Читать книгу Round the Wonderful World - Mitton Geraldine Edith - Страница 3

It is exciting to start on any journey, even if it is only one we have done before, but to go off round the world that is a real adventure!

There are many lines of steamers we could choose to go by, but we will select for this first part of the journey the Orient Line. The choice really lies between that and the P. & O., as we have already decided, and for many reasons it is best to begin with the Orient and join the other later. The main reason being that I want you to see a little of as many European countries as possible, and the Orient ships stop at Naples, in Italy, while those of the other line do not.

The ships in the Orient fleet all begin with an O; there are the Otranto, Otway, and many more, but the boat which suits us and happens to sail on the date we want to start – in the beginning of November – is the Orontes. She is not the largest ship in the fleet, having about half a dozen before her on the list, but she is a good ship and very steady.

Our jumping-off place is London, whence a special train runs from the station of St. Pancras down to the docks at Tilbury, where the Orontes is waiting for us. The long platform beside the train is covered with people when we arrive there, so that we have some difficulty in finding seats. If all these people were coming with us we should have a full ship indeed, but the one half of them is only seeing the other half off!

The line passes through dreary flat country, and at last we catch sight of open water and funnels and feel as if we must be right down at the Thames' mouth, but we are very far from that yet.

The heavy luggage has all been sent on ahead, and passengers are told only to bring with them what can be carried in the hand; judging from the piles of boxes that are tumbled out of the train many of them must have tolerably large hands!

We pass through a great shed, and coming out on the other side find our ship there, right up against the dock side. It towers above us, blocking out the sky as a street of six-storey houses would do. In fact, it is rather like looking up at a street side, and when we see the sloping ladder leading to the deck, like those used for hen-roosts but on a giant scale, we feel our adventure is well begun. Hang on to the hand-rail, for the wind is blowing hard, and if you went down into the black dirty water between the ship and the dock there would be very little chance of getting you out again; even as we climb up something flicks past us and is carried away, and we see it floating far below; it is an enormous white handkerchief which the man up there on deck has been waving to his wife in farewell. It is gone, and it is to be hoped he has another handy, he'll need it to-day. At the top of the ladder a man in uniform looks at our ticket and calls out the number of our cabin. He is so smart and has such a dignified manner we might well mistake him for the captain, but he is an officer, called the purser, who looks after the passengers. A bright-faced steward, unmistakably English, takes possession of us and pilots us down some well-carpeted stairs, through a large room where small tables are laid for lunch, and into a very long narrow passage shining with white enamel paint. There are little doors with numbers on them on one side, and about half-way along the steward stops and ushers us into our cabin. It is a tiny room. If you lay down from side to side you could touch each wall with head and heels, and if I lay down from end to end I could do the same, and I am rather bigger than you! There are two shelves, one above the other, made up as beds, a piece of furniture with drawers and a looking-glass in it, a fixed basin such as those you see in bathrooms, and a few pegs to hang things on, and that is all. Our cabin trunks, which we sent on ahead, are here before us, and through the open round port-hole we catch a glimpse of grey water. We are lucky indeed to get a cabin to ourselves, for in many, not a bit larger than this, there would be a third bunk or bed, and a stranger would be forced in on us. When we have settled our things you will be surprised to find how comfortable it all is, for everything is so conveniently arranged. It is just as well to put out what we shall want at once while the ship is steady, for once she begins to roll —

When we have done this we go back to the saloon, encountering many people rushing wildly to and fro with bags and bundles, still unable to find their cabins, having come on at the last minute. In the great saloon, those who are going ashore are hastily swallowing cups of hot tea, and just as we arrive a bell rings to warn them to get off the ship if they don't want to be carried away with her.

They flock down the gangway while we stand high above, and many good-byes are shouted, and some are tearful and some are quite casual and cheerful. Then the gangway is moved, but just before it goes down with a run there is a shout, and two policemen hurry along the quay hauling two shamefaced-looking men who are hustled up into the ship again. They are stokers who fire the furnaces for the engines far down below in the bowels of the ship. They had signed on for this voyage and at the last minute tried to slink away, but have been caught and forced back to their work.

