His seemingly unbeatable hand and after the haunting and elusive
odor of eau de rodent had become plainly perceptible all over the
ship, he began, as the saying goes, to smell a rat himself, and
straightway declined to make good his remaining losses, amounting
to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high words,
meaning by that low ones, and accusations and recriminations, and
at eventide when the sunset was a welter of purple and gold, there
was a sudden smashing of glassware in the smoking room and a flurry
of arms and legs in a far corner, and a couple of pained stewards
scurrying about saying, "Ow, now, don't do that, sir, if you please,
sir, thank you, sir!" And one of the belligerents came forth from
the melee wearing a lavender eye with saffron trimmings, as though
to match the sunset, and the other with a set of skinned knuckles,
emblematic of the skinning operations previously undertaken. And
through all the ship ran the hissing tongues of scandal and gossip.
Out of wild rumor and cross-rumor, certain salient facts were
eventually precipitated like sediment from a clouded solution.
It seemed that the engaging Messrs. X, Y and Z had been induced,
practically under false pretenses to book passage, they having
read in the public prints that the prodigal and card-foolish son
of a cheese-paring millionaire father meant to take the ship too;
but he had grievously disappointed them by not coming aboard at
all. Then, when in an effort to make their traveling expenses
back, they uncorked their newest trick and device for inspiring
confidence in gudgeons, the particular gudgeon of their choosing
had refused to pay up. Naturally they were fretful and peevish
in the extreme. It spoiled the whole trip for them.
Except for this one small affair it was, on the whole, a pleasant
voyage. We had only one storm and one ship's concert, and at the
finish most of us were strong enough to have stood another storm.
And the trip had been worth a lot to us - at least it had been worth
a lot to me, for I had crossed the ocean on one of the biggest
hotels afloat. I had amassed quite a lot of nautical terms that
would come in very handy for stunning the folks at home when I got
back. I had had my first thrill at the sight of foreign shores.
And just by casual contact with members of the British aristocracy,
I had acquired such a heavy load of true British hauteur that in
parting on the landing dock I merely bowed distantly toward those
of my fellow Americans to whom I had not been introduced; and they,
having contracted the same disease, bowed back in the same haughty
and distant manner.
When some of us met again, however, in Vienna, the insulation had
been entirely rubbed off and we rushed madly into one another's
arms and exchanged names and addresses; and, babbling feverishly
the while, we told one another what our favorite flower was, and
our birthstone and our grandmother's maiden name, and what we
thought of a race of people who regarded a cup of ostensible coffee
and a dab of honey as constituting a man's-size breakfast. And,
being pretty tolerably homesick by that time, we leaned in toward
a common center and gave three loud, vehement cheers for the land
of the country sausage and the home of the buckwheat cake - and,
as giants refreshed, went on our ways rejoicing.
That, though, was to come later. At present we are concerned with
the trip over and what we had severally learned from it. I
personally had learned, among other things, that the Atlantic
Ocean, considered as such, is a considerably overrated body.
Having been across it, even on so big and fine and well-ordered a
ship as this ship was, the ocean, it seemed to me, was not at all
what it had been cracked up to be.
During the first day out it is a novelty and after that a
monotony - except when it is rough; and then it is a doggoned
nuisance. Poets without end have written of the sea, but I take
it they stayed at home to do their writing. They were not on the
bounding billow when they praised it; if they had been they might
have decorated the billow, but they would never have praised it.
As the old song so happily put it: My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean!
And a lot of others have lied over it too; but I will not - at least
not just yet. Perhaps later on I may feel moved to do so; but at
this moment I am but newly landed from it and my heart is full of
rankling resentment toward the ocean and all its works.
I speak but a sober conviction when I say that the chief advantage
to be derived from taking an ocean voyage is not that you took it,
but that you have it to talk about afterward. And, to my mind,
the most inspiring sight to bewitnessed on a trip across the
Atlantic is the Battery - viewed from the ocean side, coming back.
Do I hear any seconds to that motion?
Chapter III
Bathing Oneself on the Other Side
My first experience with the bathing habits of the native Aryan
stocks of Europe came to pass on the morning after the night of
our arrival in London.
London disappointed me in one regard - when I opened my eyes that
morning there was no fog. There was not the slightest sign of a
fog. I had expected that my room would be full of fog of about
the consistency of Scotch stage dialect - soupy, you know, and thick
and bewildering.
