“While lying in Catania,” Captain Belknap continues, “knowing that lumber was needed at Reggio, Mr. Flint was sent ashore Wednesday morning, to buy such quantity as we could get on board that day. Lighterage facilities were very scarce, as many steamers were in the harbor discharging; but by the persistent efforts of the German Vice-Consul, Mr. Jacob Peratoner, who very kindly devoted almost his entire day in our behalf, we succeeded in getting on board enough lumber to build 25 houses, 13 by 13 feet, complete with floors.”
Mr. Thompson’s diary for January 13th is of unusual interest. This journal is human and vital. It tells us just what one man saw, did, and understood; it reflects his mood; it has the heat of his life. It gives us a series of snap-shots of the good ship “Bayern” with the rosy eupeptic German Captain and the pale slender American Commander, the crew—rather a poor lot of sailors got together at a few hours’ notice—the stewards neat and literal, the cast-iron routine, the prescribed Italian doctor, and all the usual personnel of a North German Lloyd liner, commandeered for unusual service, with the supreme authority vested for the nonce in the American Commander, the quiet man with a will of iron, who never seems to rest, but by his example ceaselessly stimulates, vitalizes, every member of the ship’s company.
Mr. Thompson’s journal:
“January 13th: In Catania harbor unloading goods. Emptied after holds before lunch. Afternoon sent away goods for Taormina. Went ashore with Little Sisters of the Poor. Town not interesting. Came back at dusk. Elliott got his nose cut on shore in an automobile smash. A number of refugee children from Messina came on board to be carried to Genoa. They had lost every one belonging to them. Most of them were apparently happy except one older one. Eleven old men, ten old women, six Little Sisters of the Poor, and six children came on board. Busy serving out blankets till near midnight.”
These twenty-one old people were between eighty and one hundred years of age. The Sisters had assumed the care and future responsibility for these poor souls.
The stay at Catania was the most important phase of the “Bayern’s” cruise. Here the most significant work of the expedition was accomplished. The Americans were brought into close and cordial relation with the leaders of the relief work in Catania. They visited the refuges and, finding how well they were administered and how grievously in need of succor, they helped with money and all the remaining stores of the “Bayern.”
At Catania the American Committee for the first time was brought into direct touch with the Americans working at Taormina; here was another channel through which the stream of American help could flow directly from the source of supply to its destination, administered from first to last by Americans. The policy of the committee was, as far as possible, to employ Americans to disburse the American money and the supplies it had purchased. It was more satisfactory to the contributors, and was of great use to the earnest men and women who devoted themselves to the cause. Here the committee came in contact, not only with Mr. Bowdoin and Mr. Wood, those tireless workers from Taormina, but with Miss Katherine Bennett Davis, one of the most significant figures among all those who labored for Italy in her dark hour. They had expected to go to Syracuse, and Mr. Cutting went thither by rail in order to learn the existing conditions of the relief work. He reported that the work in Syracuse was admirably organized, under the leadership of Miss Davis. It was found best, however, not to take the ship to Syracuse, and Mr. Flint was sent there with an American sailor to guard him and the large sum of money he carried for Syracuse. The greater part was given to Miss Davis, the rest was divided between the Sindaco and the Marchesa de Rudini.
The refugees taken on board at Catania added to the interest of life on the “Bayern,” though the men in the hold had little time to notice them; still they added a certain color and picturesqueness to the daily routine. J. has memories of the little children dancing on the deck of the “Bayern,” romping in and out of the piles of goods as they came up from the hold; and strongest of all, of Sor Michaele, an old opera singer, from the almshouse at Messina, who sat all day long at the piano in the blue brocade saloon, playing and singing the operas of his youth.
In Catania the members of the “Bayern” expedition saw thousands of the superstiti. Here they learned what the effects of the earthquake had been upon the survivors.
“They had all been singed by death,” writes J. “They looked like death’s heads with the grin and the terror of the skull in their faces. One woman—I saw her once, I heard of her often—went from hospital to hospital, to the refuges, to all the places where there were profughi, asking the same question everywhere: ‘Have you here perchance a baby who has the habit of sucking the two first fingers of his left hand?’ That was the only clue she had to her lost child. I never could hear whether or not she found him. In one of the refuges I saw a woman who was said to be one of the richest people in Messina. She had lost every member of her family, she had nothing in the world, not a suit of clothes, not a crust, nothing but herself. Dr. Alessandrini, who is studying the nervous effects of the earthquake, says that most of the survivors dream continually of it. We saw one woman who had dreamed of it every night and each time awoke in a convulsion of fright. They were in great doubt if they could save her life. The children, even the quite grown ones of fourteen or fifteen, however, forgot it all immediately. It was like a bad dream to them.”