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XXVIII
ONE WINK, SIXTEEN CENTS, AND ROYALTY

The seasoned traveler in India, planning a night's journey, don't arrive at a station a minute or two before his train leaves, as we do in plebeian America. Rush and hurry should form no part of Royal journeys.

It isn't dignified.

You should get there at least half an hour before the train starts, especially if you are playing Royalty on a second-class ticket.

As your equipage draws up to the station your footman alights and swings open the carriage door, your guide descends from the driver's seat and summons low-caste vassals who load your impedimenta on their heads.

The cavalcade starts with you bringing up the rear.

You find the station-master, the string of your menials now following on behind.

Locate your station-master, or at least an official who will answer the same purpose, and tip him a wink, not forgetting to accompany it with half a rupee, and tell him you want a car for Benares.

This man is a Hindu who can write but can't read – I am quite certain he can't read.

He leads "Master" with his string of retainers to a car of four compartments, four berths in each compartment, the berths running with the train, with a toilet room for each compartment. He opens a door. Lal tells the string of porters to put "Master's" baggage into the compartment – no matter how much, put it all in, boxes, bags, bedding and trunks.

Then this functionary who has been the recipient of a wink and half a rupee (don't forget the coin when working the combination), who can write but who cannot read, fills in a placard which is hanging outside the compartment. This placard, before the recipient of the wink and half rupee begins to toy with it, is a blank which reads:

Lower Right Berth reserved for —

Upper Right Berth reserved for —

Lower Left Berth reserved for —

Upper Left Berth reserved for —

This official who has received a wink and half a rupee – never, never forget the half rupee, because half a rupee is sixteen cents – fills in the blanks on the placard which now, in its completed state, reads:

Lower Right Berth reserved for Mr. Allen.

Upper Right Berth reserved for Mr. Jones.

Lower Left Berth reserved for Mr. White.

Upper Left Berth reserved for Mr. Brown.

He hangs up the placard outside of the compartment, wishes "Master" a pleasant journey up to Benares, and closes the door.

Lal starts the electric fan, makes "Master's" bed, lays out "Master's" pajamas, and arranges "Master's" belongings promiscuously over Jones', White's and Brown's berths – Lal, a seasoned guide, is onto his job.

These last-named gentlemen get left – yes, sir, they get left. The train pulls out before they get around, and I am deprived of the pleasure of their company.

But if there is one place where a fellow can dispense with company it's on a hot night's run in a railroad carriage through India.

It's when I step out of the car at Benares the next morning that I learned that the fellow back in Calcutta couldn't read, for, blessed if the outside of that compartment I have occupied all night isn't labeled No. 1 instead of No. 2.

But that really makes no difference.

The compartment labeled No. 2, when you get inside, is just like compartment labeled No. 1, on the other side of the partition in the same car.

I conscientiously told that fellow I held a second-class ticket, and if he could read, Royalty is so cheap in Calcutta that you can buy a whole night of it with sixteen cents, and the number on the outside of the car, and the price charged for it, is all the difference between Royalty and Plebeian in India – and Plebeians have the laugh on Royalty – they have always had it on them for that matter.

XXIX
THE ENGLISHMAN AND MARK TWAIN'S JOKE, "THAT'S HOW THEY WASH IN INDIA"

In my home town I was once asked to give a travel talk in a large stone church, the occasion being a rally for the Christian Endeavor Society.

It had been announced that there would be no charge for admission; furthermore, it had been thoroughly advertised that the young ladies of the church would furnish a delectable spread to the audience in the church parlors just as soon as I got through talking.

The town turned out en masse.

As the parson was leading me to the rostrum, the lights went out and there was Egyptian darkness.

After an anxious wait of five minutes, it being a hard stunt to get such a fine audience together in the classic, intellectual center in which I live, even with a chromo offer, the parson, fearing it would leave, made a little speech in the direction where he hoped the audience was – he couldn't see it – it was an act of faith.

