Book: The Innocents Abroad, Part 1 of 6

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> The Innocents Abroad, Part 1 of 6




I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was glad
of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.
Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant;
walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the
breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but
these are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing
people suffering the miseries of seasickness.

I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At one time
I was climbing up the quarterdeck when the vessel's stem was in the sky;
I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable. Somebody
ejaculated:

"Come, now, that won't answer. Read the sign up there--NO SMOKING ABAFT
THE WHEEL!"

It was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, of
course. I saw a long spyglass lying on a desk in one of the upper-deck
state-rooms back of the pilot-house and reached after it--there was a
ship in the distance.

"Ah, ah--hands off! Come out of that!"

I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep--but in a low voice:

"Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant
voice?"

"It's Captain Bursley--executive officer--sailing master."

I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to do,
fell to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an
insinuating, admonitory voice:

"Now, say--my friend--don't you know any better than to be whittling the
ship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than that."

I went back and found the deck sweep.

"Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine clothes?"

"That's Captain L****, the owner of the ship--he's one of the main
bosses."

In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the
pilot-house and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they
"take the sun" through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel
through it. I had hardly got it to my eye when someone touched me on the
shoulder and said deprecatingly:

"I'll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there's anything you'd
like to know about taking the sun, I'd as soon tell you as not--but I
don't like to trust anybody with that instrument. If you want any
figuring done--Aye, aye, sir!"

He was gone to answer a call from the other side. I sought the
deck-sweep.

"Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious
countenance?"

"It's Captain Jones, sir--the chief mate."

"Well. This goes clear away ahead of anything I ever heard of before.
Do you--now I ask you as a man and a brother--do you think I could
venture to throw a rock here in any given direction without hitting a
captain of this ship?"

"Well, sir, I don't know--I think likely you'd fetch the captain of the
watch may be, because he's a-standing right yonder in the way."

I went below--meditating and a little downhearted. I thought, if five
cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure
excursion.




CHAPTER IV.

We plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict of
jurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers soon
learned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and life in
the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the routine of a
barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not entirely so by
any means--but there was a good deal of sameness about it. As is always
the fashion at sea, the passengers shortly began to pick up sailor terms
--a sign that they were beginning to feel at home. Half-past six was no
longer half-past six to these pilgrims from New England, the South, and
the Mississippi Valley, it was "seven bells"; eight, twelve, and four
o'clock were "eight bells"; the captain did not take the longitude at
nine o'clock, but at "two bells." They spoke glibly of the "after
cabin," the "for'rard cabin," "port and starboard" and the "fo'castle."

At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for
such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people
walked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine
summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves
up in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and
looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and from luncheon
until dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were
various. Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though not
by the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked
after and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through
opera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more
than that, everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was
run up and politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of
those strangers; in the smoking room there were always parties of
gentlemen playing euchre, draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes,
that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, "for'rard"
--for'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle--we had what was called
"horse billiards." Horse billiards is a fine game. It affords good,
active exercise, hilarity, and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of
"hop-scotch" and shuffleboard played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch
diagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment
numbered. You stand off three or four steps, with some broad wooden
disks before you on the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous
thrust of a long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not
count anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts 7; in 5, it
counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a time. That
game would be very simple played on a stationary floor, but with us, to
play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the
ship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a
heel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was
that that disk missed the whole hopscotch plan a yard or two, and then
there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.

When it rained the passengers had to stay in the house, of course--or at
least the cabins--and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking out
of the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip.

By 7 o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's promenade
on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large majority of
the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome saloon fifty or
sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the
"Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth
Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen
minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea
was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without
being lashed to his chair.

After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing
school. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before.
Behind the long dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered
from one end to the other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen
and ladies sat them down under the swaying lamps and for two or three
hours wrote diligently in their journals. Alas! that journals so
voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as
most of them did! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host
but can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning the first twenty
days' voyaging in the Quaker City, and I am morally certain that not ten
of the party can show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty
thousand miles of voyaging! At certain periods it becomes the dearest
ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a
book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him
the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world,
and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find
out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance,
devotion to duty for duty's sake, and invincible determination may hope
to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal
and not sustain a shameful defeat.

One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head
full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in
the way of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress
every morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say:

"Oh, I'm coming along bully!" (he was a little given to slang in his
happier moods.) "I wrote ten pages in my journal last night--and you
know I wrote nine the night before and twelve the night before that.
Why, it's only fun!"

