CHAPTER IV
From Bad to Worse
Out of Provisions—Shopping for Wet Goods in the Dark—Mud and Rain—Artistic Imitation of Jamaica Cigars—Smoking for Fair Weather—A Stoic Doctor—Ingratitude—A Model Roommate—A $1,200 Bill for False Labels—Spoiling a Good Article with a Poor Price—Prepared to Fast—The Greatest Mathematician and Gravest Philosopher of Modern Times—Rough Weather—A Ladies’ Man—In Protected Waters—All on Deck—A Sudden Arrival—An Unsuccessful Attempt—A Rolling Ship Gathers no Stoics—A Charge on a Steamer Chair—Washing the Deck with White Rock Water—Female Sympathy—A Dispute between Two Old Friends—A Broken Chair—A Retreat—An Immune from Seasickness—Rough Again—The Breakfast Habit—Eating and Rolling—A Mixed-up Breakfast—Being Rammed and Trod upon—Too much Hughes—Pope and Jordan—The Apotheosis of Calmness—Philosophy out of Place—Struck by a Norther—A Night of Pandemonium—Distressed Doctors—A Doctor’s Appetite—A Doctor in Distress—Getting Dressed Successfully—Losing Time to Avoid Being Wrecked.
Upon our return to Bocas del Toro we discovered that we were in need of a new supply of provisions. We had smoked the cigars, the ladies had consumed the sherry, Doctor Brower had drunk the water and the liquor had evaporated. Hence we resolved to make a night raid upon the company’s warehouse.
The darkness was intense and it began to rain again, and as there were no street lamps, we had to find our way by the light of memory. This guided us successfully both to the warehouse and to the mud puddles, the first of which was unfortunately closed and the latter open. However, the local doctors, our good genii, who always appeared whenever we “rubbed” up against difficulty and wished for anything, went off into the dark and hunted up the agent and found him eating. After he had finished what must have been a many-course dinner he finally appeared; but as he was not the custodian of the keys he started out to locate the negro who was, leaving us standing at the warehouse door in darkness and drizzle, and in hopes that negroes dined earlier and less protractedly than managers. When the negro at last arrived he also went away in search of a candle, for there was no provision for lighting the warehouses. The absence of lighting apparatus and the prohibition of smoking in the building served as a substitute for an insurance company and a fire department. When the candle finally came, its light was practically lost in the large salesroom, and the salesmen, who were the only beings that knew where the goods were kept, were not there. But we did not care to wait for the salesman to eat and be sent for; waiting and eating didn’t seem to expedite matters. So we proceeded to hunt in the dark for the needles in the haystack, for the candle showed but one thing at a time, and that was after it had been brought about near enough to set it on fire. However, Doctor Brower found and purchased a box of one hundred bottles of White Rock, and Doctor Senn found plenty of Pommard, although Pommard was not what was wanted.
By this time we young men were tired of waiting for what could not be found and, leaving the older ones marching single file around and about between the counters and shelves by the light of a candle, like a catacomb party without a guide, we waded across the muddy street toward a light that proved to be in the window of a Chinese provision store, and obtained what we wanted in a minute. We called for some Jamaica Tropicales, which were the only good cigars retailed over the counter in the Panama Republic. They were always uniform in quality as far as our experience went, and when the Chinaman put a half box of them on the counter we quickly transferred them to our pockets and called for more. But instead of opening a new box, he reached under the counter, gathered a couple of handfuls of cigars and placed them in the box out of which we had bought the others. This, of course, made us suspicious, since Jamaica cigars must have been imported in boxes. Nevertheless, when compared with one I had left from a fine lot I had bought at Washington Hotel, I could not detect any difference. If the cigars were imitations they were works of imitative art that did credit even to a Chinaman, and were valuable as such. So we bought freely of them and felt still more certain of their genuineness because he charged us twenty-five cents in Panama silver instead of twenty cents, and would not listen to our offers to buy much more freely for twenty cents. We were, however, glad to pay the extra five cents as it was a sort of guarantee that they were genuine. We knew that an imitation never costs more than the original. Finding the cigars so orthodox, we called for sherry, and as it was labeled exactly like that we had bought before, we purchased some and went out in the rain and mud rejoicing.