He begged our good people to be patient under the trying circumstances, explained that the burned-out fuse would soon be replaced, that an electrician was even now on his way to the church, and told them that a good thing was in store for them – he assured them, "Mr. Allen is still with us."

Five more minutes passed and darkness still brooded.

Again the parson gave the audience, which he hoped was still there, the same little speech, assuring them again, "Mr. Allen is still with us – there's a good thing coming."

At the end of fifteen minutes he repeated it again, assuring them a good thing was coming – the coffee began to boil in the church kitchen, the aroma floating through the auditorium – the lights came on and there hadn't one guilty man escaped. The audience was still there.

Kind reader, you'd never guess what I was thinking about during that trying fifteen minutes.

Well, I was trying to think of an appropriate story to open my speech with, to illustrate the situation – something about where the lights went out.

I thought, and thought, and THOUGHT, but could not fetch it, but the next morning I thought of a corker – I am descended from the English.

All my ancestors came from England and settled in New England. New England was chiefly inhabited by Indians at the time, but, I suppose, there still lurks a trace of English in me.

That old joke about the English being slow is no joke – it's a sad fact.

If further proof than my inability to corral that illustration inside of fifteen minutes were necessary, I've demonstrated it coming through India this trip.

The universal way of washing clothes in India is for a native, they call him a dobe, to take his clothes to the bank of a stream, conveniently near a large stone.

The larger the stone the better. One weighing from one to three tons is an ideal size.

The dobe picks up a garment, souses it in the water, and flails the stone with it.

The dobe is a particularly vigorous man. The average Indian is of a lymphatic nature, excepting the dobe. He is animated with a strenuousness entirely lacking in all other callings.

Mark Twain, passing through India some fifteen years ago, noting the strange sights, remarked that all over India he had seen the natives trying to break huge stones with a shirt; but, he added, he hadn't, in a single instance, seen one succeed.

Just to see whether our English cousins over here in India had caught that joke yet, when our train crossed a stream I would draw a chance English traveler's attention to the ubiquitous dobe flailing a stone, and wonderingly ask: "Why does the man try to break the stone that way?" – and every time the Englishman has explained to me that he wasn't trying to break the stone; and he would further kindly explain, "That's the way the Indians do their washing," and he would invariably add: "Beastly stupid, don't you know, isn't it?"

And every time I've sadly admitted that it was.

XXX
ENGLISH AS "SHE IS SPOKE" IN INDIA

Benares is located on the Ganges River and is right in the center of things for devout Hindus – Benares bearing the same relation to Hinduism that Jerusalem does to Christianity.

Benares is the Hindus' sacred city, and the sacred Ganges River is lined with temples and bathing and burning ghats.

Hindus come from afar to die at Benares, where their bodies may be burned and their ashes consigned to the sacred waters of the Ganges. And after Benares, by easy stages, Lal and I reached Delhi, the old capital of India, until the seat of government was shifted to Calcutta, to be again brought back to Delhi three years ago. And here is some English "as she is spoke" in Delhi, handed out by an enterprising shopkeeper to both Royalty and Plebeian:

"Useful value, Save Your Money

(Defy Competition)

"We have much pleasure to inform the Ladies and Gentlemen, Officers and visitors and prince and the public in general who have always been our customers or who wished to make the shopping they must not use the Hotel and traveling guides and Hotel Carriages at the purchasing time because they always Carried the visitors to those places where they getting 25 per cent Commission, now it is a great point to think that when they will get so High Commission from the shop keepers then the visitors cannot get the things worth of a rupee only they will be extorted and will get the things 4 ans. worth in a rupee, now it is useful advice for them that the visitors should not make any purchases without having inspected our prices and charges, as we are not going to any Hotel to distribute our cards and never use to give them any Commission that is why we are ready to sell our articles at comparatively prices, our firm oldest and reliable has been established in 1860 in Chandni Chowk now we have shifted our shop from there to here near the Jama Masjid No. 1 for the convenience of our customers.

"No use to get the money from your pocket and to give these guides and Ghari-walas."

XXXI
A FIVE DAYS' SAIL AND A MEASLY POEM

We are nearing Aden in Arabia, en route from Bombay.

