The steerage passengers were to us a never-ending source of amusement and interest, as we watched them working in their various ways and listened to their strange and incomprehensible gibberish. An old Hindoo one day raffled off a richly-embroidered silk pillow at a shilling a chance, and this, with my usual good luck I won and turned over to Mrs. Anson for safe keeping.
The Hindoos and Mohammedans on board would eat nothing that they did not cook themselves, even killed a sheep every few days, when it became necessary, and carrying their own supply of saucepans and other cooking utensils. One of the Hindoos, a merchant of Calcutta, who had been ill from the time that the steamer left Port Adelaide, died when our voyage was about half over. His body was sewn up in a piece of canvas with a bar of lead at the foot and laid away in his bunk. It was in vain that we asked when he was to be buried, as we could get no satisfactory answer to our queries, but the next night, when the starlight lay like a silver mantle on the face of the waters, the steamer stopped for a moment, a splash followed, and the body of the Hindoo sank down into the dark waters, and in a few days the episode had been forgotten. Such is life.
Clarence Duval, our colored mascot, had been appreciated on the "Alameda" at his true value, but on the "Salier" for a time the waiters seemed to regard him as an Indian Prince, even going so far as to quarrel as to whom should wait on him. A word from Mr. Spalding whispered in the ear of the captain worked a change in his standing, however, and he was set to work during the meal hours pulling the punka rope which kept the big fans in motion, an occupation that he seemed to regard as being beneath his dignity, though his protests fell on deaf ears.
One hot afternoon a mock trial was held in the smoking-room, with Fogarty as the presiding Judge, and then and there a decree was passed to the effect that, "in view of the excessively warm weather and through consideration for the comfort and peace of our entire party, Clarence Duval, our chocolate-colored mascot, must take a bath."
Now, if there was any one thing more than another that our mascot detested it was a bath, and the moment that the court's decree was pronounced he fled to the darkest depths of the steerage in hopes of escaping the ordeal, but in vain, for he was dragged out of his hiding place by Pettit, Baldwin and Daly, who, in spite of his cries for mercy, thrust him beneath a salt water shower and held him there until the tank was emptied. A madder little coon than he was when released it would be difficult to find, and arming himself with a base-ball bat he swore that he would kill his tormentors, and might have done so had not a close watch been kept over him until his temper had burned itself out and he had become amenable to reason.
The afternoon of January 22d, as we were lounging about the deck, John Ward, glancing up from the pages of a book that he was engaged in reading, happened to catch a glimpse of a sail ahead, and announcing the fact, .there was a rush made by all hands to the steamer's rail in order to get a good view of the welcome sight, for a strange sail at sea is always a welcome sight to the voyager. She was under a cloud of canvas and, as we drew near, with the aid of a glass, we made out her name, "San Scofield, Brunswick, Me." A moment later the Stars and Stripes were thrown to the breeze from her masthead and the cheers that went up from our decks could have been heard two miles away. If there were tears in the eyes of some of the members of our party as they saw the old flag gleaming in the sunlight and thought of God's country at that time so far away, the display of emotion did them no discredit.
We were all astonished one morning by a performance on the part of our mascot that was not down on the bills, and that might have resulted in his becoming food for the sharks with which the Indian Ocean abounds had he not played in the very best of luck.
The performance of Professor Bartholomew had fired the "coon" with a desire to emulate his example, and he had made a wager with one of the boys that, using an umbrella for a parachute, he could jump from the rigging some thirty feet above the deck and land safely on the awning. It was late one afternoon when half a dozen of the party were sitting beneath its shade that a dark shadow passed over them followed by a dull thud on the canvas that made it sag for a foot or more, and a wild scream of terror followed. Climbing up the rope ladder to where they could overlook the awning, the boys found the mascot crawling on his hands and knees toward the rigging and dragging behind him an umbrella in a badly damaged condition. When Fogarty asked him what he was doing, he replied, after a long interval of silence, "Just been a practicin'," after which he informed them that had he landed all right he should have attempted to win his bet the next morning. One experience of this kind was enough for him, however, and though the boys begged him to give them another exhibition of his skill in making the parachute leap, nothing could induce him to do so.
"Craps," a game introduced by the mascot, soon became more popular in the card-room than even poker, and the rattle of the bones and the cries of "Come, seben, come eleben, what's de mattah wid you dice," and other kindred remarks natural to the game coming from the lips of the chocolate-colored coon were to be heard at all hours.
The nights during this portion of our trip were especially fine, and we enjoyed them immensely sitting on deck until the "wee sma' hours" watching the starlight that turned the surface of the water into a great field of glistening diamonds, and the silvery wake of the ship, that stretched away out into the ocean like a track of moonbeams, growing dimmer and dimmer until it was lost in the darkness that lay beyond.