We were soon back on shipboard, and when we had finished our dinner I sat down to enjoy one of my fresh Tropicales. To my surprise, it did not have the flavor it should have had, and became worse with each puff. I threw it away half smoked, for what I smoke on shipboard must be all right, or it is all wrong. I again compared those I had bought with the good one I had brought, and there still seemed to be no difference. They looked so good that I felt like keeping them to look at whenever I was tempted to smoke. But that would have been selfish, for I had learned that Doctor Senn had not been able to find any cigars in the dark warehouse, and was longing for a good smoke. I also knew that anything that looked like tobacco would be acceptable to him, just as boiled leather made grateful soup for Morgan’s buccaneers when they were starving on their way across the isthmus. So I presented my Chinese works of art to him. He accepted them gratefully without dreaming of questioning their quality, and smoked them on faith during the rest of the stormy voyage, a remarkable tour de force at such a time. He had the faith that performs miracles and perfumes tobacco. During a storm a cigar seemed to steady him as a pole steadies a tight-rope walker. While the ladies were praying for fine weather, and the men sighing and groaning for it, Doctor Senn smoked for it, and got it. He made his own weather. To him storms and showers became unsubstantial externals and went up in smoke. Neither strong cigars nor mountain waves affected him nor disturbed the even tenor of his ways. He took them as they came and called them good. Indeed but few men are gifted with his powers of endurance nor his even temper in times of storm and distress. I was his roommate and, altogether, heard him sigh only twice while in the stateroom, and these sighs were probably merely little suppressed gusts of impatience at the choice of the ship he had made, and the ingratitude of the company’s officials in turning him out of his room after he had filled the ship for them with first-class passengers.
I have thought it worth the while to mention this Chinese cheat for the benefit of those who remain at home and can not get their experience at first hand. It is necessary to be careful in buying wines and liquors and other less popular goods of them, to see that they are properly labeled and in unbroken packages. However, there is even then an opportunity of being cheated, for although the Chinese on the isthmus have not the facilities for putting up goods in imitation of those imported in packages, some of the white merchants are reported to be carrying on a large business in the substitution of goods. One firm in Colón is said to have paid a single bill of $1,200 for counterfeit labels to be put upon goods of their own bottling. This is shocking to us North Americans, who have recently passed a law against false labeling.
Of course, the Chinese are apt to buy these falsely labeled articles and sell them in good faith. Hence it is also better to get everything one can not judge of for himself from reputable business houses, although one may have to pay more. I remember that when Doctor Senn and I stopped at a Chinese store in Colón and asked for the best sherry in the country the Chinaman offered us a bottle for seventy cents in gold. We were too aristocratic to buy such cheap stuff, although the label looked genuine, and we refused to take it. We hunted up a well-known wholesale and retail importing house and bought a bottle for a dollar. I afterward examined the label and it was exactly like the label on the Chinaman’s seventy-cent bottle, and like the one on the bottle I bought of the Chinaman at Bocas del Toro for seventy cents. The wine tasted the same and was the same in every respect but one, viz., the price. We knew also that it was imported wine for we were not buying it in the United States.
At last we were all aboard the Brighton: bananas, plantains, pineapples, oranges, wines, cigars, land-lubbers, land ladies and all, and started merrily for home. We were glad to get out of the mud and rain, and soon were off, and out in a rough sea.
The next morning we awoke to find the ship rocking like a cradle. We had prepared ourselves to feast, but found ourselves ready to fast. Feasting is often a preparation for fasting. This fact is in keeping with the advice of the greatest mathematician and gravest philosopher in the business world, viz., the modern insurance agent, who says that in health we should be continually preparing for sickness and death. Feasting does it.
All day long we had a succession of squalls and tropical showers, drenching the canvas of our steamer chairs and converting the upper deck into a rendezvous of cold shower baths. The ladies staid in bed while the men wandered disconsolately along the wave-swept deck from the stuffy staterooms to the dreary dining-room. With the aid of appetizers some of the more determined ones managed to go to meals, nibble a little and hurry out on deck where the ever-waiting wave seldom failed to give a douche and get a d——n.
As Doctor Senn was not seasick, he was kept busy waiting on the ladies. There was no stewardess on board, but I am sure no stewardess could have been more willing for pay to do what he did out of kindness of heart. The ladies suffered not for iced sherry nor for egg-nogs and under his care, got better whenever the weather moderated. He proved to be a ladies’ man in the best sense of the word. The steward, who was not a ladies’ man, was kept busy in the dining room and pantry most of the time but, acting as the doctor’s assistant in preparing things, he managed to be of some occasional use besides putting on and taking off table food that was not tasted. Whether the doctor enjoyed the honor thrust upon him of waiting upon the ladies, or whether he was clandestinely annoyed, no one could assert or deny, for he did it with the same dutiful cheer that he ate, slept, smoked and worked, one or more of which he was doing all the time.
