There were scores of musical instruments among the steerage people, and an impromptu band was gotten up. It might have been worse.
The next morning all the steerage passengers were sent below after breakfast, and allowed to stay for two hours in the reeking crowded compartments, while the health inspection was made by the ship’s doctor as prescribed by law. The doctor and an officer stood by each companion-way in turn, and as the men and boys, then the women and children, poured up, a steward punched their health tickets, the same which bore the name, ship’s manifest number, vaccination stamp, and sheet of manifest letter. It was the second time this was done, and we had been four days at sea.
The next day was very rough, and the following one a beautiful season in which we spent the greater portion of the time watching the picturesque Azores as we glided along so close to the shores that the people at their work in the vineyards and gardens were very plainly seen. All about were little fishing-boats with half-naked boatmen who stood up and shouted to us. There was another medical inspection that day.
The next day, the 9th of October, marked a heavy gale, and, despite the size of the ship, quite a bit of water came aboard. The decks were almost deserted, and wherever the seasick women and children were gathered they were for the most part prostrated on the planks. Below decks there were music and song close by where fellow-passengers were in terrible suffering from vaccination and seasickness. Fortunately the high wind ventilated the compartments sufficiently to make them bearable. I found my left arm beginning to swell and throb, and by midnight it was in very bad condition. The little trick of rubbing off the virus in Naples had failed to work, because I was so anxious to get a photograph that I had done it carelessly.
In my talks with the men below, this day, I found a man who has two wives, one in Italy and one in America, and did not seem to consider any very great harm done. He looked at the matter from no standpoint of sentiment, merely from one that was utterly practical. In investigations since that time I have found that there are many Italians in America who have wives and families on both sides of the water, and if there are many Italians there are more Jews and Germans.
I also found a man who lives in Pittsburg, who had just been home to Messina to get himself a wife. His family sent him one from home, but he went down to Ellis Island to meet her, and was informed that he must marry her then and there before she could be admitted. Since the photograph of her that had been sent him for approval was taken when she was fourteen, and she had changed very much at twenty, he fled the place and allowed the Ellis Island authorities to deport her. Now he had gone home and married her younger sister. He is employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad on a section job at $45 a month and perquisites, and had arranged while in Messina for ten men to leave on the Liguria, the next ship sailing. They were “recommended” to friends in Pittsburg, but he had paid their fare and had promised them work. He had been twelve years in the country. Thus is the contract-labor law evaded.
Some time this day Guiseppe Rota had stolen from him seventy lire, money which it was most desirable for him to have on entering the United States, as proving him not likely to become a public charge, and he was wild with the fear of being sent back. I assured him that I would take care of him, but from that hour he followed me everywhere I went, like a big Newfoundland dog, and until the moment I delivered him into the hands of his friends in New Jersey he was a most unhappy mortal.
The night was extremely stormy, and the tons of water that fell on deck shook the ship so much that few of the emigrants slept. A priest who was voyaging in the steerage in mufti sat up with a group of friends in a corner, praying, and all the men of our party alternately moaned and prayed. The pain in my arm inspired me to anything but words indicative of a religious state of mind.
About two o’clock the Italian commissario, the naval surgeon, came down and made an inspection. He found five men very sick in one corner, and discovered a drain there which a lazy steward had allowed to become choked. The corner was worse than a pigpen, and some of the things that commissario said and did raised him higher in my esteem than ever.
In the morning I was myself in such a state that I made my way down at ten o’clock to the hospital, the companion-way of which lay just abaft that leading to the women’s compartment. There the Italian commissario had over fifty sick men, women, and children awaiting his care. I waited till the last, in order to observe the manner of handling the patients. It was expeditious, thorough, and gentle, and all of the patients whom I questioned later said that the German doctor was not to be compared with Dr. Piazza.