I am in the regular mail steamer, you see, as I told you I should be, and we were certainly not given to understand more than the truth anent her shortcomings, for she is about the same size and class as those pestiferous little nightmares which run between Gibraltar and Ceuta. There is no deck but a plank or two outside the saloon, the latter a sort of excrescence on the ship, leaving just room to squeeze a chair between its sides and the scuppers. The space in the bows is thickly occupied by marine wonders covered with tarpaulins. What these may be, as they are not deck cargo, I can’t think, but they are evidently important enough to want all the fresh air in the ship.
Aft, the galley treads upon the heels of the saloon, its fragrance extending still further, and the strip of deck outside it is completely blocked by dirty little tables, where frowzy men of the crew seem to carry on a perpetual March Hare’s tea-party.
Beyond that, again, a half-clad native is for ever killing hens, and all in a muddle with a couple of terribly mangy but very kind dogs nosing about for snacks.
She is a Spanish steamer, and the officers all Spaniards, very polite, but unkempt, unshaven, and dressed in soiled white linen suits with no attempt at a uniform.
It is astonishing to think that this is the mail between Manila and the chief town of the Islands, and I can’t understand how it is that in six years no American enterprise has stepped in to do something better. I have asked Americans about this, but they tell me the question does not affect them, for they can always get permits to go in their own transports, and then, besides that, there is nothing to tempt American capital in so slow and jog-trot a fashion of making dollars. As we went out of the river, I tried to see our house in the estuary, but all the blue-grey houses, and corrugated roofs, and green trees and palms look so exactly alike that I found it impossible to distinguish ours from amongst the jumble.
While I was looking over the side, a Filipino passenger, a middle-aged man, came up and said something to me, waving his hand towards the shore. I daresay he took me for his equal and meant no harm, but I thought it very cool of him to speak to me, so I simply drew myself up and said that I did not “habla Castellano,” whereupon he shuffled off and has not been seen again.
Luckily the weather was very calm, and is so still, so I was able to appear at the evening meal, which came off at six! A deadly hour—when you have not had time to get up any interest in food since lunch, and yet if you don’t eat you are starving before bed-time. The dinner consisted of a thick meat-and-drink soup, such as one might imagine Russian convicts yearning for in the depths of a Siberian winter, but for which it was hardly possible to return thanks in a stifling cabin in the tropics. After this nice, comforting brew followed a procession of eight courses of thick and greasy fried lumps or appalling stews, each one more fatal and more full of garlic and spices than the last. I thought that even if I had been feeling fresh and hungry on a winter’s day at home I could hardly have faced the Butuan menu, but, as it was, the mere sight and smell of the dishes made me almost hysterical.
The polite little captain pressed me to eat, and I did not like to hurt his feelings by refusing what he thought was excellent fare; but I escaped alive by waiting till his head was turned, and then dexterously passing lumps down to one of the kind, mangy dogs until the poor beast was detected by a muchacho and kicked, howling, on to the deck. After that I assured the skipper that I had had quite enough; an excellent dinner; I positively could not eat any more. He bowed and offered me coffee. I took a cup, and with that and dry biscuit made a tolerable meal.
About eight o’clock I went below, as I felt very tired, because it was almost my first day out of bed since my illness. Besides that, even if I had been in keen and robust health there would have been nothing to tempt me to remain on the narrow deck, which was pitch dark, or in the stuffy saloon with a couple of guttering candles in tall stands on the table by way of sole illumination.
The accommodation below is of much the same type as the luxury above, below decks being just of the build of one of the old penny steamers that used to go up and down the Thames—you remember the sort of things—a very low roof supported by small iron pillars. Off a narrow passage open seven small cabins, with four berths in each of them, but they are really not so bad when you get one all to yourself, and I have the best one, at the end of the ship. I caught the fat Mayordomo (chief steward), and after endless trouble, managed to get a key for my cabin door, though the choice lay between having it open or dying of asphyxiation; but I preferred the latter risk of the two, as at least I could be certain what to expect if I kept it locked.