CHAPTER XIV

STEALING A MARCH ON THE FAR EAST

All through that month of February in Cairo I studied the posters of the steamship companies to learn what ships were sailing eastward; for I hoped to get work on one of them as a sailor, and continue my trip around the world. While I was in the train on my way to Port Said, I saw four giant steamers gliding southward through the canal, so close that I could read from my window the books in the hands of the passengers under the awnings. How fortunate those people seemed to me! They were already on their way east, while I was still crawling slowly along the edge of the desert. Gladly would I have exchanged places with the dirtiest workman on board.

I wanted to go to Bombay; but I should have been glad to escape from that neck of sand in almost any direction. Not that there weren’t ships enough—they passed the canal in hundreds every week. But their sailors were yellow men or brown, and they anchored well out in the middle of the stream, where a white sailor might not go to ask for work.

All this I thought of as I crawled through the African desert behind a wheezing locomotive. But one solemn promise I made to myself before the first hut of Port Said bobbed up across the sand—that I would escape from this place somehow, on something, be it coal-barge or raft, before its streets and alleys became such eye-sores as had once those of Marseilles.

I reached Port Said. After dinner I hurried away to the shipping quarter. As I had expected, no sailors were wanted. I went to ask advice of the American consul.

“A man without money in this place,” he said, “is here to stay, I fear. We haven’t signed on a sailor since I was sent here. If you ever make a get-away, it will be by hiding on one of the steamers. I can’t advise you to do it, of course. But if I were in your shoes I’d stow away on the first boat homeward bound, and do it at once, before summer comes along and sends you to the hospital.”

Early the next morning I saw a great steamer nosing her way among the smaller boats that swarmed about the mouth of the canal. She looked so much like the _Warwickshire_ that I half expected to see my former mess-mates peering over her rail. I made out the name on her bow as she dropped anchor in the middle of the canal. Then I turned to a near-by poster to find out more about her.

“_S. S. Worcestershire_,” ran the notice. “Largest, fastest steamer sailing from England to British Burma. First-class passengers only. Fare to Colombo, one hundred eighty dollars.”

A sister ship of the vessel that had brought me from Marseilles! The very sight of her made me think of the prime roasts we had had while crossing the Mediterranean. I hurried down to the landing-stage, and spoke to the officers as they left the ship with the tourists for a run ashore.

“Full up, Jack,” answered one of them.

I thought of the advice the American consul had given me. A better craft to hide on would never drop anchor in the canal. Bah! I could never get on board. The blackest night could not hide such rags as mine! Besides, the steamer was sure to load on coal and be gone within a couple of hours.

A native fair was going on at the far end of town. I became so interested in watching the snake-charmers and dancers that I soon forgot all about the ship I had seen that morning.

Darkness was falling when I strolled back toward the harbor. At the shop where mutton sold cheaply I stopped for supper; but the keeper had put up his shutters. Hungrily I wandered on toward the main street that bordered the canal, and stopped stock-still in astonishment. There before me, cutting off the view of the buildings across the canal, the vast bulk of the _Worcestershire_ was still standing.

What a chance—if I could once get on board! Perhaps I might! But an official would be sure to halt me if I tried to do it. I must have some good excuse to offer him for being rowed out to the steamer. If only I had something to be delivered on board: a basket of fruit, or—exactly!—a letter of introduction.

Breathlessly I dashed into the reading-room of the Catholic Sailors’ Home, snatched a sheet of paper and an envelope, and scribbled a letter asking for work of any kind on board the ship. Then I sealed the envelope and addressed it in a bold hand to the chief steward of the ship.

But my knapsack? Certainly I could not carry that on board! I dumped its contents on the floor, snatched my camera and papers, and thrust them into an inside pocket. There was nothing else. With my faded clothes in the shadow, I would look like one of the passengers. Many an English lord, traveling in the East, wears a cap after nightfall.

In high excitement I rushed down to the dock. The _Worcestershire_ was still there. Two Arab boatmen squatted under a torch on one corner of the landing-place, waiting to row passengers out to the steamer. They charged sixpence. I had three. It cost me some precious moments to beat down one of them. He stepped into his boat at last, and pushed off cautiously toward the row of lighted port-holes.

As we drew near the steamer I made out a figure in uniform on the lowest step of the ship’s ladder. The game was lost! I certainly could not pass this bridge officer.

My oarsman swung his boat against the ladder with a sweep of the oar. I held up the note.

