I lie down and nap until dinner time. I have dinner in my cabin. Now comes another great problem.
Tipping. One has the feeling that if you are looked at you should tip. One thing that I believe in, though—tipping. It gets you good service. It is money well spent. But when and how to tip—that is the question. It is a great problem on shipboard.
There's the bedroom steward, the waiter, the head waiter, the hallboy, the deck steward, boots, bathroom steward, Turkish bath attendants, gymnasium instructor, smoking-room steward, lounge-room steward, page boys, elevator boys, barber. It is depressing. I am harassed as to whether to tip the doctor and the captain.
I am all excited now; full of expectancy. Wonder what's going to happen. After my first encounter with fifty newspaper men at Cherbourg, somehow I do not resent it. Rather like it, in fact. Being a personage is not so bad. I am prepared for the fray. It is exciting. I am advancing on Europe. One o'clock. I am in my cabin. We are to dock in the morning.
I look out of the porthole. I hear voices. They are alongside the dock. Am very emotional now. The mystery of it out there in blackness envelops me. I revel in it—its promise. We are at Southampton. We are in England.
To-morrow! I go to bed thinking of it. To-morrow!
I try to sleep, childishly reasoning that in sleeping I will make the time pass more quickly. My reasoning was sound, perhaps, but somewhere in my anatomy there slipped a cog. I could not sleep. I rolled and tossed, counted sheep, closed my eyes and lay perfectly still, but it was no go. Somewhere within me there stirred a sort of Christmas Eve feeling. To-morrow was too portentous.
I look at my watch. It is two o'clock in the morning. I look through the porthole. It is pitch dark outside. I try to pierce the darkness, but can't. Off in the distance I hear voices coming out of the night. That and the lapping of the waves against the side of the boat.
Then I hear my name mentioned once, twice, three times. I am thrilled. I tingle with expectancy and varying emotions. It is all so peculiar and mysterious. I try to throw off the feeling. I can't.
There seems to be no one awake except a couple of men who are pacing the deck. Longshoremen, probably. Every once in a while I hear the mystic "Charlie Chaplin" mentioned. I peer through the porthole. It is starting to rain. This adds to the spell. I turn out the lights and get back to bed and try to sleep. I get up again and look out.