From Job to Job around the World

by Alfred C. B. Fletcher

"What's the trouble? Are you seasick or homesick?" cordially inquired Richardson, approaching a stranger who was hanging over the side of a ship bound for Honolulu.

"Neither, my friend," I replied with a smile.

These were the initial sentences of a dialogue which was happily destined to continue for three years.

It was about an hour after the S.S. Alameda had left San Francisco for Honolulu, while leaning against the rail of the ship gazing at the receding city and turning over in my pocket a five-dollar gold piece, that I was hailed by Richardson. This gold piece was all the money I had in the world and I soon learned that the few loose coins my new friend possessed fell a little short of this amount.

After exchanging a few ideas each of us discovered that we were starting out on a similar expedition—a trip around the world. Richardson had made arrangements with another fellow for such a tour and he had backed out. I also had planned for a companion—who disappointed me at the last moment. With our partners failing us we both set out alone and by a happy coincidence took the same boat and met the first morning out of port. We liked one another's looks and decided to hook up, then and there.

A combined wealth of less than ten dollars and the wide, wide world in front of us! We agreed not to make any definite plans; we mapped out no itinerary, except the general one of around the world; we had no elaborate scheme of travel nor ideas of how we were to make our way, but decided to resign ourselves to chance and bang around, taking whatever came along. My idea was to explore the earth before I was anchored by matrimony, and Richardson wanted to see all of this world before he went to the next. We set out not as tourists—that familiar species of humanity—but as two refined American tramps.

As a young boy I had vague notions of how I was some day going to "beat" my way around the world. I always pictured myself going as a vagrant. My career as a world-beater had now begun.

To make the break was the difficult thing. To leave a good position against the advice of friends and start out on an expedition which seemed the height of folly to many people was not an easy step. I had heard of men beating their way amid a continual round of hardships. I thought it possible to travel in such a manner and do so with a fair degree of comfort. It was our plan to look for good jobs and to get around in the middle course between the wealthy tourist on one hand and the ignorant, homeless tramp on the other.

With our fares paid to Honolulu, by money we had saved, we had no cares, and mingled with the miscellaneous types of passengers on the ship. Forty school teachers, ranging in age from twenty to sixty, were returning to their insular positions; pious missionaries were on their way to their posts after a sojourn in the States; sugar planters and pineapple growers spent hours on the promenade deck boosting the islands to the handful of tourists and others on the water for the first time. Seated at our table in the saloon was a Roman Catholic priest, a lean, kindly old man who was only able to eat about one meal in ten. Accompanying him were two monks, a fat one and a thin one, going to the islands to resume their labours. The amount of food the fat one could surround was not only a source of amazement and anxiety to his fellow-eaters but was the cause for great alarm on the part of the ship's commissary—for fear the supply of provisions would be exhausted before port was reached. If he had taken vows to deny himself many of the pleasures of this world he more than squared himself by the quantity of food he would devour at one sitting.

The six days it takes to go to Honolulu from San Francisco were spent as such days are usually spent at sea, talking and reading in the morning, shuffle-board and other games in the afternoon, singing and spooning in the evening—on the whole a civilised trip. On the morning of the seventh day we arrived in the harbour of Honolulu. After being amused by a group of native boys diving for coins thrown by all passengers except ourselves—who felt inclined to strip and join the divers—the ship was soon alongside and in a short time we were mingling with the cosmopolitan inhabitants on the streets of Honolulu.