Now the strip of water widens and very slowly we move from the quay, being dragged ignominiously backward across the great basin in which we lie by a diminutive steamer called a tug. We are not out in the river yet and our own engines have not begun to work. You can understand that it would be very difficult to load a ship if she stood always in the river, where there are rising and falling tides, so, to make this easier, great docks have been built along the river, and in them the flow of the tides is regulated, so that the water remains always at pretty much the same level.

The tug that pulls us across the dock on our way out looks absurdly small, like a little Spitz dog pulling a great deerhound; but it does its work well, and presently we glide into a narrow cut between high walls; this is the lock, the entrance to the dock, and the water is held up by great gates at each end as required, just as it is on river locks for boats. Once we are inside the great gates behind us are shut, and presently those at the farther end open and we see two other little tugs waiting there to take us in charge. We are going out at the top of the tide, and if we missed it should have to wait for another twelve hours, or there would not be sufficient water in the river to float the ship comfortably. We are still stern first, so if we want to see the fun we must climb up to the top deck at that end. The wind is blowing a perfect gale and almost drives us off our feet; it catches the side of the ship and makes it far harder work for the gallant grimy tugs, which are pulling and straining at the taut ropes till they look like bars of iron lying between us and them. They churn the water to a fury, and pour forth volumes of black smoke; inch by inch we feel the ship moving out; her stern is dragged up-stream, so that when she is finally swung clear, her bows are pointing seaward and she is ready to go. It is an exciting moment when the ropes are cast off, and there is a great deal of running about and shouting, and then our own engines begin gently but powerfully to do their work. The screws beneath the stern revolve and we have started on our long, long voyage!

There are no waves in the river; only those who are very nervous will think about being ill yet awhile, and this is a good chance to examine the great ship which is to be our home for some time.

There is plenty of room to walk about on the decks or to play games when we reach a more summer-like climate. There are many rooms where we can shelter in the wet and cold weather, a great lounge with writing-tables, and a smoking-room – and there is no house on earth kept so spotlessly clean as a ship!

When we go down to dinner we sit on chairs that swing round like office chairs, only they are fixed into the floor, and as they only swing one way, there are some funny scenes till people get used to them. We have hardly taken our seats when a very magnificent man with a white waistcoat and gold shoulder straps and much gold lace on his uniform comes and sits down too, and smiles and bows to everyone. This is the captain, and we must be more distinguished than we guessed, for we have been put at his table, where the honoured passengers usually find seats. Though this captain has such a kindly smile, a captain can be very terrifying indeed; he is king in his ship, and has absolute authority; his word is law, as, of course, it must be, for the safety of the whole ship's company depends on him, and there is the fine tradition, which British captains always live up to, that in case of any accident happening to the ship the captain must be the last man to quit her. Innumerable captains indeed have preferred to go down into the unfathomable depths with their ships sooner than leave them when they have been wrecked.

For several days there are very few people to be seen about, and the rows of empty chairs at the table and on deck are rather depressing, but as the weather brightens a little people creep out of their cabins; white-faced ladies come to lie, rolled in rugs, on the sheltered side of the deck, and the chairs are filled. Yet it is still a little dismal, though we tramp sturdily up and down and would not admit it for the world. The strong wind blows endlessly and the great grey waves are always rolling on monotonously one after another, one after another, in huge hillocks. So we plough down the English Channel and across the Bay of Biscay, which is no rougher than anywhere else, though people ask with bated breath, "When shall we be in the Bay?" "Are we through the Bay yet?" as if there was no other bay in all the world.