“Will you kindly deliver this to the chief steward?” I asked. “The writer wants an answer before the ship leaves.”

“I really haven’t time,” apologized the mate. “I’ve an errand ashore, and we leave in fifteen minutes. You can run up with it yourself, though. Here, boatman, row me to the landing.”

I sprang up the ladder. Except for several East Indian workmen who jumped aside as I appeared, there was no one on the deck. From somewhere below came the sound of waltz music and the laughter of merry people. I strolled carelessly around to the other side of the deck, and walked aft in the shadow of the upper cabins. For some moments I stood alone in the darkness, gazing at the streaks of light from the lower port-holes sparkling in the canal. Then a step sounded behind me—a heavy British step that came toward me for several paces, and then halted. One could almost tell by his walk that he was an officer of the ship; one could certainly hear it in the gruff “Ahem!” with which he cleared his throat. I waited in fear and trembling.

A minute passed, then another. I turned my head, inch by inch, and peered over my shoulder. In the dim light stood a man in faultless evening dress, gazing at me through the darkness between us. His dress looked like that of a passenger, but the very set of his feet on the deck proved that he was no landsman. It was the captain himself, surely! What under officer would dare appear out of uniform on a voyage?

I turned away my head again, determined to bear the coming blow bravely. The dreaded being cleared his throat once more, stepped nearer, and stood for a moment without speaking. Then a hand touched me lightly on the sleeve.

“Beg pahdon, sir,” murmured a very polite voice; “beg pahdon, sir, but ’ave you ’ad dinner yet? The other gentlemen’s h’ all been served, sir.”

I swallowed my throat and turned around, laying a hand over the place where my necktie should have been.

“I am not a passenger, my man,” I replied scornfully; “I have a message for the chief steward.”

The servant stretched out his hand.

“Oh, I cawn’t send it, you know,” I objected. “I must deliver it myself, for it requires an answer before the ship leaves.”

“Goodness, you can’t see _’im_,” gasped the Briton; “we’re givin’ a dance, and ’e’s in the ball-room.”

The sound of our voices had attracted the quartermaster on duty. Behind him appeared a young steward.

“You’d best get ashore quick,” said the sailor; “we’re only waitin’ for the fourth mate. Best call a boatman or you’ll get carried off.”

“Really!” I cried, looking anxiously about me. “But I must have an answer, you know!”

“I couldn’t disturb _’im_,” wheezed the older steward.

“Well, show me where he is,” I argued.

“Now, we’re off in a couple o’ winks,” warned the quartermaster.

“’Ere, mate,” said the youth; “I’ll take you down.”

I followed him to the deck below, and along a lighted passageway. My make-up would never stand the bright glare of a ball-room. I thrust the note into the hands of my guide.

“Be sure to bring me the answer,” I cautioned.

He pushed his way through a group of his mess-mates and disappeared into the drawing-room. A moment later he returned with the answer I had expected.

“So you’re on the beach?” he grinned. “’Ard luck. The chief says he has enough sailors, and the company rules don’t allow ’im to take on a man to work ’is passage. S’y, you’ve made a mistake anyway, though, ayn’t you? We’re not ’omeward bound; we’re going out. You’d best rustle it and get ashore.”

He turned into the cook-room of the ship. Never had I dared to hope that he would let me out of his sight before I left. His carelessness was due, probably, to his certainty that I had “made a mistake.” I dashed out of the passageway as if fearful of being carried off; but, once hidden in the kindly night, I paused to peer about me.

Where was there a good place to hide? Inside a mattress in the steerage? But there was no steerage. The ship was first-class only. Down in the hold, where the cargo was stored? The doors covering the stairways leading to it were all nailed down. In the coal-bunkers? That would do very well in the depth of winter, but would be sure death in the heat of this country. In the forecastle, where the sailors live? Sure to be found in a few hours by tattletale natives. In the chain-locker? The anchor and chain might be dropped anywhere in the canal, and I should be dragged piecemeal through the hawse-hole.

