Читать книгу A Woman's Impression of the Philippines - Mary H. Fee - Страница 5

Table of Contents

I Find the Transport Ship Buford and My Stateroom—Old Maids and Young Maids Bound for the Orient—The Deceitful Sea—Making New Friends and Acquaintances.

On a hot July day the army transport Buford lay at the Folsom Dock, San Francisco, the Stars and Stripes drooping from her stern, her Blue Peter and a cloud of smoke announcing a speedy departure, and a larger United States flag at her fore-mast signifying that she was bound for an American port. I observed these details as I hurried down the dock accompanied by a small negro and a dressing-bag, but I was not at that time sufficiently educated to read them. I thought only that the Buford seemed very large (she is not large, however), that she was beautifully white and clean; and that I was delighted to be going away to foreign lands upon so fine a ship.

Having recognized with relief a pile of luggage going aboard—luggage which I had carefully pasted with red, white, and blue labels crossed by the letters “U.S.A.T.S.” and Buford—I dismissed the negro, grasped the dressing-bag with fervor, and mounted the gangway. To me the occasion was momentous. I was going to see the world, and I was one of an army of enthusiasts enlisted to instruct our little brown brother, and to pass the torch of Occidental knowledge several degrees east of the international date-line.

I asked the first person I met, who happened to be the third officer, where I should go and what I should do. He told me to report at the quartermaster’s office at the end of the promenade deck. A white-haired, taciturn gentleman in the uniform of a major, U.S.A., was occupying this apartment, together with a roly-poly clerk in a blue uniform which seemed to be something between naval and military. When I mentioned my name and showed my order for transportation, the senior officer grunted inarticulately, and waved me in the direction of his clerk, glaring at me meanwhile with an expression which combined singularly the dissimilar effects of a gimlet and a plane. The rotund junior contented himself with glancing suspiciously at the order and sternly at me. As if reassured, however, by my plausible countenance, he flipped over the pages of a ledger, told me the number of my stateroom, and hunted up a packet of letters, which he delivered with an acid reproof to me for not having reported before, saying that the letters had been accumulating for ten days.

It is true that the Buford had been scheduled to sail on the first day of the month; but I had arrived a day or two before that date, only to learn that the sailing date had been postponed to the tenth. I had made many weary trips to the army headquarters in Montgomery Street, asking for mail—and labels—with no results. Nobody had suggested that the mail would be delivered aboard ship, and I had not had sense enough to guess it. I did not make any explanations to the quartermaster and his clerk, however, because an intuition warned me not to add tangible evidence to a general belief in civilian stupidity. I merely swallowed my snubbing meekly and walked off.

I ambled about, clinging to the dressing-bag and looking for some one resembling a steward. At the foot of the ladder leading to the bridge I encountered two young girls descending therefrom with evidences of embarrassed mirth. They were Radcliffe girls, whose evil genius had led them to the bridge and to an indignant request to explain their presence there. They explained to no purpose, and, in response to a plaintive inquiry where to go, were severely told, “We don’t know, but go down from here immediately.” So they came down, crimson but giggling, and saw me (they said) roaming about with an expression at once wistful and complacent.

I found a steward and my stateroom at last, and a brown-haired, brown-eyed young woman in it who was also a pedagogue. We introduced ourselves, disposed of our parcels, and began to discuss the possibilities of the voyage. She was optimistically certain that she was not going to be seasick. I was pessimistically certain that I was. And she was wrong, and I was right. We were both gloriously, enthusiastically, madly seasick.

When we returned to the deck, it was crowded with passengers, the mail was coming aboard, and all sorts of bugle-calls were sounding, for we were carrying “casuals.” It was a matter of wonder that so many persons should have gathered to bid adieu to a passenger list recruited from all parts of the Union. The dock was black with people, and our deck was densely crowded. Khaki-clad soldiers leaned over the side to shout to more khaki on the dock. An aged, poorly dressed woman was crying bitterly, with her arms about the neck of a handsome boy, one of our cabin passengers; and all about, the signs of intense feeling showed that the voyage marked no light interval of separation.