Bombay was all stirred up over the war and my itinerary is knocked into a cocked hat.

I had planned to go through Palestine to Constantinople and cross Europe to London, but I can't get my passport viseed – I'm no war correspondent, anyway. I'm strictly a man of peace.

When Lal and I reached Bombay war was on, and Bombay was about two-thirds of my way around the world, and home loomed large in my mind – I wanted to get home. This English P. & O. mail liner was ready to sail direct for London – and this was my ship.

For a strictly peaceful man this was not a good boat to sail on, I was advised, numerously, and from many sources.

All banks in India since war was declared had shut down paying out gold. This ship was going to carry four million pounds sterling to London, which, in round numbers, is twenty million dollars.

She would be a prize for the German gunboats in the Arabian Sea. Aden would be her first stop, a five days' sail from Bombay. The Germans knew her schedule and her route and knew she would carry Indian gold to London. She would have no chance at all to make Aden with all that gold on board. The Germans would get her.

Then, from there up through the Red Sea to Suez she wouldn't be out of danger – there were German gunboats in the Red Sea. She might get through the Suez Canal all right, if she ever got so far as Suez. The trip through the canal might possibly be a peaceful one, but, ye gods! look out when she strikes Port Said at the other end of the canal, if she ever gets that far, was the word passed out.

Port Said would be a hot point. Nothing but submarines would be safe around Port Said about her due date there, it would be such a seething hot-bed of naval engagements.

From there her course through the Mediterranean to Gibraltar would be one trying ordeal for a man of peace, not used to, looking for, nor wanting war's alarms. Italy was hanging in the balance as a neutral power. She would probably be in it before the ship could reach the Mediterranean at Port Said – if she ever reached Port Said.

To sail on this ship through the Mediterranean under present conditions would be, for a rank civilian, just like committing suicide. Of course for a soldier, whose job is war, it would be all right – all in the day's business – justifiable.

Then after she reached Gibraltar (of course this was supposing the improbable chance of her ever getting so far as Gibraltar) she would have to sail out into the Atlantic through the Bay of Biscay, and up the Thames, and the telegraph said the Germans had slipped over and mined the mouth of the Thames – for a man anxious to get home this was a bad ship to sail on. That was the encouragement held out to book for passage on this ship.

I met a man at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay (I'd met this man two weeks previously at Calcutta) – an American, a machinery salesman from the United States.

He told me he was on his way home, had crossed India to Bombay to connect with this P. & O. liner, but none of this ship for him.

He had been filled as full, if not fuller, than myself of the dire disasters that would, in all probability, overtake this ship.

"Why, Mr. Allen," he said, "that ship will have about as much chance to get to London as a celluloid dog would have to catch an asbestos cat racing through – " "Oh, say, my friend," I said, "don't say it.

"Aside from that illustration having gray whiskers, it makes me nervous and discourages me, because I want to get home, and that is the ship I ought to sail on. But let's go and see our Consul; he may be able to throw a little optimism on the situation."

The Consul took an even more gloomy view of it than my friend from Calcutta. Aside from the above cheerful opinions, all of which he shared, he had the air of a man who knew something worse but was not at liberty to tell.

That settled my friend from Calcutta.

He wanted to get home as bad as any man could, but he was going to retrace his steps and go home via Japan.

Our Consul advised me if I really wanted to get home that I had better go that way too. On the other hand, he advised, if I really enjoyed the sensation of momentarily living in expectation of being sunk, shot to pieces, or blown up, that this P. & O. liner was an ideal ship to sail on.

As I had just come from Japan, as my contract is to write travel stuff around the world – not two-thirds around and back over the same ground – and as I had picked up numerous cases of stuff coming across India, all of which were under consular invoice, said invoice reciting the fact that the goods it described were to leave India on this same ship, for entry at New York (it being a requirement of our tariff laws to name the ship, port of departure, and port of arrival of goods for entry into United States), I told our Consul and my Calcutta friend that I was going to take a chance and sail on this ship.

