Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

I paid it and, ticket in hand, wormed my way to the nearer of two gangways. Here I was repulsed; but at the second, an officer of immaculate exterior but for two very bleary eyes, tore off a corner of the blue check and jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the steamer behind him. As I set foot on her deck a seaman sprang up suddenly from the scuppers and hurled at my chest a tightly rolled blanket. I caught it without a fumble, having once dabbled in football, and, spreading it out on a hatch, disclosed to view a deep tin plate, a huge cup, a knife, fork and spoon of leaden hue, and a red card announcing itself as "Buono per una razione."

A hasty inspection of the Prinzessen ---- confirmed a suspicion that she would not offer the advantages of the steamers plying the northern route. She was a princess indeed, a sailor's princess, such as he may find who has the stomach to search in the dives along West street or down on the lower Bowery. At her launching she had, perhaps, justified her christening; but long years have passed since she was degraded to the unfastidious southern service.

The steerage section, congested now with disheveled Latins and cumbrous bundles, comprised the forward main deck, bounded on the bow by the forecastlehead and aft by an iron wall that rose a sheer eight feet to the first-class promenade, above which opened the hurricane deck and higher still the wheelhouse and bridge. This space was further limited by two large hatchways, covered with tarpaulins, of which a corner of each was thrown back to disclose two dark holes like the mouths of a mine. By these one entered the third-class quarters, of which the forward was assigned to "single men" and the other to any species of the human race that does not fall into that category. I descended the first by a perpendicular ladder to a dungeon where all but utter darkness reigned. As my eyes accustomed themselves to this condition, there grew up about me row after row of double-decked bunks, heaped with indistinct shapes. I approached the nearest and was confronted by two wolfish eyes, then another pair and another flashed up about me on every side. My foresighted fellow-passengers, having preëmpted sleeping-space, were prepared to hold their claims by force of arms--and baggage.

Every berth seemed to be taken. I meandered in and out among them until in a far corner I found one empty; but as I laid a hand upon its edge, a cadaverous youth sprang at me with a plaintive whine, "E mío! è mío!" I returned to the central space. A sweater-clad sailor whom I had not made out before was standing at the edge of an opening in the deck similar to that above.

"Qui non ch' è più," he said; "Giù!"

I descended accordingly to a second bridewell below the water-line and lighted only by a feeble electric bulb in the ceiling. Here half the bunks were unoccupied. I chose one athwartships against the forward bulkhead--a wooden bin containing a burlap sack of straw--tossed into it blanket and baggage, and climbed again to daylight and fresh air.

At eleven the sepulchral bass of the steamer sounded, the vast pier, banked with straining faces and fluttering handkerchiefs, began slowly to recede, sweeping with it the adjoining city, until all Hoboken had joined in the flight to the neighboring hills. We were off. I pitched overboard the cracked derby and crowded with a half-thousand others to the rail, eager for the long-anticipated pleasure of watching the inimitable panorama of New York grow smaller and smaller and melt away on the horizon. But we were barely abreast the Battery when three officers, alleging the impossibility of checking their human cargo on the open deck, ordered the entire steerage community below. When, long after, it came my turn to be released, my native land was utterly effaced, and the deck was spattering with a chilling rain before which we retreated and frittered away the remnant of the day with amical advances and bachelor banter.

In the morning the scene was transformed. Almost without exception my fellow-voyagers had changed from the somber garb of America to the picturesque comfort of their first landing in the Western world. The steerage deck, flooded with sunshine, resembled the piazza of some Calabrian city on a day of festival. Women in many-hued vesture and brilliant fazzoletti sat in groups on the hatches, suckling their babes or mirthful over their knitting. Along the rail lounged men in bag-like trousers and tight-fitting jackets of velveteen, with broad scarlet sashes. Jaunty, deep-chested youths strolled fore and aft angling for glances from winsome eyes. Unromantic elders squatted in circles about the deck, screaming over games of mora; in and out among them all raced sportive bambini. High up on a winch sat a slender fellow Turkish fashion, thumbing a zither.

Though there was not one beside myself to whom that tongue was native, English was still the dominating language. Except for a handful of Greeks, the entire 'tweendecks company hailed from southern Italy or her islands. But force of habit or linguistic pride still gave full sway to the slang-strewn speech of east New York or the labor camp. There were not a few who might have expressed themselves far more clearly in some other medium, yet when I addressed them in Italian silence was frequently the response. The new world was still too close astern to give way to the spell of the old.

But it was in their mother tongue that I exchanged the first confidences with three young men with whom I passed many an hour during the journey. The mightiest was Antonio Massarone, a vociferous giant of twenty, whose scorn was unbounded for those of his race who had pursued fortune no further than the over-peopled cities of our eastern coast. Emigration had carried him to the mines of Nevada, and it was seldom that he refrained from patting his garnished waistband when tales of experience were exchanging. But the time had come when he must give up his princely wage of three dollars a day and return for years of drudgery and drill at as many cents, or forever forfeit the right to dwell in his native land. When his term was ended he would again turn westward; before that glad day comes what a stalwart task confronts certain officers of the Italian army!