I stood at the forward rail of the promenade deck, and fell into conversation with a gentleman whom I had met in San Francisco and who was a fellow passenger. We agreed in being glad that none of our relatives were there to see us off; but, though we made much ado to seem matter-of-fact and quite strong-minded about expatriating ourselves, I noticed that he cleared his throat a great deal, and my chin annoyed me by a desire to tremble.

The gongs warned visitors ashore, and, just as all the whistles of San Francisco were blowing the noon hour, we backed away from the dock, and turned our head to sea. As the little line of green water between ship and dock widened to a streamlet and then to a river, the first qualm concerning the wisdom of the expedition struck its chilly way to my heart. Probably most of the passengers were experiencing the same doubts; and the captain suspected the fact, for he gave us fire drill just to distract our attention and to settle our nerves.

The luncheon gong sounded immediately after his efficacious diversion, and the military people who were to eat in the first section—the Buford’s dining-room was small—went down to lunch. The junior lieutenants, and the civil engineers and schoolteachers, who made up her civilian list, took their last look at San Francisco. We swung past Alcatraz Island and heard the army bugles blowing there. The irregular outline of the city with its sky-scrapers printed itself against a background of dazzling blue, with here and there a tufty cloud. The day was symbolic of the spirit which sent young America across the Pacific—hope, brilliant hope, with just a cloud of doubt.

We passed the Golden Gate just as our own luncheon gong sounded, and the Buford was rolling to the heave of the outside sea as we sat down to our meal. At our own particular table we were eight—eight nice old (and young) maid schoolteachers. Some of us were plump and some were wofully thin. One was built on heroic lines of bone, and those sinners from Radcliffe were pretty.

Toward the end of luncheon the Buford began to roll and pitch and otherwise behave herself “most unbecoming,” and my room-mate, declining to finish her luncheon, fled to the deck, where the air was fresher. Feeling no qualms myself, and secretly triumphing in her disillusion, I followed with her golf cape and rug, of which she had been too engrossed to think. My San Francisco acquaintance coming to my assistance, we established her in a steamer chair and sat down, one on each side, to cheer her up—and badly she needed it, for her courage was fast deserting her.

The sea was running heavily, and the wind was cold; I had not thought there could be such cold in July. The distance was obscured by a silvery haze which was not thick enough to be called a fog, but which lent a wintry aspect to sea and sky—a likeness increased by the miniature snow-field on each side of the bow as the water flung up and melted away in pools like bluish-white snow ice.

As the Buford waded into the swell, wave after wave dashed over the forward deck, drenching a few miserable soldiers there, who preferred to soak and freeze rather than to go inside and be seasick. Sometimes the spray leaped hissing up on the promenade deck, and our weather side was dripping, as I found when I went over there. I also slipped and fell down, but as that side of the ship was deserted, nobody saw me—to my gratification. I petted a bruised shin a few minutes and went back to the lee side a wiser woman.

About three o’clock, when Miss R——‘s face was assuming a fine, corpse-like green tint, I began to have a hesitating and unhappy sensation in the pit of the stomach, a suggestion of doubt as to the wisdom of leaving the solid, reliable land, and trusting myself to the fickle and deceitful sea. In a few moments these disquieting hints had grown to a positive clamor, and my head and heels were feeling very much as do those of gentlemen who have been dining out with “terrapin and seraphim” and their liquid accompaniments. At this time Miss R—— gave out utterly and went below, but I was filled with the idea that seasickness can be overcome by an effort of will, and stayed on, making an effort to “demonstrate,” as the Christian Scientists say, and trying to look as if nothing were the matter. The San Francisco man remained by me, persistent in an apparently disinterested attempt to entertain me; but I was not deluded, for I recognized in his devotion the fiendish joy of the un-seasick watching the unconfessed tortures of those who are.