To write that invoice all over again for another ship, for entry into San Francisco en route from Japan – to get out of that was the determining factor.

Anyone who knows anything about the details of a consular invoice will understand.

So I boarded this ship with a handful of passengers booked for London. The tender steamed away and left us in Bombay Harbor, ready to weigh anchor and sail at 3 P. M. Saturday, the advertised hour for sailing.

But we didn't weigh – not at 3 P. M. that day, or the next. The next day, Sunday, all first and second-cabin passengers – the P. & O. carry no steerage – were shoved up forward, and British troops, homeward bound, were taken on aft – and I wondered if the Consul knew.

This changed the situation.

Sailing on a British ship with British troops, to say nothing of twenty million dollars in gold, with England and Germany at War, was no good place for a man of my peaceful proclivities.

I wasn't alone in these sentiments.

The purser, on that peaceful Sabbath day, put this question to the passengers: "Do you want to sail on this ship or go ashore?"

We might sail at our own risk. Anyone sailing was a belligerent. That question thinned the passenger list down to about a score. The most timid ones stampeded to leave the ship. I won first place at the ladder, but remembered that consular invoice and turned back, and one of our preacher passengers beat me to it and was the first one down the ladder.

He had spent his life preaching that Heaven was a desirable place, but he proposed to go there in God's good time. The purser, thinking he had missed me, put the question to me the second time.

With my teeth chattering with valor and my face blanched with the war spirit, to hide my real feelings I made reply: "P-p-please start your tank. I want to go home – I want to get there as soon as possible – I want to go home, I tell you."

But I don't like this war game, and I decided right then and there if they sprung another one, if they added another war risk to the ship for this voyage, I would shake it and go home via Japan.

We stayed in Bombay Harbor until next day at noon, to throw the Germans off her schedule, and she sailed out of her regular course to throw them off her route.

Nights we sail in darkness – her lights out and her wireless out of commission; sailing phantom-like, with no lights to betray her to lurking German cruisers, and by the same token, no lights to warn a ship sailing north and south from ramming her.

I had fully intended to write some travel stuff coming across from Bombay, but shucks! I haven't felt like writing travel stuff – couldn't seem to get down to it.

A speck on the horizon would knock any travel stuff out of my mind – that speck might grow into a German cruiser, and England at war with Germany, and no guns aboard to shoot with! Just a merchant mail ship with twenty million dollars in gold and British troops aboard.

From all the accounts we had been getting of German atrocities, if a German gunboat met with us, she would snitch that twenty million first, help herself to our coal second, and, third, sink us.

That was the consensus of opinion of the handful of English and French passengers aboard. The Arabian Sea is full of sharks, terrible, ferocious, man-eating sharks; and what with anxiously watching specks on the horizon, speculating as to whether those specks would develop into German cruisers, and wondering how salt water tasted, and whether a shark would get me on the way down, with these pleasant thoughts a man of my peculiar temperament couldn't write travel stuff.

I tried, I honestly tried, but only one measly little poem was all I could accomplish on this five days' passage coming across from Bombay to Aden.

I never attempt poetry unless my soul is stirred with deep emotions.

Eight verses were wrenched out of me, when a smudge of smoke was visible on the horizon, and the bets were ninety to one that a German cruiser had sighted us.

The first two verses of that poem went:

 
Your scribe he is a soldier nit,
Nor used to war's alarms;
He never died, or bled, or fit,
Save bugs upon his farms.
And when at last he went to war
On a big P. & O.,
He went to war, just only for
To get home quick, you know.
 

And the next six verses were even worse than those two.

The smudge turned out to be an English merchantman, eastbound, as scared of the Germans as we were. There isn't a speck on the horizon in any direction, and with Aden almost in sight, in exuberance of spirit I wrote one more verse:

 
So whoop, hurrah, don't look askance,
He's sailing o'er the sea;
Doggone a man who'll take no chance,
"A chance for me," quoth he.
 

