Читать книгу A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel - Samuel G. Bayne - Страница 42

Among those present who came all the way from Medicine Hat was the cowboy girl, who could ride a mustang, toss a steer with a lariat, shoot a bear or climb a tree. She wore a sombrero, rolled up her sleeves, and was just dying to show what she could do if she had only half a chance. She got it when we came to the donkey rides in Egypt. She was a "Dreadnaught girl," sure enough.

The claims of the pocket "Venus" from the "Soo," must not be forgotten. She was small and of the reversible, air-cooled, selective type, but as perfect as anything ever seen in a glass case. She wore a spray of soft-shell crab-apple blossoms in her hair, which stamped her with the bloom of Arcady. She spilled her chatter lavishly, and had the small change of conversation right at her finger-tips. She had an early-English look, and was deservedly popular with the boys.

The beet-sugar man from Colorado also had his place. This specialist put his table to sleep before we lost sight of land. He stifled his listeners with sugar statistics, informing them how many tons of beets the State produced and what they were worth in money; how much to expect from an acre, and the risks and profits of the industry: a collection of facts that were the mythology of alleged truth. If you were good the gods would make you a sugar-king in the world to come, and Colorado was to be financially sugar-cured in the sweet by-and-by. His whole song was a powerful anaesthetic, and many at the table did not know the meal was over till the steward woke them up.

One among our crowd who really mattered was a tall, gloomy, dyspeptic man, hard to approach, but once known he never failed to harp on his favorite string—the old masters and the Barbizon school of painting. This man had all the ready veneer of the art connoisseur. He used to talk by the hour about the great pictures he had seen, and gave each artist a descriptive niche for what he thought him famous: such as, the expression of Rubens; the grace of Raphael; the purity of Domenichino; the correggiosity of Correggio; the learning of Poussin; the air of Guido; the taste of Coraceis, and the drawing of Michelangelo. This, of course, was all Greek to most of us, but it raised the tone of the smoking-room and enveloped the entire ship in a highly artistic atmosphere which no odors from the galley could overcome. Incidentally I may say, however, he didn't know all about them, for one day a wag set a trap for him by saying he had had a fine bit of Botticelli at dinner.

"My dear sir," exclaimed our "authority," "Botticelli isn't a cheese; he was a famous fiddler!"

"I have always had an impression he was an old master," said another passenger, who was an amused listener.

It is impossible for any large body of travelers to escape the man who by every device tries to impress his fellows with the idea that he is a Mungo Park on his travels, and so our harmless impostor had his "trunkage" plastered with labels from all parts of the world, sold to him by hotel porters, who deal in them. He wore the fez, of course, and sported a Montenegrin order on his lapel; he had Turkish slippers; he carried a Malacca cane; he wrapped himself in a Mohave blanket and he wore a Caracas carved gold ring on his four-in-hand scarf. But his crowning effort was in wearing the great traveling badge, the English fore-and-aft checked cap, with its ear flaps tied up over the crown, leaving the front and rear scoops exposed. Not all of the passengers carried this array of proofs, but many dabbled in them just a little bit. It doesn't do, however, when assuming this role to have had your hair cut in Rome, New York, or to have bought your "pants" in Paris, Texas, for if you are guilty in those matters you will give the impression of being a mammoth comique on his annual holiday.

The dear lady who delights in "piffle," and to whom "pifflage" is the very breath of life, had also her niche in our affairs. She hailed from Egg Harbor and was an antique guinea hen of uncertain age. When you are thinking of the "white porch of your home," she will tell you she "didn't sleep a wink last night!" that "the eggs on this steamer are not what they ought to be," that the cook doesn't know how to boil them, and that as her husband is troubled with insomnia her son is quite likely to run down from the harbor to meet her at the landing two months hence. Then she will turn to the query by asking if you think the captain is a fit man to run this steamer; if the purser would be likely to change a sovereign for her; what tip she should give her steward; whether you think Mrs. Galley-West's pearls are real, and whether the Customs are as strict with passengers as they used to be; whether any real cure for seasickness has yet been found, and why are they always painting the ship? Not being able to think of anything else she leaves her victim, to his infinite relief. Oh you! iridescent humming-bird!

The men who yacht and those who motor are of course anxious to attract attention. The freshwater yachtsman (usually river or pond), plants his insignia of office on his cap. It is generally a combination of a spread-eagle and a "hydriad," surrounded by the stars and stripes. These things lift him above the level of those who would naturally be his peers, and effect his purpose. The motorer sports his car duster on all possible occasions, and thinks his goggles are necessary to protect his eyes from the glare of the sun on the deck of the steamer. He has large studs of motors, and always proposes to keep in front of the main squeeze. The chatter relating to cars and yachts when these men were in evidence was insistent and incessant. You were never allowed to forget for a moment that they owned cars, power boats and runabouts, and that their tours averaged thousands of miles. The man from the stogie sections does not, of course, fear to fire his fusee in this company and he always does it—it keeps up the steam.

A row of three extinct volcanoes was frequently to be seen seated side by side in the smoking-room, where they recounted the scenes of their youth with evident gusto. One would recall the days of '49, spring of '50, and tell his companions all about the excitement of mining in those early times—"Glorious climate, California!" was the way he usually wound up his reminiscences. Another would draw his picture of the firing on Fort Sumter, and would assert that the battle of Antietam in which he took part was the hottest of the war. The favorite topic of the third raconteur was the flush times on Oil Creek in the early '60's, when he had drilled a dry hole near "Colonel Drake's" pioneer venture. And so it would go till it was time to "douse the glim." One thing they all agreed on—that the whiskey was good but the drinks were small on the Cork.