During the night we ran into protected waters near the coast of Honduras and the doctor’s patients all felt better, and Friday morning were able, by lying very still on their steamer chairs, to be on deck. He asked them how they felt and they said they felt quite well, and thanked him for it. The ship had stopped its pitching and had taken a slow-rolling gait, a sort of sea-canter, that was quite easy for those who liked it.
The weather overhead was sunshiny and alluring, and all of the men but Doctor Brower and Doctor Frank were out. Suddenly, to our delight, Doctor Brower appeared among us and was greeted with appropriate applause. The doctor is a large man with one of those cheery natures whose hearty laugh spreads its contagion wherever it is heard. He is of sober Dutch descent, but so many American grafts have been incorporated into the original stock that the only Dutch qualities left are a large waist, great industry, and an unusual capacity for work and words. Physically considered he is the equivalent of a whole roomful of Dutchmen, and has tenfold the vivacity of the whole Netherlands on his tongue. He has that easily aroused, nervous organism that belongs to our own country, and which is undoubtedly accentuated in him by having spent his whole adult life studying and treating neurasthenics and lunatics. It is a well-recognized fact that people who live with or associate intimately with the insane have more or less mental aberration induced in them by a sort of hypnotic suggestion, an aberration which neurologists recognize in others, but not in themselves.
He greeted us without the signs of joyful emotion that characterized his usual manner, and hurried across the deck to the pile of steamer chairs, jerked off the topmost one, which was Doctor Frank’s, and unfolded it hurriedly. Just as he had it straightened out and placed, the boat gave a lurch to one side and sent him staggering across the deck. When he struck the life-boat he clung to it, straightened up and stared at the chair defiantly, as if to say, “Damn!” But he had the gentlemanly instinct that did not allow him to forget himself in the presence of ladies. He tried to assume his usual cheerful but dignified expression, but his feature only expressed pathos and pathology. A rolling ship gathers no stoics, as the saying is. We would have led him to the chair, but we knew that he had the pride born of the habitual exercise of power and authority, and would resent help as long as he was able to be on his feet. Moreover, most of us felt that we ourselves might suddenly lose our dignity, etc., if we did not lie still. Finally the spirit of the soldier gained the upper hand. He made a successful charge upon the chair and dropped on it with such force that its rickety joints cracked and its slender legs began to spread. While on his feet he had displayed some remnants of his great energy, but his head was no sooner down than his energy centered itself in the stomach. He jumped up into a sitting posture as if started by an electric shock, and before he could get on his feet the deck was flooded with White Rock water. He then sank back in the steamer chair, causing more spreading and creaking of its frail legs and exclaimed, “I declare! That White Rock tastes better out of the bottle than out of the stomach.”
At this, the lady who sat next to him could not resist an impulse to imitate him, although she had otherwise good manners. But she had no reserve of White Rock to call upon; she could produce nothing but a set of teeth, which went overboard. Discouraged with the result of so much conspicuous and exhaustive effort, she allowed herself to be helped off the scene by her gagging husband. Several of us suppressed a few sympathetic flourishes and hid our eyes like ostriches, and were safe.
Pretty soon Doctor Senn, who had experience in about everything but in being seasick, began to think that perhaps Doctor Brower needed some helpful advice, and said in his kind, deliberate way: “Brower, you have been drinking again. I have always told you that so much water disagreed with you. The deck was made to be kept clean, but not with White Rock. If you would drink something stronger, it would teach you to drink less in quantity, and thus incline you toward moderation.”
Doctor Brower raised himself to make a vigorous response when the spreading legs of the rickety chair gave way, and man and chair collapsed, the doctor sick and the chair dead.
“Come, Brower, let me help you to your stateroom. Bed is the best place when you are sick.”
While saying this Doctor Senn went to him to help him, but he began to feel better and would not be helped.
“No, thank you, Senn; I am all right now. I never felt better. I’ll try another chair.”
“Ah, I thought that you were not really sick. It was all a joke after all. As long as a man can continue producing more than he consumes he must be all right. Have a cigar.”
Doctor Brower looked at the cigar, turned suddenly pale, said “Ugh,” and started toward his stateroom.