Then comes a day when all at once everyone on board seems to wake up and become alive again. The sun shines in patches along the decks and the sea is blue and sparkling. We are passing close beside a steep and rocky coast, and so near do we go that we can see the white waves dashing against it and even spouting up in sheets of spray through blow-holes in the cliffs. What we see is the coast of Spain, so we have set eyes for the first time on another country than our own. There are many other steamers in this stretch of water, some small and some as large as ours, some coming and some going. It is all much more lively than it was. Soon we have pointed out to us the place where the battle of Trafalgar was fought, when Britain won a victory that assured her the dominion of the seas up to the present time – a battle in which our greatest sailor, Lord Nelson, was killed in the moment of victory!

It is the next morning after this that, when we wake up, we find that the tossing and rocking motion has ceased; it is curiously quiet, the iron plates that bind the ship together no longer creak and groan as if they were in agony. We are bewildered. Then in a moment the meaning of all this flashes upon us. We have reached Gibraltar!

Coming up on deck we find the scene glorious. The sun is shining out of a cloudless sky on to a sea so blue that it gives one a sort of pleasant pain to look at its loveliness. The air is brilliant, as if we were living at the heart of a crystal. The ship is stealing along so silently and gently she hardly seems to move, and then she comes to anchor in a bay that seems to be surrounded on all sides with hills. Some of these hills, lying rather far away, gleam white in the sunshine; they are part of the great continent of Africa, and so, though it is only in the distance, we have set eyes on our first new continent. Towering up before us, with mighty bulk, is an immense rock, rising bald and rather awful into the pure sky. Near the summit its sides are completely bare, seamed by great gashes, and broken by masses of rock that look as if they might crash down at any moment. Apes live up there, wild mischievous creatures, who descend to steal from the orchards below, but are so shy that they are hardly ever seen of men. They are of a kind called Barbary apes, only found elsewhere in Africa; and it is thought that perhaps, many ages ago, Europe was joined to Africa at this point, and that when a great convulsion occurred which broke the two asunder and let the water flow through the Straits of Gibraltar some of the apes may have been left on this side, where their descendants still are, sundered for ever from their kinsfolk by the strip of sea.

About the base of the rock is a little town running up the hill and brightened by many trees – this is Gibraltar itself, one of the most famous places in the world. For this alone it is well worth while to come round by sea.

Anyone can see at a glance why it is so important. That little strait, about a dozen miles across, is the only natural entrance by water into the Mediterranean Sea, which lies all along the south of Europe. At the other end men have had to cut a way out by means of a canal. If ever European nations were at war, the nation which held Gibraltar would be able to prevent the ships of other countries from getting into or coming out of the Mediterranean. It could smash them with big guns if they tried, or blow them up. So that even if the country on each side were flat this would still be an important place; but nature has made here a precipitous rock, which is a natural fortress, and by great good luck this belongs, not to the country of Spain, of which it is the southern part, but to Great Britain. To find out how this is so you must go to history. Gibraltar has been held by Britain for many years now, and though the King of Spain is very friendly with Britain, and has married an English princess, I think he must sometimes feel a little sore over Gibraltar.

Lying in a basin on one side of us are some of our own powerful and ugly ironclads, like bulldogs guarding the fort, and on the other side are ships of all nations, come on peaceful trading errands or for pleasure cruises, including a dainty little white French yacht that looks like a butterfly which has just alighted.

We go ashore in a launch and are met on the quay by a medley of strange folk and a great clamour of voices! The men and women are nearly all dark skinned and black eyed, and yet they are all speaking English after a fashion. A woman offers us a curiously twisted openwork basket of oranges, with the deep-coloured fruit gleaming through the meshes, a man implores us to take some of the absurdly neat little nosegays he has made up, picture postcards are thrust under our noses, and cabmen wildly beseech us to patronise their open vehicles. It is a brilliant scene, full of life and colour and warmth, and the people all seem good-humoured and jolly.

