Читать книгу A Yankee in the Far East - George Hoyt Allen - Страница 4

This is a fine, large ship – Japanese line.

I don't call to mind any line of ships I have not sailed on prior to this voyage in my chasing up and down the world in search of a "meal ticket," and pleasure; but this is my first voyage on a Japanese liner, and I'm simply delighted with it.

It contrasts delightfully with a ship I sailed on, on one of my former trips across the Pacific.

That boat was all right, too. Good ship, good service – particularly good service – Chinese help; and anyone who has ever sailed with Chinese crews, waiters and room boys, knows what that means – nothing better in that line. I had a fine stateroom and a good room boy – that boy was a treasure.

I cottoned to that boy the minute he grabbed my baggage at the wharf, and blandly said, "You blong my," as he led me to my stateroom.

There was an obnoxious sign in that stateroom which read: "No Smoking in Staterooms." I settled for the long voyage, hung a coat over that sign, and lit up.

Wong Lee flagged me with a word of warning: "No can slmoke stlate room. Slmoke loom, can do."

"Wong," I said, "how fashion you talkee so? 'No can slmoke stlate loom!' No tlouble slmoke stlate loom. Can slmoke stlate loom easy, see?"

If anyone tells you the Chinese can't see a joke, tell them to guess again. Wong saw that little one – saw it through a cloud of smoke, at that. Wong shut my stateroom door, like a boy in the buttery stealing jam, and said: "Lofficers findee out. They flobid."

"All right, Wong, I won't tell them if you don't," I said. And Wong didn't – Wong certainly didn't betray me.

The further we sailed the more I became attached to the boy – he took such excellent care of me – I got so I really loved that boy.

All Wong's other duties seemed easy compared to his efforts, in my behalf, to see that my slight and harmless infraction of the ship's rules should not be discovered. If I dropped a little ash, Wong was on hand to brush it up. A tell-tale cigar stub, carelessly left – Wong was there to whisk it out of sight with: "Lofficers may come insplection any time. No can tell when."

It wasn't my uneasiness at fear of being found out that robbed me of some of the pleasures of the trip, but an anxious fear that Wong, 'round whom the tendrils of my heart's affections were gaining strength each day as we neared the mystic land of the rising sun – my great fear was that before we landed at Yokohama, Wong would surely burst in his efforts to keep the smoke in my stateroom blown out of the port-hole.

Now this ship is different. No silly rules that drive a man out of his room onto the deck, or the smoking room, when he feels like drawing a little inspiration from the weed that cheers but don't inebriate – I like this ship.

"Land ho!" Hawaii in the distance.