Today I saw a whale. Every time I am on the ocean I see a whale. At first nobody else could see it, but soon a large number could. There was a good deal of excitement, and the passengers divided into two factions, those who saw the whale and those who didn’t and who evidently thought we didn’t. The argument lasted nearly all the morning, and would be going on yet if a ship had not appeared in the distance, and our passengers divided promptly as to whether it was a Cunarder, a French liner, or a Norwegian tramp freighter. This discussion will take our valuable time all the afternoon. Friends will become enemies, and some of those who rallied around the whale story are almost glaring at each other over the nationality of that distant vessel. I am trying to keep out of this debate, as I am something of a Hero because I saw the whale. I have already told of my nautical experience on Cow creek, so while I feel I would be considered an authority, it is better to let some of the other ambitious travelers get a reputation.
The Lions of the Ship
Steamship Potsdam, July 19.
There are always "lions" on a ship, not the kind that roar and shake their manes, but those the other passengers point at and afterward recall with pride. I often speak carelessly of the time I crossed with Willie Vandergould, although he never left his room during the voyage and was probably sleeping off the effects of a long spree. Once I was a fellow-passenger with Julia Marlowe, a fact Julia never seemed to recognize. There are always a few counts and capitalists on an ocean steamer, and a ship without a lion is unfortunate. Our largest and finest specimen is Booth Tarkington, the head of the Indiana school of fiction, an author whose books have brought him fame and money, and a playwright whose dramatizations have won success. He is the tamest lion I ever crossed with. He is delightfully democratic, not a bit chesty, but rather modest, and as friendly to a traveling Jayhawker as he is to the distinguished members of the company. In fact, he understands and speaks the Kansas language like a native. His ideal of life is to have a home on an island in the track of the ocean steamers so he can sit on the porch and watch the ships come and go. Not for me. It is too much like living in a Kansas town where No. 3 and No. 4 do not stop, and every day the locomotives snort and go by without even hesitating.
Tarkington is an honest man, so he says, and he tells good sea stories. His favorite true story is of Toboga Bill, a big shark which followed ships up and down the South-American coast, foraging off the scraps the cooks threw overboard. Tarkington’s friend, Captain Harvey, got to noticing that on every trip his boat was escorted by Toboga Bill, whose bald spot on top and a wart on the nose made him easily recognizable. Harvey got to feeding him regularly with the spoiled meat and vegetables, and Toboga Bill would come to the surface, flop his fin at the captain and thank him as plainly as a shark could do. After several years of this mutual acquaintance the captain happened to be in a small-boat going out to his ship at a Central-American port. The boat upset, and the captain and sailors were immediately surrounded by a herd of man-eating sharks. The shore was a mile away and the captain swam that distance, the only one who escaped; and all the way he could see Toboga Bill with his fin standing up straight, keeping the other sharks from his old friend. Occasionally Toboga would give the captain a gentle shove, and finally pushed him onto the beach.
This story Tarkington admitted sounded like a fish story, but he has a motor-boat named Toboga Bill, which verifies the tale.
That reminded me of a Kansas fish story which I introduced to the audience. Everybody in Kansas knows of the herd of hornless catfish which has been bred near the Bowersock dam at Lawrence. Some years ago Mr. Bowersock, who owns the dam that furnishes power for the mill and other factories, conceived the idea that big Kaw river catfish going through the mill-race and onto the water-wheel added much to the power generated. Then he read that fish are very sensitive to music. So he hired a man with an accordion to stand over the mill-race and play. The catfish came from up and down stream to hear the music, and almost inevitably drifted through the race, onto the wheel, and increased the power. The fishes’ horns used to get entangled in the wheel and injure the fish; so Mr. Bowersock, who is a kind-hearted man and very persistent, had a lot of the fish caught and dehorned, and in a year or two he had a large herd of hornless catfish. These fish not only turn out to hear the music, but they have learned to enjoy the trip through the mill-race and over the wheel, so that every Sunday or oftener whole families of catfish—and they have large families—come to Bowersock’s dam to shoot the chutes something as people go out to ride on the scenic railway. Whenever the water in the river gets low Mr. Bowersock has the band play: the catfish gather and go round and round over the wheel, furnishing power for the Bowersock mill when every other wheel on the river is idle from lack of water.