Still thinking rapidly, I climbed to the spot where I had first been seen. From the starboard side, forward, came the voice of the fourth mate, clambering on board. In a few moments officers and men would be flocking up from below. Noiselessly I sprang up the ladder to the highest deck. There was no one in sight. I crept to the nearest life-boat, and dragged myself along the edge that hung well out over the canal. I tugged at the canvas cover on the boat for a minute that seemed a century before I succeeded in making an opening. When it had loosened for a space of four feet, I thrust my head through. Inch by inch, I squirmed in, fearful of making the slightest noise. Only my feet remained outside when my hand struck an oar inside the boat. Its rattle could have been heard in Cairo. Drenched with perspiration, I waited for my discoverer. But the music, it seemed, held the attention of everybody on the ship. I drew in my feet by doubling up like a pocket-knife, and, thrusting a hand through the opening fastened the canvas cover back in place.

The space inside was too small. Seats, kegs, oars, and boat-hooks left me barely room to stretch out on my back without touching the canvas above me. Two officers brushed by, and called out their orders within six feet of me. I heard the rattle of the anchor-chain, and knew that the long trip through the canal had begun.

When I could breathe without opening my mouth at every gasp, I was forced to remember that I had had nothing to eat that afternoon. Within an hour my hunger was forgotten. The sharp edge of a keg under my back, the oars under my hips, the seat that my shoulders barely reached, began to cut into my flesh, sending sharp pains through every limb. I dared not move for fear of sending some unseen article clattering. Worst of all, there was hardly room for my head, while I kept my neck strained to the utmost. The tip of my nose touched the canvas. To have stirred that ever so slightly would have landed me back on shore at the first canal station.

The position grew more painful hour by hour; but after some time my body grew numb and I sank into a half-conscious state that was not sleeping.

Daylight did not help matters, though in the sunshine that filtered through the canvas I could see the objects about me. There came the jabbering of strange tongues as the sailors quarreled over their work on the deck. Now and then there was a shout from a canal station that we were passing. Passengers climbing to the upper deck brushed against the life-boat as they took their walks. From time to time I heard them talking—telling what they were going to do when they reached India.

It became so hot that all but the officers returned to the shade below. By noon the Egyptian sun, pouring down upon the canvas, had turned my hiding-place into an oven. A raging thirst had long since silenced my hunger. In the early afternoon, as I lay motionless, there sounded a splash of water close at hand. Two natives had been sent to wash the life-boat. For an hour they dashed bucketful after bucketful against it, splashing, now and then, even the canvas over my head.

The gong had just sounded for afternoon tea when the ship began to rock slightly. Then came a faint sound of waves breaking against her side. A light breeze moved the canvas ever so little, and the throb of the engines became louder. Had we passed out of the canal? I was about to tear at the canvas and bellow for water. But had we really left the Suez Canal behind? Was this, perhaps, only the Bitter Lakes? Or, if we had reached the Red Sea, the pilot might still be on board! To be set ashore now would mean an endless tramp back through the burning desert to Port Said.

I held myself quiet, and listened intently for any word that might show me our whereabouts. None came, but the setting sun and falling darkness brought coolness. The ship did not pitch as it did in the open sea. I made up my mind to wait a little longer.

With night the passengers came again, to lean against my boat and tell their secrets. A dozen schemes, ranging from a plan for making Christians of all the Indias to the arrangement of a tiger hunt in the Assam hills, were told within my hearing during that motionless evening. But when music sounded from below they left the deck deserted, and I settled down to listen to the faint tread of the second mate, who paced the bridge above me.

The night wore on. Less fearful, now, of being discovered, I moved, for the first time in thirty hours, and, rolling slowly on my side, fell asleep. It was broad daylight when I awoke to the sounding of two bells. The ship was rolling and pitching, now, in a way that indicated plainly that we were on the open sea. I tugged at the canvas cover and peered out. My muscles were so stiff that I could not move for some moments. Even when I had wormed myself out, I came near losing my grip on the edge of the boat before my feet touched the rail. Once on deck, I waited to be discovered. No land-lubber could have mistaken me for a passenger now.

Calmly I walked toward the stairway, and climbed down to the second deck. A score of bare-legged brown men were “washing down.” Near them, their overseer, in all the glory of embroidered jacket and rubber boots, strutted back and forth, fumbling at a silver chain about his neck. I strolled by them. The low-caste fellows sprang out of my way like startled cats; their overseer gazed at me with an uncertain smile. If they were surprised they did not show it. Probably they were not. What was it to them if a _sahib_ (white man) chose to turn out in a ragged hunting costume in the early morning? Stranger things than that they had seen among these queer beings with white skins. For some time I paced the deck without catching sight of a white face. At last a small son of Britain clambered unsteadily up the stairway, clinging tightly to a pot of tea.

