“Napoli! Ma! This is Napoli!” he bellowed, shoving me aside.
I plunged on, certain that a descending road must lead to the harbor and its sailors’ lodgings. Ragged, sullen-visaged laborers, now and then an unsoaped female, swept against me. Donkeys laden and unladen protested against the goads of their cursing masters. Heavy ox-carts, massive wagons, an occasional horseman, fought their way up the acclivity, amid a bedlam of shrill shouts, roaring oaths, the strident yee-hawing of asses, the rumble of wheels on cobblestones, the snap of whips, the resounding whack of cudgels; and before and behind a bawling multitude filled the scene that resembled nothing more nearly than the hurried flight of its diabolical inhabitants from that inferno which the Florentine has pictured. It was long after my first inquiry for “Napoli” that I reached level streets and was dragged into a dismal hovel by a boarding-house runner. Fifty-five days had passed since my departure from Paris, thirty-four of which had been spent in walking.
If there is a spot of similar size in the civilized world that houses more rascals, knaves, and degenerates than Naples, it has successfully hidden its iniquities. The struggle for existence in this densely packed section of the peninsula has driven its lower classes in one of two directions: they have become stolid, unthinking brutes or incorrigible rogues. Even those who, by day, are employed at professions considered honorable and remunerative among us, spend their nights and idle hours as agents of every species of business and deception to be found in congested centers. Every steamship office, every restaurant, every hotel, shop, gambling den, or house of prostitution has its scores of “runners” to entice the stranger or unwary citizen within its doors. We have “runners” in America, but these procurers that fight for a meager percentage in Naples are not merely the dregs of city life; even the man who has left his telegraph instrument or bookkeeper’s stool during the afternoon prowls through the dark streets in quest of a stray soldo. The barber roams at large to drag into his shop those whose faces show need of his services; the merchant stands before his door and bawls and beckons to the passing throng like a side-show barker; the ticket-agent tramps up and down the wharves striving to sell passage, at regular price if necessary; at an exorbitant one if possible. To cheat is second nature to the Neapolitan of the masses. He cheats his playmates as a boy, cheats the shopkeeper at every opportunity, enters business as a man intending to cheat, and sticks to that intention with a persistence worthy a better cause to the end of his days—to be cheated by the undertaker and the priest at the finale of his life of deception and fraud. Yet this same Naples, corrupt, Machiavelian, is, with its environs, the breeding-ground of the vast majority of Italians who emigrate to America.
As is usual among poverty-stricken people, gambling is the principal vice of the southern Italian. Cards and dice are not unknown, but the game that is dearest to the heart of the Neapolitan is mora, the counting of fingers. The sharp call of “cinque! tre! otto! tre! dieci!” raised a never-ending hubbub in my lodging house. The sums of money hazarded were not fabulous; but had there been fortunes at stake the game could not have been more fiercely contended. Each player, at the beginning of the contest, jabbed his sheath-knife into the bottom of the table within easy reach of his hand, and at every dispute waved it threateningly above his head. A quarrel, one evening, went beyond the point of vociferations. One player emerged from the contest with a slash from nose to chin, and another with an ugly cut in the abdomen. But so ordinary an occurrence was this in the house that a half-hour later the game was raging as loudly as before.
One fine morning, soon after my arrival in Naples, I awoke to find myself the possessor of just twenty francs. Thus far I had been a tourist; for, if I had spent sparingly, I had given my attention to sightseeing rather than to searching for employment. Having squandered in un-riotous living the money intended for photographing, the time had come when I must earn both the living and the photographs.
It had been my intention to ship as a sailor from Naples to some point of the near east. The cosmopolitan dock loafers assured me, however, that there was but one port on the Mediterranean in which I might hope to sign on, and that was Marseilles. The information had come too late, for the fare to Marseilles as a deck passenger—and that included no food en route—was twenty-five francs. To be left stranded in Naples, however, was a fate to be dreaded. I determined to take passage as far as possible, namely, to Genoa, and to make my way as best I could from there to the great French port.
By playing rival runners against each other, I reduced the regular fare of twelve francs to nine francs and a cigar, the stogie being the commission of the runner. With a day left at my disposal I ruined my misused shoes among the lava-beds of Vesuvius, slept on a park bench to save the price of a lodging, and was rowed out to the Lederer Sandor, a miserable cargo-steamer hailing from Trieste. She did not sail until a full twenty-four hours after the time set, and my stock of bread and dried codfish gave out while we were but halfway to Genoa. I had noted, however, that, the ship’s business being chiefly the carrying of freight, little watch was kept on the passengers. Upon arrival in the birthplace of Columbus, therefore, I purchased a second stock of provisions and returned on board, for it was cheaper to hire a boatman to row me out to the ship than to pay lodgings in the city. Among a score of through passengers my presence on board attracted no attention and, knowing that the Sandor was to continue along the Riviera, I was still seated on one of her hatches when she sailed out of Genoa at noon.
We cast anchor next morning at St. Maurizio and, in the early afternoon, steamed on towards Nice. As we slipped by gleaming Monte Carlo, and I was beginning to congratulate myself on having made my way thus far in spite of a flat purse, the first mate, a native of Trieste, sought me out on deck.
“What is your name?” he asked, in Italian, waving in his hand a bundle of tickets, each of which bore the signature of its purchaser.
Plainly my ruse was discovered; but, hoping to confuse the discoverer, I answered in English. But to no avail. For this young man, who swore at the sailors in German and cursed longshoremen impartially in Italian and French, spoke English almost without an accent. I had barely mentioned my name when he burst out in my own tongue:—