Sitting huddled up against a wall, with some odd-looking bundles beside them, are a group of very poor people; they are emigrants about to leave their own country for South America. Out there in the bay is the emigrant ship, and dipping toward her over the open water are several boats loaded down to the gunwale going out; others have reached her side and the people swarm up like flies. This group on the quay are awaiting their turn. A small boy and girl are rolling about in the sun like little lizards and laughing gaily. The little girl is called Maria and is about ten years old; she has a tiny scarlet shawl pinned across her chest, and her bright black hair shines in the sunlight; in her wee brown ears are little gilt ear-rings, and she is hugging tightly to her bosom a large and very gaudy doll. It is not exactly the kind of doll an English child would care about, because its face is the face of an idiot and it is made of some sort of poor composition stuff; its clothes are tawdry material of tinsel and stiff muslin, and are pinned on by pins with coloured glass heads glittering in the sun. Maria thinks it lovely and shrieks if her young brother Sebastian lays a finger on it. She is on the point of leaving her own country, perhaps for ever, to travel for thousands of miles to a land where everything is different from what she is used to; but she is as unconscious of this as if she were a little kitten, and as long as she can roll in the sunshine and hug her doll, the first she has ever possessed, the thought of the morrow does not trouble her soul.

Her home lies far away in the interior of Spain, and her parents have travelled to Gibraltar in carts and then in a marvellous thing called a train which made the children shriek with delight when it moved off without horses. Maria and Sebastian were brought up in a hovel with a mud floor, and only one room, shared with the donkey and the goat. They were never taught to obey, or to have their meals at regular hours, or to go to bed at night at a particular time; they ran in when they pleased, clamoured for something to eat or drink, or else fell down on a bundle of rags in the corner and were sound asleep in a moment. They often slept in the heat of the day and were up almost all night listening to a neighbour playing the guitar, or singing and rollicking with other children. Their usual drink was sour red wine made from grapes grown on the neighbouring hillsides after all the best juice had been already pressed out of them. This the peasants bought in immense bottles, swollen out below like little tubs, and cased in wicker-work with handles which made them easy to carry. In every hovel there was a bottle like this. To match it there was an enormous loaf of dark-coloured bread, made flat and round as a cart-wheel or a small table; bits of this were chopped off as required, and when Sebastian and Maria cried out they were hungry they had a lump of bread and sip of wine given to them, and then they became quite happy again. Sometimes they had olives with their bread, or chestnuts, or a salad made from herbs growing by the roadsides, and they had oranges very often and goat's milk cheese. On high days and festival days they had sometimes very thin hot cabbage soup out of a great black pot that boiled over a few sticks; they dipped their bread into it or supped it up out of large flat wooden spoons, wrinkling their little noses meantime because it was so hot. A grand treat was a purple or crimson pomegranate given by a kindly neighbour.

When Maria was about seven the whole family moved into a town where the narrow streets were always dark between the tall thin houses. It was much more exciting here than in the country; there was always something to see, and in the evenings the whole place was like a bazaar with people coming and going, and shows and entertainments open half the night. On festival days the streets were gay with lanterns, and festoons of coloured paper and flags were waved until the children thought it like heaven.

Then came a talk of crossing the sea. Some members of the family and very many friends had already made a journey to a far-away country called Argentina, and others were thinking of going. It seemed that in that land, which was as sunny and warm as their own, there was more money to be made than in Spain, and as party by party made up their minds and set off in one of the great emigrant ships Maria's father grew more gloomy and unsettled, until at last, by one means or another, he had scraped together enough money to pay for their passages, and then they all started on the great adventure, even a greater one than our going round the world.

It is only a couple of days after leaving Gibraltar that we reach Toulon in good time in the morning. We anchor well outside the splendid bay, as Toulon is one of the most important French ports, and no prying eyes are wanted there. In the little steam-launch we run past the huge battleships La Verité, La Republique, and others lying solidly in a row manned by French sailors with little red top-knots on their flat caps. Then we see the beautiful range of high hills surrounding the bay, and are landed on the quay. The market is one of the most interesting things here, and we are lucky to be in time for it. Up a long narrow street are lines of open-air stalls covered with masses of fruit and vegetables. The natty little Frenchwomen who sell them almost all wear blue aprons and black dresses, and have little three-cornered shawls over their shoulders.

