hills found standing-room on the right of way. An occasional hovel built of field stones frowned down from the crest of a parched hillock. Now and again out of the meeting-place of the rails ahead came jogging a peasant seated sidewise on an ass, to swerve suddenly aside and rattle off down a rocky gorge, singing a high-pitched ballad of Arabic cadence. But these were but bubbles on the surface of a fathomless solitude, though a solitude brilliant with an all-invading sunshine that left no skulking-place for somber moods. It turned out that the railroad had not been built for the exclusive convenience of pedestrians and donkeys. A bit before noon a rumbling arose out of the north, and no unconscionable time thereafter the daily "expreso" roared by--at a rate close upon fifteen miles an hour. The ticket collector, cigarette in mouth, clambered hand over hand along the running board, in imminent peril of losing his footing--and being obliged to pursue his train to the next station. During the afternoon there passed two "mixtos," toy freight trains with a caudal carload of passengers. But the speed of these was more reasonable, varying from six to eight miles, with vacations at each station and frequent holidays in the open country. The sun was still an hour high when I reached the station of San Pablo. This time the town itself stood in plain sight, pitched on the summit of an oak-grown hill barely a mile from the line. I plunged quickly down into the intervening valley. It was a checker-board place, perhaps only a century or two old; certainly no relic of the Moor, for there was not a sign of shop or market in all its extent. Only in the last street did I catch sight of one of its inhabitants, dining in solitary state in the center of a bare room. He stared at me a long moment when I halted before the immense open window to inquire for an inn. "San Pablo, seÑor," he answered at last, "is a private town owned by the mining company. There is no inn." I was turning away when he continued: "But step inside and we shall see what the ama can arrange for you." He was, as I had guessed, a Frenchman, an expert employed in the mines. The Spanish, however, in which he addressed the ama was faultless. "Ah, Don Victor!" protested that matron, "How can I give posada, having no license from the government? And without the permission of Don JosÉ--" "Pepete," said the Gaul to an urchin peering in upon us, "ask Don JosÉ to have the goodness to step over. He is manager of the mines," he continued, "and so alcalde and potentate of San Pablo." It would have been a misfortune, indeed, to have journeyed through Andalusia without making the acquaintance of Don JosÉ. He burst in upon us a moment later; a very hippopotamus of a man, dressed in baggy trousers, slouch hat, and alpaca jacket. Unfortunately his arrival coincided with my announcement that I was walking to CÓrdoba--the whole itinerary would have been too strong meat for Latin consumption--and his native geniality was for a time overshadowed by astonishment at my extraordinary means of locomotion. I had all but finished the meal set for me in an adjoining room when the pair entered and sat down beside me. "SeÑor," began the manager, in what was meant to be a whisper, "you cannot walk to CÓrdoba. It is forty leagues." "How much money have you?" put in the Frenchman. "Er--I have something over seven pesetas," I answered. "Bueno! BonÍsima!" cried the alcalde, patting me on the shoulder. "Don Victor and I will add the rest and I shall go with you to the station to buy the ticket--in the morning." Great, I reflected, is the infant mortality among generous resolutions in the gray of dawn, and accordingly held my peace. Having settled my future to his own satisfaction, Don JosÉ linked an arm in one of mine and plunged out into the night. "Your bed is waiting for you in your own house," he said with Spanish formality. "You have only to say the word." The first syllable of which I had not found time to say before we marched full front into San Pablo's barrack-like cafÉ. A roar of greeting sounded through the dense cloud of cigarette smoke: "Buenas tardes! Don JosÉ!" "Buenas, amigos! Que le gusta!" returned my companion, and pushing toward a table with two vacant chairs he continued without a break, "Un ponche, Don Gregario! And you, seÑor? Anything you may choose, though there is nothing equal to ponche. Verdad, Rufo?" Then as I opened my lips to express a preference, "SÍ! sÍ! Don Gregario! Dos ponches!" The room was filled with a hundred bronze-tinted miners over wine and cards. Don JosÉ was the industrial autocrat of every man present, yet one would have fancied him rather a brother or cousin, so free was the intercourse from haughtiness on the one hand and servility on the other. Miner and manager addressed each other by their given names, shouted at each other in friendly dispute, thumped each other fraternally on the back. Despite all which one felt absolute assurance that when labor again caught up its pick the manager's word would command instant obedience. The landlord, flushed with the exertion of their concoction, soon set the incomparable beverages before us. With the alacrity of a man who will have no shadow of debt hanging over his head, Don JosÉ thrust a hand into a pocket of his alpaca and cast on the table three mammoth coppers, the combined value of which was close upon five cents. With the first sip he rolled a cigarette and pushed pouch and papers toward me. Then having introduced me as "SeÑor Newyorkano," he plunged headlong into the story of my life, addressing not merely the assembled miners but whomever else may have been prowling within gunshot of the building. "And to think, amigos," he concluded, "after crossing all the sea el seÑor should have wandered into San Pablo looking for a posada!" The company beat their hands on the tables and howled with merriment. Whatever the uproarious humor of that climax to my adventures, it lost nothing of its poignancy as long as the evening lasted, and served to top off a score of otherwise pointless tales. My ignorance of the Andalusian game notwithstanding, I had soon taken a hand. The alcalde, consuming uncounted cigarettes, beamed over my shoulder shouting praise of my sagacity each time I cast on the table the card he pointed out. As for "ponche," what the peerless libation lacked in favor with the masses it gained in the unswerving fidelity of its sponsor. With clock-like regularity his reverberating voice rang out above the din of revelry: "Don Gregario, un ponche!" In vain did I announce my thirst permanently abated, in vain did I "say the word" or strive at least to take advantage of the free choice offered me. My protest was invariably drowned in the roar of the amended order: "SÍ, sÍ! Dos ponches, Don Gregario!" Evening rolled into night, night into morning, and still the clank of copper coins continued. Once I attempted to forestall the diving into that fathomless alpaca by thrusting a hand into my own pocket. My unquenchable host started to his feet with a bellow that seemed to set the very walls vibrating: "Strangers, seÑor, cannot spend money in San Pablo! We are a private town!" The minute hand was nearing the completion of its third lap when a general uprising, subtly instigated by the landlord, swept the carousers into the coal-black night. "My house" was no such regal mansion as befitted an industrial sovereign, an alcalde, and a man of unlimited coppers rolled into one. It was different, to be sure, from the other bare stone dwellings of San Pablo, but only in the wild bachelor disorder that reigned within its four naked walls. In one corner was a mountainous husk mattress. Its mate, alleged my host, lay somewhere buried in the jumble; and he verified the assertion not long after by dragging it forth. While he was booting this into some resemblance to a bed, I kicked off my shoes and sank into profound slumber. |
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