Italian peasants returning from the vineyards to the village.
In spite of bruises and aches, I plodded on at a good pace, hoping by this early start to reach Naples before the day was done. But I was still in the country when the gloom, settling down like a fog, drove into the highway bands of weary people and four-footed beasts, toiling homeward from their day’s work. The route led downward. The fields between tumble-down villages grew shorter and shorter until they disappeared entirely, and I found myself between an unbroken row of stone houses. The bands of home-going peasants increased to a crowd, through which I struggled to make my way.
It was impossible to stop long enough to look about me. I finally cornered a workman and asked how to get to Naples.
“Napoli! Ma! This is Napoli!” he bellowed, shoving me aside.
I plunged on, certain that the road must lead to the harbor and its sailors’ lodgings. Ragged, cross-looking laborers swept against me. Donkeys, with and without loads, brayed when their masters struck them. Heavy ox-carts, massive wagons, here and there a horseman, fought their way up the hill amid shrill shouts, roaring oaths, screaming yeehawing of asses, the rumble of wheels on cobblestones, the snap of whips, the whack of heavy sticks. I moved along with the bawling multitude before and behind me, and a long time afterward reached level streets, and was dragged into a miserable lodging-house by a boarding-house runner.
In Naples the business people do not wait for you to come into the shop to ask for what you want. They come out to the street after you, or send their runners out to invite you in. The barber walks up and down the street, watching for men who need a shave; the merchant stands before his door and shouts and beckons to the passing crowd to come in and see his goods; the ticket agent tramps up and down the wharves, trying to sell a ticket to everyone who passes; and the boarding-house runners are everywhere, looking for the stranger within the city who has not yet found a lodging-place.
I spent a few days in Naples, then went to Marseilles, where I lived a month, tramping sorrowfully up and down the break-water waiting for a chance to get work on some ship eastward bound. On the last day of November my luck changed. The Warwickshire, an English steamer sailing to Burma, put in at Marseilles and sent out a call for a sailor. I was the first man on board, showed them my discharge from the cattle-boat, and was “signed on” at once.
The next day I watched the familiar harbor of Marseilles grow smaller and smaller until it faded away on the distant sky-line.