"What do you find to put in it, Jack?"

"Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many
miles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and
horse billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the
sermon Sundays (because that'll tell at home, you know); and the ships we
saluted and what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and
whether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don't
ever carry any, principally, going against a head wind always--wonder
what is the reason of that?--and how many lies Moult has told--Oh, every
thing! I've got everything down. My father told me to keep that
journal. Father wouldn't take a thousand dollars for it when I get it
done."

"No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars--when you get it
done."

"Do you?--no, but do you think it will, though?

"Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars--when you
get it done. May be more."

"Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a journal."

But it shortly became a most lamentable "slouch of a journal." One night
in Paris, after a hard day's toil in sightseeing, I said:

"Now I'll go and stroll around the cafes awhile, Jack, and give you a
chance to write up your journal, old fellow."

His countenance lost its fire. He said:

"Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that journal anymore.
It is awful tedious. Do you know--I reckon I'm as much as four thousand
pages behind hand. I haven't got any France in it at all. First I
thought I'd leave France out and start fresh. But that wouldn't do,
would it? The governor would say, 'Hello, here--didn't see anything in
France? That cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I thought I'd copy
France out of the guide-book, like old Badger in the for'rard cabin,
who's writing a book, but there's more than three hundred pages of it.
Oh, I don't think a journal's any use--do you? They're only a bother,
ain't they?"

"Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a journal
properly kept is worth a thousand dollars--when you've got it done."

"A thousand!--well, I should think so. I wouldn't finish it for a
million."

His experience was only the experience of the majority of that
industrious night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a
heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to
keep a journal a year.

A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists amused
and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met in
the writing school after prayers and read aloud about the countries we
were approaching and discussed the information so obtained.

Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his
transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern exhibition.
His views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two
home pictures among them. He advertised that he would "open his
performance in the after cabin at 'two bells' (nine P.M.) and show the
passengers where they shall eventually arrive"--which was all very well,
but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas
was a view of Greenwood Cemetery!

On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the
awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by
hanging a number of ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music
consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little
asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong,
a clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather
melancholy on the low ones, and a disreputable accordion that had a leak
somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked--a more elegant term does
not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was infinitely worse than
the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole platoon of
dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in mass
at the rail; and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to
port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around
precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down
to the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as
performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than
any reel I ever saw before, and was as full of interest to the spectator
as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the
participant. We gave up dancing, finally.

We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a
poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea
that hadn't a mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing an
overcoat from stateroom No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a
crier of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for
the defendant; witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much
challenging. The witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradictory,
as witnesses always are. The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and
vindictively abusive of each other, as was characteristic and proper.
The case was at last submitted and duly finished by the judge with an
absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.

The acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young
gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished
success of all the amusement experiments.

An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure.
There was no oratorical talent in the ship.

We all enjoyed ourselves--I think I can safely say that, but it was in a
rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the
flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was
of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune
--how well I remember it--I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We
never played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions--but I
am too fast: young Albert did know part of a tune something about
"O Something-Or-Other How Sweet It Is to Know That He's His
What's-his-Name" (I do not remember the exact title of it, but it was
very plaintive and full of sentiment); Albert played that pretty much
all the time until we contracted with him to restrain himself. But
nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational
singing at church and prayers was not of a superior order of
architecture. I put up with it as long as I could and then joined in
and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George to join in
too, and that made a failure of it; because George's voice was just
"turning," and when he was singing a dismal sort of bass it was apt to
fly off the handle and startle everybody with a most discordant cackle
on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes, either, which was
also a drawback to his performances. I said:

"Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will
provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a
good tune--you can't improve it any, just off-hand, in this way."

"Why, I'm not trying to improve it--and I am singing like the others
--just as it is in the notes."

And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame but
himself when his voice caught on the center occasionally and gave him the
lockjaw.

There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing
head-winds to our distressing choir-music. There were those who said
openly that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going
on, even when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by
letting George help was simply flying in the face of Providence. These
said that the choir would keep up their lacerating attempts at melody
until they would bring down a storm some day that would sink the ship.

There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said the
pilgrims had no charity:

"There they are, down there every night at eight bells, praying for fair
winds--when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship going
east this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming west--what's a
fair wind for us is a head wind to them--the Almighty's blowing a fair
wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear
around so as to accommodate one--and she a steamship at that! It ain't
good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good Christianity, it ain't
common human charity. Avast with such nonsense!"




CHAPTER V.

