“Tony of the Belt”
Workers were a drug on the market in Marseilles. There was one happy day when, in wandering about the vieux port, where the fleet of “windjammers” was rolling and pitching in a heavy gale, I was promised extraordinary wages by the captain of a clumsy barkentine, flying the checkerboard Greek flag, to help his depleted crew move the craft to a safer mooring. He had picked up the Antiguan and—strange to relate—Tony of the Belt; and together we tugged at hawser and brace for several hours, while the barkentine under our feet seemed undetermined after each roll whether to right herself again or turn turtle. But we got her re-moored at last, and the three francs which the skipper dropped into my hand had a merry jingle which I had almost forgotten. A day’s work in the fish-market won me as much more, and I seemed to have struck prosperity when, the following morning, I spent three hours in rolling wine-barrels onto harbor trucks. But the only reward which the truckman and the official taster offered when the task was done was “all the wine you can hold,” and my humble capacity forced me to accept much less than union wages. The six-franc fortune dwindled gradually away, though I spent it sparingly to supplement the meager fare of Pete’s table, or for an occasional investment of two sous in tobacco. The French government does not sell the weed in such small quantities. But “beachcombers” hesitated to spend a half-franc all at once, especially as the invariable word of greeting from seemingly countless acquaintances was, “Any smokin’ on you, Jack?” and the dealers—indifferent to the law and with an eye to business—broke up the legal ten-sous packets into ten two-sous lots, in their own wrappings. There were fellow-boarders who laughed at my extravagance. They sallied forth in the morning before the street-sweepers had made their daily round, and tramped up and down the Cannebière, a main thoroughfare which evening promenaders littered with cigar and cigarette butts. But the Anglo-Saxons, for the most part, refused to employ their talents in “shooting snipes on the Can o’ Beer.”
The boarding-masters of Marseilles refused to believe my assertion that I was bound away from, and not towards, my native land. Three times during my stay with Pete, I was called upon to sign on—once on a collier for Algiers, and twice on tramps bound for the “States.” My refusal to accept these berths aroused the ire of Joe; and, on the day following the sailing of the last craft, I was turned out dinnerless from Pete’s domicile on a world that had grown decidedly cold for a southern country. I could not greatly regret this ejection; it left Joe unable to make a demand on my wages, should I ever sign on. My list of acquaintances had increased; on some occasions I had spent a few sous to relieve the hunger of some unhoused beachcomber, and the thoughtfulness stood me now in good stead. As I wandered from Pete’s house down to the Place de la Joliette, I fell upon one of these, a little, wizened Alexandrian Jew, who had “just made a haul of a franc” which, with that unselfishness universal “on the beach,” he offered at once to share. That night I found myself again in the crowd before the Asile de Nuit.
Quarrels were frequent among the destitutes who collected at the asylum, but not often was it the scene of such a tragedy as was enacted on this frosty evening. Five minutes after I had joined the group before the building, a begrimed and tattered youth strolled up to within a few feet of me, glanced about him, pulled a revolver from his pocket, fired instantly at a group of vagabonds who chatted on the curb ten feet away, and dashed off towards the harbor. The victim, a German who could not have been over twenty, fell with scarcely a groan, rolled off the sidewalk into the gutter, gave a few convulsive kicks, and lay still. A doctor arrived as he was being carried into the office. He had been shot directly through the heart. My first impulse, when two gendarmes began inscribing the names of witnesses, was to offer my testimony. Luckily, it occurred to me in time that justice is a slow process in France, and that authorities are none too kind in their methods of assuring the presence in court of such witnesses as lodge at an Asile de Nuit. To be delayed in Marseilles several months would have put an end to my wanderings before they had well begun; I backed towards the outskirts of the increasing crowd and made answer to the excited officer with the book;—“Moi, monsieur? Je viens d’arriver.”
The assassin was taken, before morning, and his story added to the annals of “the road.” The dead man had been his companion during his Wanderjahre in Servia. The few dollars that had been their common possession he had trusted to his comrade—no unusual custom among tramps. At a dismal mountain village the treasurer had decamped, leaving the other to the tender mercies of the Servian police. When he was released from several weeks of imprisonment as a vagrant, the deserted man determined to have revenge. By methods peculiar to trampdom, and with a persistency that would have done credit to the best of detectives, he had tracked the absconder through Montenegro, the Turkish coast-towns, and Italy, only to lose all trace of him in Genoa. A chance meeting put him on the trail again; he tramped to Marseilles and ran the German youth to earth five months after his act of treachery. The sympathy of the beachcombers was entirely with the assassin. In the moral code of “the road” there are few crimes more iniquitous than that of the dead man. But sympathy availed him nothing, for months afterward the youth was guillotined in the Place Victor Gélu, that dreary square in which Portuguese Joe and penniless seamen were accustomed to “hang around.”
When excitement had abated somewhat, the Asile was thrown open—not for me, however. The second frère received my papers from his superior, as on the first night, but squinted at me above his glasses.
“Lodged here before?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”