“Here, boy,” I called. “Who’s on the bridge—the mate?”

“Yes, sir,” stammered the boy, sidling away; “the mite, sir.”

“Well, tell him there’s a stowaway on board.”

“W’at’s that, sir? You see, sir, I’m a new cabin-boy, on me first trip—”

“And you don’t know what a stowaway is, eh?”

“No, sir.”

“If you’ll run along and tell the mate, you’ll find out soon enough.”

The boy mounted to the upper deck, clutching now and then at the rail. Judging from the grin on his face as he came running back, he had added a new word to his vocabulary.

“The mite says for you to come up on the bridge quick. ’E’s bloomin’ mad.”

I climbed again to the hurricane-deck. The mate’s anger had so overcome him that he had left his post and waited for me at the foot of the bridge-ladder. He was burly and heavy-jawed, bare-headed, bare-footed, his hairy chest showing, his duck trousers rolled up to his knees, and his thick tangle of disordered hair waving in the wind. With a ferocious scowl and set jaw, he glared at me in silence.

“I’m a sailor, sir,” I began. “I was on the beach in Port Said. I’m sorry, sir, but I had to get away—”

The mate gave no other sign of having heard than to push his heavy jaw farther out.

“There was no chance to sign on a ship there, sir. Not a man shipped in months, sir, and it’s a tough place to be on the beach—”

“What has that got to do with me and my ship!” roared the officer, springing several yards into the air, and coming down to shake his sledge-hammer fist under my nose. “I’ll give you six months for this directly we get to Colombo. You’ll stow away on my ship, will you? Get down off this deck before I brain you with this bucket!”

Not certain as to what part of the _Worcestershire_ he wanted me to go, I started forward. Another bellow brought me to a halt.

“You—” But never mind what words he used. The new order was that I was to wait in the waist until the captain had seen me.

I went down, snatched a swallow of lukewarm water at the pump, and leaned against the side of the ship. Too hungry to be greatly terrified, I had already taken new heart at the mate’s words. “Colombo,” he had said. Until then I had feared that the _Worcestershire_, like most ships bound for East India, would put in at Aden in Arabia, and that I would be set ashore there.

An hour, two hours, three hours, I stood in the waist, returning the stares of everybody on board, Hindu or English, who passed by me. With the sounding of eight bells a steward came by with a can of coffee. Once started, an endless procession of bacon, steaks, and ragoûts filed by under my nose. It was almost more than I could bear. To snatch at one of the pans would have been my undoing. I thrust my head over the railing, where the sea breezes blew, and stared at the sand billows on the Arabian coast. Not until the last of the dishes had passed by did I dare to turn around once more.

“Peggy,” the steward’s cook, peered cautiously out upon me. “Eh, mite,” he whispered; “’ad anything to eat yet?”

“Not lately.”

“Well, come inside. There’s a pan o’ scow left to dump.”

Very little of it was dumped that morning.

I had barely returned to my place when four officers came down a ladder to the waist. They were led by the mate, carefully dressed now in a snow-white uniform. His language, too, had improved. A “sir” falling from his lips showed me which of his companions was the captain. My hopes rose at once at sight of the latter. He was a very different sort of man from his first officer. Small, neat, and quick of movement, his iron-gray hair gave setting to a face that showed both kindliness and strength. I knew I should be treated with fairness.

The officers pretended they didn’t see me. They mounted the ladder and strolled slowly along the deck, examining as they went. Peggy came to the door of the kitchen with the dish-cloth in his hands.

“Morning h’inspection,” he explained in a husky whisper. “They’ll be back here directly they’ve looked over the other side. The little feller’s the captain. ’E’s all right.”

“Hope he lives out the voyage,” I muttered.

“The fat jolly chap’s the chief steward,” went on Peggy. “Best man on the ship. The long un’s the doctor.”

The officers continued examining the ship for things that needed repairing. They came back toward the waist, and halted several times within a few feet of me to look over some part of the ship’s machinery or furnishings. When the scuppers had been ordered cleaned and the pump had been pronounced in proper condition, the mate turned to the captain and pointed angrily at me:

“There he is, sir.”

“Ah,” said the captain. “What was your object, young man, in stowing yourself away on this vessel?”

I began the story I had tried to tell the first officer. The captain heard it all without interrupting me.

“Yes, I know,” he said, when I had finished. “Port Said is a very unfortunate place in which to be left without money. But why did you not come on board and ask permission to work your passage?”

