Welsh Rarebit Tales

by Harle Oren Cummins

Even in 1885, though the business had not then attained the gigantic proportions of the present day, the advertising genius was still at work; and any one chancing to read such a notice would no doubt have set it down as the bait thrown out by the vendor of some patent medicine, weight lift, or equally undesirable article.

The promoters of the scheme for the “Pursuance of Vice,” as they facetiously called it among themselves, realized this, and did not attempt to reach the public by any such open means. To make known their project they resorted to other methods which, though acting quietly and unnoticed, nevertheless produced sufficient effect, so that on the night of June 16, 1885, when the floating palace of Iniquity, “Lawless,” left one of the North-river piers, she had on board eight hundred souls. That is to say, there were eight hundred passengers; but, judging from the declared object with which the “Lawless” put to sea, it is more probable that the souls of those on board had been left behind.

This voyage of the “Lawless” was the result of much thought on the part of three individuals who, at one time or another, had figured prominently in the police courts of New York and Chicago. Jenifer Vass, in whose brain the plan had first found its inception, was at one time proprietor of the Red Inn, a feeble imitation of the Moulin Rouge of Paris; while Jackson Elbers and Louis Hopeman had both been mixed up in various enterprises, all of which tended to cater to the animal rather than the intellectual passions of their patrons.

Three miles from land, as you may not happen to know, is the limit of distance to which the law of the neighboring country applies. When beyond that point on the high seas no law on earth is valid save the orders of the ship’s captain. Knowing this fact, and from the knowledge of human nature gained in their various former pursuits, the three men mentioned had gotten together a few thousand dollars and purchased the Atlanta, once an ocean liner of the White Star line.

The Atlanta had been taken from the passenger service, being unable to compete with her faster rivals on the Cunard and Hamburg-Bremen lines; and it was planned to remodel and use her for a freight steamer.

Hearing of this, and as speed was no object in the excursions which the Palace of Sin was to make, Jenifer Vass and his two companions made an offer which was immediately accepted by the managers of the White Star line.

Then a work of transformation began. According to the scheme of Jenifer Vass, every vice which tempts men and women, every form of iniquity of the old and the new world, was to be introduced, cultivated, and pampered on board the “Lawless.” Ten staterooms were torn to pieces and made into one. The floors were covered with Turkish rugs; Bagdad curtains and Eastern ornaments were hung about the walls. The final appearance of the room was totally different from the little holes in the wall found in the Chinatown of nearly all the large cities, but its object was the same. Here men and women could smoke opium from morning till night, and with the additional advantage that no one would disturb them. There was no danger of the place being raided and their names appearing in the next morning’s police-court items. On one of the walls was arranged a set of bunks on which the sleepers could be laid away when the drug was really on.

One-half the ship was converted into a gambling hall. Here every game of chance at Monte Carlo,—faro, roulette, poker, pinquette, fantan, and every other game by which a man can win a fortune or lose his all in a single night—was to be put in operation.

There was to be a bar where every known strong drink could be bought, and each man was to be the judge of when he had had enough. No waiter could inform him that the management refused to serve him anything more, and he would have to go elsewhere. Here one could swill brandy, absinthe, bhang, or any other nerve-destroying drink until his brain reeled; and as long as he had the money to pay for more no one would stop him.

Every drug and narcotic, whose sale is guarded by the laws of the United States and other civilized countries, was to be sold as freely as the chocolates of the confectioner. Cocaine, opium, laudanum, and morphine were laid in in bulk for the use of the passengers of the “Lawless,” without limit or restriction. In fact, there was wine for the drinker, women for him who wanted company, song for him who would sing, and each and every other evil thing ever devised by a wicked and lustful world was to be found somewhere between the two decks of this Palace of Sin.