The Italian steamship, which shall be nameless, was a large, fine-looking one when compared with banana boats, and was to arrive and depart on Sunday. It did so on Monday, and thus was keeping excellent time for Central American sea travel. It had done it mañana, and every one was full of passive praise.[*]
[*] Please see Transcriber’s note.
In order to avoid having our luggage examined, and being taxed by the thrifty Costa Rican custom officers, we arranged to have it put aboard the Italian steamer without being landed. This was easy for us but difficult for the sailors. They took it to the seaward side of the ship in a large row boat which held off about six feet and bobbed up and down like a cork. At an apparent risk of being thrown into the sea by each rising wave, the sailors made a noose in a heavy, stiff rope and placed it around half a dozen trunks and bags at a time. Then the derrick swung the things out over the side of the small boat and up on the ship in a way that frightened us, for it seemed almost a miracle that the loosely bound trunks and bags did not slip out and drop into the deep water. The sailors, however, seemed quite as cool and unconcerned about the chances of the trunks as about their own.
But how to transfer the ladies was a more difficult problem for us. It was proposed that they be sent the same way as the luggage, but the gallant captain vetoed the proposition and swore that we should have to get them in and out of the row boats, and put them ashore, where they could board the steamship as became their sex. And, in fact, after many an “oh” and “no” and “I can’t,” and plenty of shoving and pulling and catching, we finally got them safely on mother earth. The promenade from one pier to the other, including a walk through the gorgeous garden of the gangrenous hotel, and the final boarding of the ship, which lay alongside the pier, brought our task however to a most agreeable ending.
As a large number of the San Joséans who had been trapped in Limón by the washout were going with us, the steamship was quite crowded. It had come from Italian and Spanish ports and was making a tour of the Caribbean Sea, stopping at Limón, Colón and several South American ports, and had all kinds and conditions of men, women, children and animals on board. Sounds of many languages, English, Spanish, Italian, French, canine and gallinine, chased one another through the air in lively competition. We were a sort of Tower of Babel crowd. The European passengers looked the worse for wear, and their appearance, actions and words convinced me that “A Life on the Ocean Wave” was a poetical expression for Englishmen and Americans only. The song has never been translated that I know of, hence other nations know nothing of the poetry of such a life; and I had the proof of it right there before me and all about me. Wm. J. Bryan is said to be responsible for the following sentence:[1] “There is rest in an ocean voyage. The receding shores shut out the hum of the busy world; the expanse of water soothes the eye by its vastness; the breaking of the waves is music to the ear and there is medicine for the nerves in the salt sea breezes that invite to sleep.” How eloquent must be the man who can talk or write like that on shipboard.
[1] Chicago Daily News, Jan. 13, 1906.
The steerage was crammed with men, women, children, dogs and chickens; the dogs and chickens in coops and the humans huddled quite as closely together on their deck space. The latter were much worse off because they had a little more intelligence than the chickens, and realized their situation and sufferings more fully. Some of the men stood up and some sat on boxes, bundles, sky-lights and parts of the rigging, staring blankly and stupidly about them; others loitered about the narrow gangways, or reclined on the dirty deck, playing cards. Women and girls sat in out-of-the-way places with plates of unbuttered bread and dry boiled potatoes in their laps, eating with ravenous content and looking and acting as if they had not eaten before for a fortnight. As the voyage had been a long and stormy one, the appearances probably were not at great variance with the facts.
When finally we steamed out into the open sea the big boat, which sat high out of the water, rocked almost if not quite as badly as had the S. S. Limón. Many of the saloon (so-called first-class) passengers amused themselves watching and criticising the sea-weary crowd on the steerage deck below them, and laughed loudly whenever one of the sufferers would give way to a paroxysm of sickness. But some of those heartless laugh-promoters got their deserts, for the night turned out to be quite stormy and they themselves did what seemed so amusing when others did it.
The Port Limón passengers were quite gay for people who were traveling over a thousand miles by sea, and over a hundred by land, in order to get to a place that had been only a hundred miles distant before the great flood of the Reventazon or Big Buster River. I was particularly interested in an English resident of San José who had traveled extensively in Europe and Central America and spoke French, Italian, Spanish and English quite fluently and frequently. He spoke to every one in his own language and was “hail-fellow-well-met” with all. Before the ship left the pier he treated and was treated by the Limonians who came to see him off, and after we got off he did the same to his friends on board. In order to save his head he drank a great deal of champagne cider, a temperance drink which limits its ravages mainly to the stomach. We put out to sea at four-thirty, and by five-thirty his stomach weighed a ton and had to be lightened by throwing a part of its cargo overboard. By dinner time he was a changed man and acted as small as before he had acted big. When he sat down at the table he put on a brave and cheerful look. But I could see that his bravura and cheerfulness were only skin deep, for there was no confirmatory luster in his eyes and no pleasant word on his tongue. While the soup was being eaten he began to look at us with that unmistakable, conquered expression of a seasick man. He stared at us as if asking us if we noticed his plight, and when the second course came on he had to capitulate. He suddenly stood up and said meekly, “I think I must go,” and left the table, quickening his step as he neared the door.
The dinner was quite elaborate, but the foods were mostly Italian mixtures and so greasy that although the motion of the boat did not affect me, my stomach felt, after I had finished, as if it had done something wrong. Grease and sauce blend the flavors of food mixtures into a greasy and saucy harmony and, since the taste of fat is agreeable to the hungry stomach, often make the mess taste good. This is one of the secrets of economical cooking, which is so extensively cultivated abroad. The mixtures, although not attractive to the pampered American palate, are much more healthful than mince and pumpkin pie, doughnuts, baked beans, gingerbread, boiled corn beef and cabbage, devil cake and other devil dishes of Yankee invention. Our Pilgrim Fathers renounced the devil in all but eating. But the secret of the enjoyment of our dinner was the fact that we S. S. Limonians, who had become good friends and good sailors during the mutual and varied experiences of our voyage, all sat at the same table and took pleasure in each other’s company—the more so because all around us were strangers with whom we had nothing in common either social or ancestral. They were gesticulating and talking incessantly, rolling their R’s like ratchets and becoming more noisy, if possible, with every glass of wine they swallowed. The ship provided, gratis, plenty of cheap red and white wine, quite enough to inebriate all of us if we had been able to drink enough of it. Our Englishman and our insurance agent tasted it and promptly ordered some good wine at their own expense. But about the time we were half through eating and the passengers had drunk about all they wanted, some excellent wine was brought in and served free. It was better than what either of our men had ordered and drunk, but came too late for them to enjoy it. Not having indulged in any before, I took a little and relished it. It seemed to affiliate with the grease that was growling inside of me, and made it feel more contented to remain where it was. If our New England had only provided an antidote or palliative for the sweet and sodden mixtures with which she tempts us! But she finishes the destruction of digestion by slaking and cementing them in the stomach with hard cider.