It was five o’clock when I gasped with a last effort of facetious misery, “And yet they say people come to sea for their health,” and went below. The Farralones Islands, great pinky-gray needles of bleak rock, were sticking up somewhere in the silvery haze on our starboard side, and I loathed the Farralones Islands, and the clean white ship, and myself most of all for embarking upon an idiotic voyage.

Arrived in the stateroom, it was with little less than horror that I saw Miss R—— in the lower berth—my berth. Such are the brutalizing influences of seasickness that I immediately reminded her that hers was above. She dragged herself out, and, in a very ecstasy of selfish misery, I discarded my garments and burrowed into the warmth of my bed. Never had blankets seemed more comfortable, for, between the wind and the seasickness, I was chilled through and through.

I fell asleep through sheer exhaustion, and wakened some time after in darkness. The waves were hissing and slapping at the porthole; the second steward was cursing expertly in the linen closet, which happened to be opposite our stateroom; and somewhere people in good health were consuming viands, for cooking odors and the rattle of dishes came to us. A door in the corridor opened, and the sound of a cornet was wafted back from the forward deck. Somebody was playing “The Holy City.” Steps went by. A voice with an English accent said, “By Jove, you can’t get away from that tune,” and, in one of those instants of stillness which fall in the midst of confusion, I heard a gurgling moan.

I snapped on the light and turned—at what cost only the seasick can appreciate—to behold Miss R—— sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. She was still shrouded in her golf cape and hood, and contemplated her boots—which were on her feet, sticking straight out before her—as if they were a source of mental as well as bodily inconvenience. At intervals she rolled her head and gave utterance to that shuddering moan.

Wretched as I was, I could not help gasping, “Are you enjoying your sea trip?” and she replied sepulchraily, “It isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.” We could say no more. That time we groaned in unison.

She must have gathered strength of mind and body in the night, however, for she was in her berth next morning when the stewardess came in to know what we wanted for breakfast. We did not want anything, as we quickly made reply. The wind went down that day; the next day was warm and clear, with a sea like sapphire, and we dragged ourselves to the deck. Recovery set in quickly enough then, so that we began to “think scornful” of seasickness. Fortunately the good ship Buford ploughed her way across the Pacific without meeting another swell, and our pride was not humbled again. We ate quite sparingly for a meal or two, and had fits of abstraction, gazing at the ceiling when extra-odorous dishes were placed in front of us. The Radcliffe girls said that they had passed a strenuous night, engaged in wild manœuvres to obtain possession of the monkey wrench and feloniously to secrete the same. Their collegiate training had included instruction on the hygienic virtues of fresh air, which made no allowance for a sea trip; and their views as to the practical application of these principles came sadly into conflict with the ideas of their bedroom steward. There were frantic searchings for a monkey wrench all that night, while the article lay snugly bestowed between the mattresses of a maiden who looked as if she might be thinking of the angels. Also their porthole was open in defiance of orders, and much water came into their stateroom. But they did not care, for it brought fresh air with it.

The first two or three days of the voyage were spent in taking stock of our fellow passengers and in finding our friends. We were about seventy-five cabin passengers in all—a small family, it is true. The ship was coaled through to Manila, the first stop being Guam. So we made acquaintance here and there, settling ourselves for no paltry five or six days’ run, but for a whole month at sea. We all came on deck and took our fourteen laps—or less—around the promenade deck before breakfast. The first two or three nights, with a sort of congregational impulse, we drifted forward under the promenade awnings, and sang to the accompaniment of the cornetist on the troop deck. The soldiers sang too, and many an American negro melody, together with “On the Road to Mandalay” and other modern favorites, floated melodiously into the starlit silence of the Pacific. Our huge windsail flapped or bellied as the breeze fell or rose; the waves thumped familiarly against the sides; the masthead lantern burned clear as a star; and the real stars swung up and down as the bowsprit curtsied to each wave. In the intervals between songs a hush would fall upon us, and the sea noises were like effects in a theatre.

In a few days, however, our shyness and strangeness wore off. We no longer sang with the soldiers, but segregated ourselves into congenial groups; and under the electric lights the promenade deck looked, for all the world, like the piazza of a summer hotel.