Chapter 2

If you decide to "end it all"--which, I believe, is the expression adopted by the best authorities--there is one humane suggestion I would make. End it before the ship's concert. There's absolutely no use in just living on and saying you won't go to the concert, for that is just what everybody else says, yet everybody always goes. There is a horrible fascination about a ship's concert, something hypnotic that draws you, very much against your word and will. I always think of it as a sort of awful antidote that is given to the passengers to counteract the poison of the steady boredom of the ship. It is an event in the voyage, just as the appendicitis operation is an event in life. And as the only people who enjoy the appendicitis operation are the doctors, the only people who go gaily to the concert are those who go there to perform.

The chairman, for instance, enjoys it very much. He is a peer, a member of Parliament, or the United States consul at Shepherd's Bush, and he begins his speech by stating that the proceeds of the entertainment will be equally divided between the Seamen's Funds of New York and Liverpool, or somewhere else. It is then necessary to explain what seamen are. They are "these brave, watchful fellows who have our lives in their hands." At this, the chairman looks at the table stewards, who stand about the walls with their napkins and their middle-class grins; brave, watchful fellows trying to look as if they really held our lives and not our dinners in their hands.

His duty to the Seamen's Funds accomplished, the chairman passes on to other things. Just what they are depends upon his nationality. If he be a British chairman, his speech will be composed of throaty sounds, coughs, clearings of the throat, and mumblings, through which the quick ear of the auditor may catch the following remarks:

"As a matter of fact----"

"Don't you know----"

"I mean to say----"

Now and then there comes a British chairman with a wide oratorical scope. In his case these additional expressions will occur:

"After all, now----"

"You Americans----"

"Eh, what?"

With the American chairman it is different. You understand his speech and only wish you didn't. After telling you that "it is a great pleasure," he continues through allusions to:

"This international occasion----"

"Our English cousins----"

"Hands across the sea----"

"Blood is thicker than water----"

Then comes a humourous story about an Englishman, an American, and an Irishman, at which the English passengers laugh, having a tradition that "you Yankees are such droll chaps!" The chairman now switches quickly from the quasi-ridiculous to the pseudo-sublime, and works up to his big moment, which has for its climax the table-pounding statement that "the Anglo-Saxon race must and shall predominate!"

This is violently applauded by everybody but a Frenchman, who writhes horribly and Fletcherises his handkerchief.

When the applause is over, the entertainment begins with the announcement that the Opera-Singer and the Polish Pianist are unable to appear, owing to indisposition--which really means an ingrowing disposition not to do so. They have, however, sent "liberal donations" to the Fund. We then find that "we are nevertheless so fortunate as to have with us to-night" a young actor. The Actor gives a serio-comic recitation. But his encore is his _pièce de résistance_. It proves to be a vivid verse about marine disaster, a form of selection obviously suited to the occasion. Where, except at a ship's concert, can one get the full value of such lines as

"We are lost!" the captain shouted, As he staggered down the stair--

By turning one's head only slightly, one can actually see the stair, all ready for the captain. Suppose we hit a derelict at this very moment! We might see the whole thing acted out!

After this recitation some one tries to play on the piano. In the middle of the piece the ship gives an obliging lurch, but to no purpose; for, though the performer slips off the stool, striking with his hands something that sounds like the lost chord, and with his body two ladies who are waiting for their turn, he is picked up and put back on the stool to finish.

When he has done so, his rescuers spring blithely forward, one playing the accompaniment very badly while the other renders "Araby." "Araby" is always sung at a ship's concert. Likewise a young Englishman invariably sings "The Powder Monkey."

The English have peculiar views on singing. Mere matters of voice and ear make not the slightest difference to them. It is like going to war, or playing on the flute: one can't refuse, I mean to say, if one is asked. Eh, what? The only man in England who has a right to say he cannot sing is one who is literally dumb, and as he cannot say it, it is never said. And so, you see, Britannia Rules the Wave, and all that sort of thing.

At the end of the concert, "God Save the King" strikes up, and everybody rises and lifts such voice as he has in song, the American passengers labouring under a conviction that the words begin "My country, 'tis of thee," until the Britons drown them out.

But we have our turn, for "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played immediately after. The words of this excellent song (as Mr. Rupert Hughes has pointed out) begin with something of this sort:

Oh say, can you see by the dawn's early light How the la ta-ta ta, and the ta-ta ta tum-tum.

So we proceed until we reach the spirited "ba-a-an-ner ye-et wa-ave," and the shrieking climax of "the la-and--of--the--free-e-e-e!" The object of the game is not to let the British find out that we don't know the words.