Look at that bunch of celery there, it is monstrous – the size of a child! Everything seems on a huge scale; there are artichokes on great stalks, melons gleaming deep orange-red and too large for any but a man to lift; scattered all about are bunches of little scarlet tomatoes not much bigger than grapes. But the oddest thing to us are the bunches of fungi, tawny-coloured, piled up in heaps, and evidently very popular! There are squares of matting covered with chestnuts, and whelks, like great snails, sticking out their horns and crawling over each other in a lively way. A strange medley! The flowers are lovely; you can buy a big bunch of violets for a son, and sou is the peasant word for a halfpenny. Gladiolus, anemones, roses, and mignonette fill the air with fragrance. It is a beautiful place this market.

After lunch we stroll down to the quay again and wander idly about looking at the people until the launch comes to take us back to the steamer. There is a huge fat man seated on a low stool cleaning the boots of another man equally stout. Wedged into the corner beside them, so that they cannot stir, are two small white boys with thin pathetic little faces. As we watch we see the boot-cleaning man, who has a cruel, mean expression, pull hold of the little tunic of the nearer one, and point to a smear upon it, then deliberately he raises his large hand and smacks the child hard across the cheek. The little chap makes no effort to escape, – he evidently knows it is hopeless, – he only crooks a thin little arm over his cheek as he shrinks back. Deliberately the great man holds down the thin little arm and strikes him again with savage force. It is sickening! If we interfere the child will probably only get it worse afterwards. There are a few brutes like this who make their own children's lives a misery, though mostly French people are very kind. The children look so ill and pale, too, they probably don't get half enough to eat.

"May I get them some sweets?"

Happy thought! We passed a shop a minute ago. Here, wait a second, say to the father in your best French this sentence —

"Ils sont à vous, ces garçons, Monsieur? Très beaux garçons!"

You see you have put him in a good humour, he is pleased, though the poor little chaps are very far from being "beaux." They seem almost too stupefied to understand the sweets, but they know the way to put them in their mouths.

While we are waiting on the tender before it starts we see a different set of little boys; one, a delicate, pretty-looking little fellow, about your age, but not nearly so tall or strong, raises his cap and begins in English, "Good-day, Monsieur." His little companions sit around in awe at his knowledge and audacity. His name is Pierre, he tells us, and that badly dressed sturdy little boy with a sullen face is Louis. Pierre tries to make conversation in our own language to entertain us. "Are you to Australie going?" he asks. We tell him we are going first to Egypt. "Monter au chameau!" he cries excitedly, going off into a gabble of French and beseeching us to take him with us as "boy." We tell him that he is too small and that it costs much money. "Have you money – English?" he asks. He is very much interested when we show him half a crown and explain that it is equal to three francs of his own money. Then he catches sight of some English stamps. "Timbres!" he cries, and then, with a great effort, "I college," meaning "I collect." We give him a halfpenny stamp, which he carefully puts away in a battered purse already containing two French pennies. Louis, who has been giving convulsive hitches to his little trousers, which threaten to part company altogether with the upper garment, bursts in eagerly, asking us to give him a penny, adding solemnly: "Ma mère est morte," as if the fact of his mother being dead entitled him to demand it. We explain that it is not polite to ask for money. "Cigarette," he then says promptly. We tell him that in England the law forbids boys under sixteen to smoke, whereat they all shriek with laughter. So we add that Englishmen want to grow up tall strong men, and if they smoke as boys they won't, whereupon they grow grave again and nod their little heads wisely.

The waves are quite wild out in the bay and we have considerable difficulty in jumping on to the slippery step at the foot of the long gangway up the ship's side. Hanging on with a firm grip we struggle upward, and when we reach the top we see the little French boys waving their good-byes to us from the tender, Pierre bowing gracefully, cap in hand, Louis with his disreputable air of being a little ragamuffin and rejoicing in it.