Everbody
bought great bunches of green bananas at the ports in Mexico,
where we stopped for passengers.
The old woman was irritable, and one day when she saw the
agreeable German doctor pulling bananas from the bunch which she
had hung in the sun to ripen, she got up muttering "Carramba,"
and shaking her fist in his face. He appeased her wrath by
offering her, in the most fluent Spanish, some from his own bunch
when they should be ripe.
Such were my surroundings on the old "Newbern." The German
doctor was interesting, and I loved to talk with him, on days
when I was not seasick, and to read the letters which he had
received from his family, who were living on their Rittergut (or
landed estates) in Prussia.
He amused me by tales of his life at a wretched little mining
village somewhere about fifty miles from Ehrenberg, and I was
always wondering how he came to have lived there.
He had the keenest sense of humor, and as I listened to the tales
of his adventures and miraculous escapes from death at the hands
of these desperate folk, I looked in his large laughing blue eyes
and tried to solve the mystery.
For that he was of noble birth and of ancient family there was no
doubt. There were the letters, there was the crest, and here was
the offshoot of the family. I made up my mind that he was a
ne'er-do-weel and a rolling stone. He was elusive, and, beyond
his adventures, told me nothing of himself. It was some time
after my arrival in San Francisco that I learned more about him.
Now, after we rounded Cape St. Lucas, we were caught in the long
heavy swell of the Pacific Ocean, and it was only at intervals
that my little boy and I could leave our stateroom. The doctor
often held him while I ran below to get something to eat, and I
can never forget his kindness; and if, as I afterward heard in
San Francisco, he really had entered the "Gate of a hundred
sorrows," it would perhaps best explain his elusiveness, his
general condition, and his sometimes dazed expression.
A gentle and kindly spirit, met by chance, known through the
propinquity of a sixteen days' voyage, and never forgotten.
Everything comes to an end, however interminable it may seem, and
at last the sharp and jagged outlines of the coast began to grow
softer and we approached the Golden Gate.
The old "Newbern," with nothing in her but ballast, rolled and
lurched along, through the bright green waters of the outer bar.
I stood leaning against the great mast, steadying myself as best
I could, and the tears rolled down my face; for I saw the
friendly green hills, and before me lay the glorious bay of San
Francisco. I had left behind me the deserts, the black rocks, the
burning sun, the snakes, the scorpions, the centipedes, the
Indians and the Ehrenberg graveyard; and so the tears flowed, and
I did not try to stop them; they were tears of joy.