“What a great thing a sea voyage is to bring out all there is in a man,” said Senn, as his friend disappeared. He then lighted a fresh cigar and sat down to read French poetry.
But Doctor Brower’s experience was only a sample of what was in store for the rest of us. He merely got ahead of the crowd, as usual. Eleven o’clock, our breakfast hour, came an hour too late. By eleven o’clock the wind blew, the waves grew, and the breakfast flew. But the breakfast habit had become too firmly fixed to be broken off voluntarily, and when the hour came around, those of us who were able to be about could not resist the impulse to try our luck. Two ladies were counted among the brave when we solemnly filed into the dining-room, viz., Doctor Waite and Mrs. Brower. But they were out of place, for the occasion called for gymnastics rather than gustatics, for dexterity rather than daintiness. The table, which extended across the room from side to side, was set with the frames on, for the rolling of the ship was such that itself was about the only thing that did not go over. Every few minutes a big lurch would send dishes, frames, chairs and passengers sliding down to the end of the table, changing food from one framed space to another, and feet and elbows from one place to another.
Doctor Hughes, who sat next to me, had an old head and a young face, and was of that indefinite age at which the hair turns prematurely white and men grow considerate and gentle in their ways and feelings. He was greatly distressed whenever his chair struck mine, when his feet came down upon my feet, when his elbow rammed my ribs, and his bottles and plates with their spilling contents mixed freely with mine. His elbows hurt me and he knew it; but he was helpless to avoid it, for I sat in the corner of an ell at, the end of the table and served as a buffer to stop the advance of the whole line. He had the accumulated momentum of the others, besides the motion of the ship, to resist, but he had me for a cushion. His distress was mental; mine was physical.
In order to conceal my suffering I called in as gay a voice as I could command to Doctor Newman, who sat opposite on the solid seat that ran along the wall of the room, and was able to cling to his place and to his food.
“What do you think of this jam, Doctor Newman?”
“I’m fond of jam; pass it over, please.”
“Ask Doctor Hughes. I got mine from him.”
“Oh! Ah! I see! You’ve got too much Hughes. Everything is going your way. But this passive exercise is just what we all need. The boat is doing the moving; all we have to do is to resist, and to eat.”
Doctor Frank had brought Jordan’s “Majesty of Calmness” to read en voyage, but had not yet come out of his five-days’ doze. So Doctor Hughes borrowed it (not the doze), and spent the afternoon reading extracts to us from it, and in quoting Pope’s “Essay on Man.” At any other time and place I probably could have appreciated these books, although I would not have taken time to read them, but it seemed to me that Jordan was more or less possessed about the word calmness. It is easy to say to yourself or to the sea, “Be calm,” but there are things beyond Jordan both in the mind and in the sea. Pope’s polished verse and filigreed philosophy are out of place in the trade-winds. Even the meaning of words and the truth of philosophy depend upon the way the wind blows. It is not what the author writes, but what the reader reads that makes the book.
We were heartily weary of trade-winds which came from the east and kept steadily in our quarter, and we clamored for a change, knowing that all things come to those that wait. And the change did come. At about 9 P. M. the wind changed and a “norther” struck us. And we quickly realized that it was a change, all except Doctor Senn. He may have noticed a difference. It was one of those things nobody could divine.
Discretion was the only part of valor for us and we arrayed ourselves on the side of Doctor Brower, who was a born leader. We got to bed as quickly as possible without thinking of consequences, or of preparing either our souls or our staterooms. The ship began to pitch as well as roll, and a sort of “still life” pandemonium kept us awake all night. The steamer screw was out of water half of the time and shook us, and the motion of the boat knocked us about in our bunks until we felt beaten up like raw eggs. The electric light was put out as usual at midnight and we were left to our imaginations. Doors and port-hole windows began to slam with startling thuds, chairs tumbled over and bumped back and forth, bottles rolled and clinked around the stateroom floors, while heavy things all over the ship fell and crashed. The sailors did such noisy work that we could not listen to it and sleep. The night was long and dreary.
Finally at daybreak the machinery suddenly stopped working, allowing the ship to drift before the wind, but the sailors made more noise than ever, replacing broken bolts and tying the shaky rudder on with ropes. I knew that the boat was drifting and said, “Let her drift. Let her go down. Let us have peace.” I thought that I might as well die in bed as to get up and die with my boots on. I might as well lie there comfortably and die from taking too much water as to get up and drink California sherry, and have my head cracked against the bunks and washstand beforehand, or against the walls of the narrow passageways. I might as well be a good-looking corpse as a mutilated one. I was less helpless in bed than out of it. In bed I could die with majesty, the majesty of calmness. Besides, it was rainy and cold outside, and although my bed was a hard rolling-place, I dreaded the difficult dressing, the dreary standing about all day in the cold, the holding on, and, above all, the dizziness and distress that belonged to keeping the head up. So I remained in bed and took my chances.
