When the stewards, who were among the few persons on board who did not play, tried to spread a table-cloth and serve food, they were indignantly rebuked. The most untiring players were the captain and the ship’s officers. Whenever they found that navigating their ship interfered with their baccarat we came to anchor. We should have reached Salonika in a day and a half. We arrived after four days. And all of each day and half of each night we were anchored in midstream while the captain took the bank. The hills of Eubœa and the mainland formed a giant funnel of snow, through which the wind roared. It swept the ship from bow to stern, turning to ice the woodwork, the velvet cushions, even the blankets. Fortunately, it was not the kind of a ship that supplied sheets, or we would have frozen in our berths. Outside of the engine-room, which was aft, there was no heat of any sort, but undaunted, the gamblers, in caps and fur coats, their breath rising in icy clouds, crouched around the table, their frozen fingers fumbling with the cards.
There were two charming Italians on board, a father and son—the father absurdly youthful, the boy incredibly wise. They operate a chain of banks through the Levant. They watched the game but did not play. The father explained this to me. “My dear son is a born gambler,” he said. “So, in order that I may set him an example, I will not play until after he has gone to sleep.”
Later, the son also explained. “My dear father,” he whispered, “is an inveterate gambler. So, in order that I may reprove him, I do not gamble. At least not until he has gone to bed.” At midnight I left them still watching each other. The next day the son said: “I got no sleep last night. For some reason, my dear father was wakeful, and it was four o’clock before he went to his cabin.”
When we reached Volo the sun was shining, and as the day was so beautiful, the gamblers remained on board and played baccarat. The rest of us explored Volo. On the mountains above it the Twenty-Four Villages were in sight, nestling on the knees of the hills. Their red-tiled houses rose one above the other, the roof of one on a line with the door-step of the neighbor just overhead. Their white walls, for Volo is a summer resort, were merged in the masses of snow, but in Volo itself roses were still blooming, and in every garden the trees were heavy with oranges. They were so many that they hid the green leaves, and against the walls of purple, blue, and Pompeian red, made wonderful splashes of a gorgeous gold.
Apparently the captain was winning, for he sent word he would not sail until midnight, and nine of his passengers dined ashore. We were so long at table, not because the dinner was good, but because there was a charcoal brazier in the room, that we missed the moving-pictures. So the young Italian banker was sent to bargain for a second and special performance. In the Levant there always is one man who works, and one man who manages him. A sort of impresario. Even the boatmen and bootblacks have a manager who arranges the financial details. It is difficult to buy a newspaper without dealing through a third party. The moving-picture show, being of importance, had seven managers. The young Italian, undismayed, faced all of them. He wrangled in Greek, Turkish, French, and Italian, and they all talked to him at the same time. Finally the negotiations came to an end, but our ambassador was not satisfied.
“They got the best of me,” he reported to us. “They are going to give the show over again, and we are to have the services of the pianist, the orchestra of five, and the lady vocalist. But I had to agree to pay for the combined entertainment entirely too much.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Eight drachmas,” he said apologetically, “or, in your money, one dollar and fifty-two cents.”
“Each?” I said.