On a peaceful sea the Warwickshire sped eastward. My work was “polishin’ ’er brasses,” and I can say without boasting that the ship was brighter because I was there.
On the morning of the fifth day out, I was ordered into the hold to send up the trunks of Egyptian travelers. When I climbed on deck after the last chest, the deep blue of the sea had turned to a shabby brown, but there was no land in sight. Suddenly there rose from the sea a flat-topped building, then another and another, until a whole village lay spread out on the water before us. The houses appeared to sit like gulls on the ruddy sea. It was Port Said. Beyond the town we could see a stretch of reddish desert sand. Slowly the Warwickshire nosed her way into the canal, the anchor ran out with a rattle and roar, and there swarmed upon our decks a multitude of strange-looking people who seemed to belong to another world.
Darkness soon fell. I had signed on the Warwickshire under a promise that I might leave her at Port Said. Through all the voyage, however, my shipmates had spent the hours of the dog-watch telling me tales of the horrors that had befallen white men who became penniless among the Arabs. Perhaps my shipmates spoke truly. It seemed as if they might have done so as I sat gazing off into the blackest of nights, listening to the shrieks that rose from the maze of buildings ashore, and the snarling, scowling mobs that raced about our decks. Perhaps I should be murdered if I ventured ashore among these black tribes. Or, if I escaped murder, I might be left to die of starvation on this neck of sand.
The captain had given me leave to go on to Rangoon. An Englishman, who was returning to the Burmese district he governed, had promised me a position with good pay. It seemed foolhardy to halt in this land of rascals, when in a few days I might complete half my journey around the globe and find ready employment.
For an hour I sat staring into the black night, trying to decide whether to risk going ashore or to go on with the ship. I finally decided that I must see Palestine and Egypt, countries I had read much of in the Bible. They were lands too famous to be lightly passed by. I bade farewell to my astonished shipmates, collected my few days’ wages, and, with about nine dollars in my pocket, dropped into a boat and was rowed ashore.
At the landing I paid the dusky boatman the regular fare—the amount was posted in plain sight on the wharf. But he was not satisfied. For an hour he dogged my footsteps, howling threats or whining in a high-pitched voice, now in his native Arabic, now in such English as he could put together. But I shook him off at last, and set out to find a lodging.
It was not an easy thing to do. To be sure, I passed several hotels before which well dressed men lounged at little tables, and barefooted black waiters flitted back and forth carrying cool drinks. But to stop at such a hotel would take more money than I had had for some time. There must have been dozens of native inns among the maze of hovels into which I plunged at the first step off the avenue. But how could I tell where they were, when the only signs I could see were as meaningless to me as so many spatters of ink? Even in Holland I had been able to guess at shop names. But Arabic! I had not the least idea whether the signs I saw announced a lodging-house or the quarters of an undertaker! A long evening I pattered in and out of crooked byways, bumping now and then into a dark Arab who snarled at me and made off, and bringing up here and there in some dismal blind alley. Fearful of wandering too far from the lighted square, I turned back toward the harbor. Suddenly I caught sight of a sign in English: “Catholic Sailors’ Home.” I dashed joyfully toward it.
The Home was little more than a small reading-room. Half hidden behind the stacks of ragged magazines, sat the “manager,” a Maltese boy, huddled over paper and pencil and staring in a discouraged manner at an Italian-English grammar. I stepped forward and offered to help him, and together we waded through a very long lesson. Before we had ended, six tattered white men wandered in and carefully chose books over which to fall asleep.
“You must know,” said the young manager, as he closed the grammar, “that there am no sleepings here. And we closes at eleven. But I am fix you oop. I am shelter all these seamens, while I lose my place when the Catholic society found it out.”
He peered out into the night and locked the doors. Then he blew out the lights and awoke the sleepers. We groped our way through a long stone-paved passageway to the back of the building.