If I had gone with Number One in the first place to try to fleece Number Two, there would have been another case for the Naples police of the “mysterious disappearance” of a returned emigrant. I could not long have concealed my nationality, and that might perhaps have saved me.
CHAPTER XIII
THE EMBARKATION PROCESS
In the morning we were up early, and after a very indifferent breakfast got our hand luggage together and departed from the Albergo della Rosa. At the door we were beset by fruit-venders with their long barrows, and small tradesmen with all sorts of trifles that they convinced our people were indispensable on the voyage; and I really believe that between the lodging-house and the steamship-broker’s offices that portion of the party which lagged behind where I could not control them bought forty or fifty lire worth of stuff that was worse than useless, being merely a burden and a care.
At the steamship-broker’s offices an enormous crowd was gathered. Two thirds of them had no real occasion to go there, but if one member of a party was not right in his papers, or imagined he was not, all the party went with him to avoid being separated. We had some baggage checks to see about. It seemed that there was not one hour of our journey from Gualtieri to our American destination which was not embittered by the mishaps of that baggage, and as I write, months after, some of it is still missing. I have had thoughts about it that were deeper than the greatest depths of profanity, and more far-reaching than the extent of the combined English and Italian languages in blasphemous reference.
We passed down the Vico di Via Porta and along the Marina, a veritable tumult of sailing-day traffic.
A highly picturesque carreta loaded with emigrants and their friends on their way to the Capitaneria from their country home came jogging by and paused long enough to be kodaked.
Near the railroad tracks we came upon a group that was both laughable and pathetic. It was one of the places of sudden and forced sale of household effects of emigrants. Some of the foolish people will bring, even from provinces more distant than the Campania, quantities of household goods, furniture, etc., and their hearts are almost broken when they find they cannot take it aboard. They have felt sure that there must be some little corner on such a big ship in which they can place a half-dozen two-hundred-years-old hand-made chairs, or a five-foot bureau, or so small a matter as a table large enough to accommodate a family of the usual Italian size. However, here was a pile of it, heaped up indiscriminately, and about and on it were beggars who had bargained to look after it, or owners who had decided to remain and guard their own.
When we arrived within the iron enclosure of the Capitaneria we found that the first thing to demand attention was of course the baggage. It was already getting hot, and the large space of open, unsheltered dust in front of the Capitaneria was strewn with luggage of all shapes and sizes. There were huge wooden chests, bundles of bedclothes and blankets, casks of wine, kegs of olives, and cheese and butter, and quantities of small bags like my own. All such were already tumbling to pieces, being but cloth and paper pasted over frail wooden frames, and made on purpose to be sold to emigrants at ten times their value. Men went about selling grass ropes with which to tie them up.
First of all we had to get the baggage together and separate the hand baggage from the hold baggage; then the latter must all be opened up before the American consular agent and inspected, numbered, and listed; next inspected by the port health authorities; then received and receipted for by the company’s agents; and what with wild efforts of the emigrants to go backward through the process, to get shut trunks that had been opened and shaken up in inspection, and to get through before the steamer should leave, it was a scene to wring a man’s soul. If any of our party had any trouble, they came to Antonio or to me with it. Antonio went about holding his head as if he was afraid it would burst, and all the emigrants about us kept an eye on the big ship; not due to sail for hours yet, as if they were afraid to see it start off, like a train, at any moment.
This section of the toil and turmoil being over at last, we found that we had to carry our encumbrances to the south side of the Capitaneria and embark on a small steamer which would take us over to the fumigating-station, half a mile across the harbor, on the breakwater. It was an hour before we were properly assembled at this embarkation point, and the women were already almost succumbing to the dust and heat.