“I did, sir!” I cried. “That’s just what I did! I brought a letter to the chief steward. That’s how I came on board, sir.”

“That’s so!” put in the “fat jolly chap”; “he sent a note to me in the drawing-room. But I sent back word that we had all the men we needed.”

“I see,” replied the captain thoughtfully. “You’re the first man that ever stowed away on a vessel under my command,” he went on almost sadly. “You make yourself liable to severe punishment, you know?”

“I’d put him in irons and send him up, sir,” burst out the mate.

“N—no,” returned the captain; “that wouldn’t be right, Dick. You know Port Said. But you know you will have to work on the voyage,” he added, turning to me.

“Why, certainly, sir,” I cried, suddenly beginning to fear that he might see through my coat the camera that contained a likeness of his ship.

“You told the chief officer you were a sailor, I believe?”

“A. B., sir—and steward.”

“Have you anything you can put him at, Chester?” he asked the steward.

“I’ve more men than I can use now,” replied the steward.

“Beg pardon, sir,” put in the mate; “but the chief engineer says he can use an extra man down below.”

He was a kindly fellow, was the mate. He wanted to force me to shovel coal into the furnace. Not only was the place an oven in that climate, but the Hindu firemen would have made life very disagreeable for me had I been sent to work among them.

“No, no,” answered the commander. “The man is a sailor and a steward; he is not a stoker. You had better take him on deck with you, Dick.”

He started up the ladder.

“Huh,” muttered the mate, “I know what I’d do with him if I was in command.”

“Take him on board with you, Dick,” repeated the captain, from above. “Get something to eat now, my man, and report to the chief officer, forward, when you have finished.”

“I’ll send you down a couple of cotton suits,” whispered the steward, before he followed the captain up the ladder; “you’ll die with that outfit on.”

I stayed in the kitchen long enough to eat breakfast, and then hurried forward. The mate, scowling, began asking me question after question as rapidly as he could. Perhaps he wanted to find out whether I had told the truth when I said I had been a sailor.

“Box the compass,” he snarled suddenly.

I did so. For an hour he gave me a severe examination.

“Umph!” he growled at last. “Take that holy-stone with the handle”—it weighed a good thirty pounds—“and go to polishing the poop. You’ll work every day from six in the morning till seven at night, with a half-hour off for your meals. From four to six in the morning, and from eight to ten at night, you’ll keep watch in the crow’s-nest, and save us two natives. On Sunday you’ll keep watch from four to eight, nine to twelve, two to seven, and eight to ten. Look lively now, and see that the poop begins to shine before I get there.”

From that time on, the mate rarely gave me a word. Without a break I toiled at the task he had given me as long as the voyage lasted. The holy-stone took on great weight, but the view I had from the crow’s-nest of every tropical sunrise and sunset I would not have exchanged for a seat at the captain’s table. My mess-mates were good-hearted, and the chief steward was friendly and kind. But the Hindu crew tried to make life unpleasant for me. Few were the moments when a group of the brown rascals were not hovering about me, chattering like apes and grinning impudently. The proudest man on board was the overseer; for it was through him that the mate sent me his orders. Since the days when he rolled naked and unashamed on the sand floor of his native hut, he had dreamed of no greater happiness than the power to give commands to a _sahib_.

Ten days the _Worcestershire_ steamed on through a motionless sea, under a sun that became more torrid every hour. The kitchen became too hot to live in. Men who had waded through the snow on the docks of Liverpool two weeks before took to sleeping on the deck in the thinnest of clothing. On the eleventh evening we were certain that there was an odor of land in the air. Before morning broke I had climbed again to the crow’s-nest. With the first gray streak of dawn I could see the dim outline of a low mountain range, colored by the gleam of sunrise behind it. Slowly the mountains faded from view as the lowlands beneath them rose up to greet us.

By eight bells we could see a score of naked black-brown islanders paddling boldly seaward in their queer outrigger canoes. The _Worcestershire_ glided past a far-reaching break-water, and, steaming among a school of smaller boats and vessels, rode to an anchorage in the center of the harbor. A crowd swarmed on board, and in the rush and noise I left my stone and hurried below to pack my “shore bundle.” Through the kindness of the chief steward, I was well supplied with cotton suits. I returned to the captain, got his permission to leave, tossed my bundle into the company launch, and, with one English half-penny jingleless in my pocket, set foot on the green island of Ceylon.