Читать книгу Working my Way Around the World - Harry Alverson Franck - Страница 4

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At noon the next day I received my wages and a printed certificate stating that I had been a sailor on the cattle-boat. I kept it, for the police would surely demand to know my trade while I was tramping through the countries of Europe.

Tucking my camera into an inside pocket, I struck out along the Clyde River toward the Highlands of Scotland. I passed through Dumbarton, a town of factories, and at evening reached Alexandria. A band was playing. I joined the crowd on the village green, and watched the young Scots romping and joking, while their elders stood apart in gloomy silence. A church clock struck nine. The concert ended. The sun was still well above the horizon. I went on down the highway until, not far beyond the town, the hills disappeared, and I saw the glassy surface of a lake, its western end aglow in the light of the drowning sun. It was Loch Lomond.

By and by the moon rose, casting a pale white shimmer over the Loch and its little wooded islands. On the next hillside stood a field of wheat-stacks. I turned into it, keeping well away from the owner’s house. The straw was fresh and clean, and made a soft bed. But the bundles of wheat did not protect me from the winds of the Scottish Highlands. With a feeling that I had not slept soundly, I rose at daybreak and pushed on.

Two hours of tramping brought me to Luss, a pretty little village on the edge of Loch Lomond. I hastened to the principal street in search of a restaurant; but the village was everywhere silent and asleep. Down on the beach of the Loch a lone fisherman was preparing his tackle. He was displeased when I said his fellow townsmen were late risers.

“Why, mon, ’tis no late!” he protested; “ ’tis no more nor five—and a bonny morning it is, too. But there’s a mist in it,” he complained as he looked at the sky.

I glanced at the bright morning sun and the unclouded sky. I could see no mist, nor any sign of rain. Trying to forget my hunger, I stretched out on the sands to wait for the morning steamer. Ben Lomond, a mountain I had read of in Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” stood just across the Loch, and I had made up my mind to climb it.

About six, a heavy-eyed shopkeeper sold me a roll of bologna and a loaf of bread. The steamer whistle sounded before I got back to the beach. I bought a ticket at the wooden wharf, and hurried out to board the steamer.

A big Scot stepped in front of me and demanded “tup’nce.”

“But I’ve paid my fare,” I said, holding up the ticket.

“Aye, mon, ye hov,” rumbled the native, straddling his legs and thrusting out his elbows. “Ye hov, mon. But ye hovna paid fer walkin’ oot t’ yon boat on our wharf.”

Ten minutes later I paid again, this time for being allowed to walk off the boat at Renwardenen.

Plodding through a half mile of heath and marsh, I struck into the narrow white path that zigzagged up the face of the mountain. The mist that the fisherman had seen began to settle down, and soon turned to a drenching rain. For five hours I scrambled upward, slipping and falling on wet stones and into deep bogs, and coming at last to a broad, flat rock where the path disappeared. It was the top of old Ben Lomond, a tiny island surrounded by whirling gray mist. The wind blew so hard that it almost bowled me off my feet into the sea of fog.

I set off down the opposite slope. In the first stumble down the mountain I lost my way, and came out upon a boggy meadow, where I wandered for hours over low hills and through swift streams. Now and then I scared up a flock of shaggy highland sheep that raced away down wild looking valleys. There was neither road nor foot-path. For seven miles I dragged myself, hand over hand, through a thick growth of shrubs and bushes; and once I fell head first into an icy mountain river before I reached the highway.

At the foot a new disappointment awaited me. There was a hotel, but it was of the millionaire-club kind. I turned toward a group of board shanties at the roadside.

“Can you sell me something to eat?” I inquired of the sour-faced mountaineer who opened the first door.

“I can no!” he snapped. “Go to the hotel!”

There were freshly baked loaves plainly in sight in the next hovel where I stopped.

“Have you nothing to eat in the house?” I demanded.

“No, mon; I’m no runnin’ a shop.”

“But you can sell me a loaf of that bread?”

“No!” bellowed the Scot. “We hovna got any. Go to the hotel. Yon’s the place for tooreests.”

I tried at the other huts; but nobody would sell me any bread. So, though I had already tramped and climbed twenty-five miles, I struck off through the sea of mud that passed for a road, toward Aberfoyle, fifteen miles distant. The rain continued. There was another lake, and then the road stretched away across a dreary field. I became so weary that I forgot I was hungry—then so drowsy that I could hardly force my legs to carry me on. Dusk fell, then darkness. It was past eleven when I splashed into Aberfoyle, too late to find an open shop. I hunted until I found an inn, rang the bell until I awoke a servant, and went supperless to bed.

Late the next morning I hobbled out into the streets of Aberfoyle to the station, and took the train for Sterling. Two days later, in the early afternoon, I reached Edinburgh. Following the signs that pointed the way to the poor man’s section, I brought up in Haymarket Square, a place well known in history. Many places in Europe that were once the palaces of kings and queens are the slums of to-day. A crowd of careless-looking men, in groups and in pairs, sauntered back and forth at the foot of a statue in the center of the square. One of them, as ragged and uncombed as his hearers, was making a speech. Another, in his shirt sleeves, wandered from group to group, trying to sell his coat for the price of a night’s lodging.

A sorry-looking building in front of me bore the sign: “Edinburgh Castle Inn. Clean, capacious beds, 6 shillings.”

I went inside, and found the place so dirty that I was glad to escape again into the street. A big policeman marched up and down with an air of importance.

“Where shall I find a fairly cheap lodging-house?” I asked him.

“Try the Cawstle Inn h’over there,” replied “Bobby,” grandly waving his Sunday gloves toward the place I had just left.

“But that place is not clean,” I objected.

“Not clean! Certainly it is clean! There’s a bloomin’ law makes ’em keep ’em clean,” shouted Bobby, glaring at me.

I entered another inn facing the square, but was thankful to escape from it to the one I had first visited. Here I paid for my lodging, and passed into the main room. It was furnished with benches, tables, and several cook-stoves.

Men were crowded around these stoves, getting their own supper. Water, fuel, and dishes were furnished free to all who had paid their lodging. On the stoves were sputtering or boiling many kinds of cheap food, tended by tattered men who handled frying-pans with their coat-tails as holders, and cut up cabbages or peeled potatoes with knives that had half-inch layers of tobacco on their blades. Each ate his mixture with the greatest enjoyment, as soon as it showed the least sign of being cooked, often without giving it time to cool, as I could tell by the expression on the faces about me.