Taking it "by and large," as the sailors say, we had a pleasant ten days'
run from New York to the Azores islands--not a fast run, for the distance
is only twenty-four hundred miles, but a right pleasant one in the main.
True, we had head winds all the time, and several stormy experiences
which sent fifty percent of the passengers to bed sick and made the ship
look dismal and deserted--stormy experiences that all will remember who
weathered them on the tumbling deck and caught the vast sheets of spray
that every now and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept
the ship like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer
weather and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the
phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at
the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the
part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when
we reflected that we were gaining about twenty minutes every day because
we were going east so fast--we gained just about enough every day to keep
along with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had
left behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place and
remained always the same.

Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West and is on his first voyage,
was a good deal worried by the constantly changing "ship time." He was
proud of his new watch at first and used to drag it out promptly when
eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he
were losing confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on
deck and said with great decision:

"This thing's a swindle!"

"What's a swindle?"

"Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois--gave $150 for her--and I
thought she was good. And, by George, she is good onshore, but somehow
she don't keep up her lick here on the water--gets seasick may be. She
skips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven, and then, all
of a sudden, she lets down. I've set that old regulator up faster and
faster, till I've shoved it clear around, but it don't do any good; she
just distances every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a way
that's astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells always gets in
about ten minutes ahead of her anyway. I don't know what to do with her
now. She's doing all she can--she's going her best gait, but it won't
save her. Now, don't you know, there ain't a watch in the ship that's
making better time than she is, but what does it signify? When you hear
them eight bells you'll find her just about ten minutes short of her
score sure."

The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was
trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he
had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the
watch was "on its best gait," and so nothing was left him but to fold his
hands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he
explained to him the mystery of "ship time" and set his troubled mind at
rest. This young man asked a great many questions about seasickness
before we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were and how
he was to tell when he had it. He found out.

We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, &c., of course, and by and
by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular list
of sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant carmine
color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly that
spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot
or two long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an
accomplished sailor and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when
a storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely
and goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in
good sailing order by turning over and dipping it in the water for a
moment. Seamen say the nautilus is only found in these waters between
the 35th and 45th parallels of latitude.

At three o'clock on the morning of the twenty-first of June, we were
awakened and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I
did not take any interest in islands at three o'clock in the morning.
But another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally
believing that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in
peace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half
o'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled
about the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were
wrapped in wintry costumes and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless
gale and the drenching spray.

The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud
standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon
it the sun came out and made it a beautiful picture--a mass of green
farms and meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet and
mingled its upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp,
steep ridges and cloven with narrow canyons, and here and there on the
heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and
castles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that
painted summit, and slope and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of
somber shade between. It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole
exiled to a summer land!

We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and
all the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to settle
disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of trees or
groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea were
really villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. Finally
we stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly became a
dome of mud again and sank down among the mists, and disappeared. But to
many a seasick passenger it was good to see the green hills again, and
all were more cheerful after this episode than anybody could have
expected them to be, considering how sinfully early they had gotten up.

But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came up
about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common sense
dictated a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island
of the group--Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the
accent on the first syllable). We anchored in the open roadstead of
Horta, half a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten
thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of
fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more
attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are
three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear
to their summits--not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every
acre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone walls, whose duty
it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that
blow there. These hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava
walls, make the hills look like vast checkerboards.

The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has Portuguese
characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of swarthy,
noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese boatmen, with
brass rings in their ears and fraud in their hearts, climbed the ship's
sides, and various parties of us contracted with them to take us ashore
at so much a head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the walls
of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve-and-thirty-two-pounders,
which Horta considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever
to get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to
move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find
it again when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one--men
and women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and
unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession beggars. They
trooped after us, and never more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid
of them. We walked up the middle of the principal street, and these
vermin surrounded us on all sides and glared upon us; and every moment
excited couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back,
just as village boys do when they accompany the elephant on his
advertising trip from street to street. It was very flattering to me to
be part of the material for such a sensation. Here and there in the
doorways we saw women with fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is
of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a
marvel of ugliness. It stands up high and spreads far abroad, and is
unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is
hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from his tin
shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about
this monstrous capote, as they call it--it is just a plain, ugly
dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go within eight points of the
wind with one of them on; she has to go before the wind or not at all.
The general style of the capote is the same in all the islands, and will
remain so for the next ten thousand years, but each island shapes its
capotes just enough differently from the others to enable an observer to
tell at a glance what particular island a lady hails from.

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