* * * * *

On German ships, particularly those in the Mediterranean service, the gay occasion of the voyage will be the Captain's Dinner, a function which doubtless draws its name from the fact that the captain is invariably absent from the table. But if the captain doesn't come, everybody else does, and there is more dress than usual, and there are lights inside the ices. After dinner, the deck is illuminated with coloured electric bulbs, the band plays, and the people "trip the light fantastic toe," as country papers put it. On German liners it's not always light, but it is frequently fantastic.

There are two great events that occur on this occasion. Some young men from the section which is the backbone of our country--if not it's fashion centre--appear on deck in dinner-coats and derby hats. They have read somewhere a fashion note stating that "the derby or bowler hat is the one headpiece _de rigueur_ with the Tuxedo or dinner suit," and they mean to be _comme il faut_ upon their trip abroad, or "bust." The other great event is the ship's belle in her pink chiffon. It makes you almost wish you were a dancing-man, to see her. But there are dancing-men enough--among them the ship's doctor. He leads her in the mazes of the waltz and, while dancing, is given an anæsthetic, in shape of a languishing glance or two. Before he comes to, his partner has performed a minor operation on him--the amputation of a button.

You overhear her on the tender, as you leave the ship next day: "Oh, yes, I love the sea. You can let yourself go and be sure of getting out of everything in a week!" Perhaps you see her in Paris, with new escorts. Perhaps she is on the same boat when you go home again. And if she's not, there's some one else just like her. And also there is some one just like each of the other passengers with whom you left New York.

But for all that, there are differences between the voyage east and the voyage west. Letters of credit have shrunk, wardrobes have increased, and the handiwork of the European bill-poster may be seen on trunks and bags as that of his American confrère is seen at home on ash-barrels and fences. And there's more to talk about when you are going west: Paris dressmakers, European hotels, and the American custom-house. If you talk with Europeans, it is always nice to give them fresh impressions as to what's the matter with their country and with them.

So the gray, dismal voyage passes. At last there comes the morning when you wake to see the sunshine streaming through your port-hole; when, though your clothing and the flowered cretonne curtains of your berth are swinging freely back and forth in time with creaking sounds which chase each other through the bounding ship, you do not care, because your heart is glowing with an unaccustomed happiness.

"Fane brate day, sir," says the steward, in a cheery voice, as he brings in your hotwater can.

"A little rougher, isn't it?" you return, as if you hoped it was.

"A bit _fresher_, perhaps, sir," he corrects. "She did put 'er foot in a few 'oles lahst night. See the land, sir?"

Ah, that's why you're so gay!

"Land! Where?"

You leap from your berth to the port-hole in one bound.

A schooner and a coastwise steamer are in sight, gulls are swinging in long circles with the ship, and far away on the horizon lies a haze which is America.

You dress with care and hurry to the deck. You bow and give a gay "good morning!" to some people you've not spoken to before. You even have a word for the man who always walks with a pedometer, and the one who is coming back from Germany after having put a noiseless soup-spoon on the market. The deck is all abloom with pretty girls in pretty hats and pretty suits.

Even the ship is making ready for the shore. Hatches are off, busy donkey-engines are hustling mail-bags up from dark recesses within, stewards are smiling as they rush about with trunks and rolls of rugs.

"I'm Boots, sir. Don't forget Boots, sir."

Ah, no, good Boots! Thrice welcome, Boots! And here's thy toll, already set aside, like all the other tips, in envelopes.

Land ho!

The world is blithe and gay--except for one depressing thought. The nearer you get to the New York custom-house, the heavier becomes the load of luggage on your mind. Dresses, hats, wraps, lingerie, so gaily bought in Paris, lie withering like Dead Sea fruit in the forlorn cold storage of furiously labelled wardrobe trunks.

"_Must_ I declare that Paris motor-coat? It never fitted, and it's fairly worn to shreds!"

"Yes, dear, everything. And sh-h! There are spotters on the ships, you know."

The United States custom-house spotter ought to look like a detective, but he doesn't. Instead of playing Foxy Quiller, he plays bridge, and probably with you. He adores the ladies--the dear ladies, God bless 'em! For it is the ladies whom the spotter mostly spots: the pretty ladies with big state-rooms and big trunks and big hats; the pretty ladies with the little maids and little evening gowns and little pearls. The spotter has to be the sort of man these ladies like, or else the Government will change his spots. In short, he is a perfect dear! So when, at bridge, he makes the coy confession that he is taking French silk stockings over to his sister and wonders if he'll "have trouble on the pier," your wife tells him just what she is doing. ("One can't mistake a gentleman!") She tells him that she's going into her state-room to sew some New York labels into Paris gowns and hats--and that is how she comes to lose twelve dresses and a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace, and have hysterics on the dock, and how she never sends that dinner invitation to him at the club in Forty-fourth Street.