The slamming, hammering, clinking and shaking of the screw all stopped at last, which gave a certain kind of relief and enabled me to hear what was going on in the corridors and adjoining staterooms. Apparently some of the others were trying to get up and out into the rain and cold. I suppose that, like eating, the habit of getting up in the morning had grown on them and that they could not rest until they had done it. The first thing I heard was a feminine voice saying:
“How bad the air is in here!—If I could only get up on deck!—Doctor Senn, are you anywhere? If you are, will you please bring me some iced sherry?—If I only had something on my stomach it wouldn’t make me feel so sick. I’m so faint. I wish I had an egg-nog.”
Soon afterward I heard Doctor Newman call out in a sonorous, unnecessarily cheerful voice at the other end of the hallway.
“Why, good morning, Doctor! How do you feel this morning?”
A man’s voice answered:
“First rate, thank you. Did you rest well?”
“Slept like a top. Only woke up once when I rolled out of bed upon an overturned stool and struck my head. Let’s go and have our coffee.”
“No, thank you; I’m not going to take anything this morning.”
“Why not?” said Newman. “Why, I wouldn’t miss my coffee and strawberry jam for the world. Come along; it will ballast you and keep you from being light-headed.”
“No; I’m not hungry. You can have my share of rattan coffee and strawjuice jam this morning. I never eat without an appetite.”
“Nor I,” answered Newman, “but I always eat. It doesn’t matter what you eat; it’s how it tastes. I have an empty place inside of me the size of the United States. This constant motion of the ship doesn’t give your appetite any rest. See you later. Wish you’d come.”
Pretty soon some one came stumbling along the narrow passageway and exclaimed as he struck his head or something against a partition:
“Ouch! What to —ll did I get out of that infernal bed for? I wish the Lord had made the waves some other shape. I’d rather get out and walk home than ride up every derned single wave in the ocean and then slide back again. I always supposed that a boat went forward instead of upward and downward and sideways. Confound the boat!—I wish ’twould go to the bottom. ’Twould serve the miserly Fruit Company right for putting people in such a drifting rat-trap. I wish I were home. Home is good enough for me. Whoo-oop!”
This periodic whooping reminded me how undignified people will act in the most conspicuous places and inopportune moments, and how often such unseemly actions become contagious and spread like laughter.
The man had evidently rushed or staggered out to the outer door as he uttered the last whoop. After a short session of silent thought, I heard him walk back to his stateroom mumbling between his teeth:
“The yellow fever is bad enough, but seasickness is a deuced sight worse. The next time I want to see a canal I’ll look at the Chicago Drainage Canal. When I want a change of climate I’ll stay in Chicago where it’s always changing, and where it sometimes changes for the better.”
I took an ounce of dry sherry at nine-thirty and again at ten, and soon after arose to give my bones a needed rest. After some shivering from the unaccustomed cold, some unintentional collisions and gyrations about the room, and some expressions of opinion about the luxury and healthfulness of sea voyages, followed now and then by a short recess in my bunk in order to press my bruised scalp into shape and allow the whirl in my head to subside, I succeeded at last in getting my winter flannels and heavy suit out of my trunk and on me. As the result of the night’s wakefulness and the morning’s exercise of bracing and holding on while dressing, I actually felt a desire to eat, and resolved to do it before I changed my mind.
There were not many at table, for most of those who had arisen early had already changed their mind. As I couldn’t conceive of anything worse than going back to my cabin, I lay down on the cushioned benches along the wall of the dining-room and gained some of the rest I had lost during the noisy night. We were going ahead again but only at the rate of seven knots an hour, were already nearly twenty-four hours behind our schedule time, and were likely to lose another twenty-four before reaching New Orleans. To try to go faster would have put us in danger of breaking the screw propeller, of losing our loose rudder and of cracking open at the part of our shell that had struck on the reef. In fact, we had been voyaging under conditions that according to natural laws and insurance statistics should have resulted in a wreck, and were content to be careful. Better two more days of comparative purgatory than to take up hastily and without preparation a longer residence in some more uncertain place.