Nicolò, too, expected to return. In fact, of all the steerage community a very few had resolved to remain at home, and for each of these there were a score who had emigrated a half-dozen times in the face of similar resolutions. Nicolò was a bootblack, proud of his calling and envious of no other. Already there hovered in his day dreams a three-chair "parlor" in which his station should be nearest the door and bordering on the cash-register. Conscription called him also, but he approached the day of recruiting light of heart, knowing a man of four feet nine would be quickly rejected.
As for Pietro Scerbo, the last of our quartet, his home-coming was voluntary, for the family obligation to the army had already been fulfilled by two older brothers. Pietro had spent his eighteen months kneading spaghetti dough in the Bronx at seven dollars a week; and he physically quaked at the sarcasm of 'Tonio on the subject of wages. Still he was by no means returning empty-handed. "To be sure, I am not rich with gold, like 'Tonio," he confessed one day, when the miner was out of earshot, "but I have spent only what I must--two dollars in the boarding-house, sometimes some clothes, and in the winter each week six lire to hear Caruso."
Thirty dollars a month and the peerless-voiced a necessity of life! I, too, had been a frequent "standee" at the Metropolitan, yet had as often charged myself with being an extravagant young rascal.
The steerage rations on the Prinzessin were in no way out of keeping with her general unattractiveness. Those who kept to their bunks until expelled by the seaman whose duties included the daily fumigation of the dungeons, were in no way the losers for being deprived of the infantile roll and the strange imitation of coffee that made up the European breakfast. Sea breezes bring appetite, however, especially on a faintly rippling ocean, and it was not strange that, though the dinner-hour came early, even racial lethargy fled at its announcement. Long before noon a single jangle of the steward's bell cut short all morning pastimes and instantly choked the passages to the lower regions with a clamorous, jocose struggle of humanity as those on deck dived below for their meal-hour implements and collided with the foresighted, fighting their way up the ladders. Once disentangled, we filed by the mouth of the culinary cavern under the forecastlehead, to receive each a ladleful of the particular pièce de résistance of the day, a half-grown loaf of bread, and a brimming cupful of red wine. Thus laden, each squirmed his way through the multitude and made table of whatever space offered,--on the edge of a hatch, the drum of a winch, or on the deck itself. Unvaryingly day by day boiled beef alternated with pork and beans. Then there was macaroni, not alternately, nor yet moderately, but ubiquitously, fourteen days a week; for supper was in no way different from dinner even in the unearthly hour of its serving. It was tolerably coarse macaroni, but otherwise no worse than omnipresent macaroni must be when boiled by the barrel under the watchful eye of a rotund, torpescent, bath-fearing, tobacco-loving, Neapolitan ship's cook. For the wine we were supremely grateful; not that it was particularly good wine, but such as it was not even the pirates in the galley could make it worse.
The ensembled climax of this daily extravaganza, however, had for its setting the steerage "washroom," an iron cell furnished with two asthmatic salt-water faucets. To it dashed first the long experienced in the quick-lunch world, and on their heels the competing multitude. The 'tweendecks strongholds housed six hundred, the "wash-room" six, whence it goes without saying that the minority was always in power and the majority howling for admittance and a division of the spoils. Yet dissension, as is wont, was rampant even among the sovereign. From within sounded the splashing of water, the tittering of jostled damsels, or the shouting for passage of one who had resigned his post and must run the gauntlet to freedom through a vociferous raillery. In due time complete rotation in office was accomplished, but it was ever a late hour when the last gourmand emerged from the alleyway and carried his dripping utensils below.
The Prinzessin plowed steadily eastward. Gradually, as the scent of the old world came stronger to our nostrils, the tongue of the West fell into disuse. Had I been innocent of Italian I must soon have lost all share in the general activities. As it was, I had the entrée to each group; even the solemn socialists, seated together behind the winch planning the details of the portending reversal of society, did not lower their voices as I passed.
How little akin are anticipation and realization! Ever before on the high seas it had been my part to labor unceasingly among cattle pens or to bear the moil of watch and watch; and the unlimited leisure of the ticketed had seemed always fit object for envy. Yet here was I myself at last crossing the Atlantic as a passenger, and weary already of this forced inactivity before the voyage was well begun. The first full day, to be sure, had passed delightfully, dozing care-free in the sun or striding through the top-most volume in my luggage. But before the second was ended reading became a bore; idling more fatiguing than the wielding of a coal-shovel. On the third, I sauntered down into the forecastle more than half inclined to suggest to one of its inmates a reversal of rôles; but the watch below greeted me with that chill disdain accorded mere passengers, never once lapsing into the masculine banter that would have marked my acceptance as an equal. As a last resort I set off on long pedestrian tours of the deck, to the astonishment of the lounging Latins, though now and then some youth inoculated with the restlessness of the West, notably 'Tonio, fell in with me for a mile or two.
It was the miner, too, who first accepted my challenge to a bout of hand-wrestling and quickly brought me undeserved fame by sprawling prone on his back, when, had he employed a tithe of science, he might have tossed me into the scuppers. From the moment of its introduction this exotic pastime won great popularity. Preliminary jousts filled the morning hours; toward evening the hatches were transformed into grandstands from which the assembled third-class populace cheered on the panting contestants and greeted each downfall with a cannonade of laughter, in which even the vanquished joined.
More constant and universal than all else, however, was the demand for music. The most diffident possessor of a mouth-organ or a jew's-harp knew no peace during his waking hours. Great was the joy when, as dusk was falling on the second day out, a Calabrian who had won fortune and corpulence as a grocer in Harlem, clambered on deck, straining affectionately to his bosom a black box with megaphone attachment.
"E un fonógrafo," he announced proudly; "a present I take to the old madre at home." He warded off with his elbows the exultant uprising and deposited the instrument tenderly on a handkerchief spread by his wife on a corner of the hatch. "For a hundred dollars, signori!" he cried; "Madre di Dío! How she will wonder if there is a little man in the box! For on the first day, signori, I do not tell her how the music is put in the fonógrafo, ha! ha! ha! not for a whole day!"--and the joke came perilously near to choking him into apoplexy long before its perpetration.