XXXII
BEATING THE GAME WITH ONE SHIRT

We will land at Tilbury (London) in an hour, and I have beaten the game with one shirt.

The English are great in many respects, but in nothing do they excel more thoroughly than in dressing for dinner. Now we, of the great American "proletariat," are not strangers to the dress-suit. We do, on occasions, don it.

At evening weddings we put it on.

When a town magnate gives an evening reception, those of us who are counted among the elect and get an invitation, put on a dress-suit.

Occasions of this kind may happen three or four times a year, and, to make sure that everything is in order, after the invitations are out and we have received ours, our wives, who are more solicitous about this thing than we men, dig up hubby's dress suit and give it an airing.

Our dress shirt is sent to the laundry so as to have it fresh for the occasion, and a day or two before the event hubby gets into the spirit of the game, and at the earnest solicitation of the female portion of the house, submits to a dress rehearsal to make sure that shirt, studs, special collar, tie and all the toggery appertaining to the deal will be in order at the last moment prior to the final plunge.

Now our English cousin's familiarity with the dress-suit breeds contempt – that is, contempt for any exhilaration incident to getting into the thing on state occasions.

While it is not a criminal offense not to dress for dinner, it is something in the nature of a misdemeanor, and a rigid rule prescribes the dress-suit for dinner.

Nowhere on earth is this rigid rule more thoroughly observed than on the P. & O.

I was not a stranger to this rule – the P. & O. and I are not strangers. Nor am I a stranger to the customs of the Far East.

As the years have gone by I have added to the dress shirt a sufficient number to take care of the situations one meets with on world tours.

When I got to Bombay I found that the strenuous dobes had practically annihilated all but one of my dress shirts, so I presented those wrecked shirts to Lal, along with my bedding purchased in Calcutta, for which I had no further use, to take back to Calcutta with him.

If Mark Twain were alive today I'd be willing to bet him dollars to doughnuts that the dobes had succeeded in breaking stones clear across India with my dress shirts.

I had many things to do to get ready to sail on this ship, and one would have been enough – that consular invoice.

To lay in a bale of dress shirts was one of the items that should have been attended to, as I knew I was in for a twenty-two days' sail on a P. & O. to London; if all went well after boarding her.

But somehow, other things pressed more heavily.

I thought of the dress shirts several times, but I seemed to have a vague sort of an idea that dress-suits wouldn't cut much ice this trip, so I dismissed dress shirts with the idea that I had one, and the gloomy outlook was such that I must have decided that one shirt would last two days – three on a pinch – and that we were due to be sunk by that time, and if we were, a dress-suit would be of secondary importance to me – anyway I got aboard with only one dress shirt.

After clearing from Bombay for Aden, along about ten o'clock in the forenoon, the day slipped by without my realizing that I had started on a twenty-two days' voyage on a crack P. & O. liner with only one dress shirt.

The careful reader who has followed me in these travel letters will have gathered in my last that dress shirts were not weighing as heavily on my mind as some other things.

It was a doughty lot of Englishmen, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen, that made up the passenger list, about a score of men. You might say it was a picked lot – sifted, as it were – English colonials going home to England for a holiday. Judges seemed to predominate – an especially good lot of fellows – and brave.

After tea that day (by the way, I've attended twenty-two "he" tea parties on this voyage, the Englishman's tea and his dress-suit are twin brothers), shortly after tea the bell rang to dress for dinner.

I had a hazy idea that the ceremony might be waived on this voyage.

I couldn't see any occasion to put on the glad rags – a handful of men, probably sailing to their doom – to get into gala attire seemed almost sacrilegious.

But every last man ducked for his cabin to get into his dress-suit.

Under the circumstances the Frenchmen wouldn't kick, no matter how they felt about it – they all ducked too.

I had no enthusiasm to dress for dinner.

Couldn't see the use.

I felt, unless we were sunk, I couldn't play the game right more than three or four days with one shirt.

But I decided to be game and not cross a bridge till I came to it. I could hold out with my one shirt for three or four days and not be thrown overboard, and by that time we would all go down together.

After four days that shirt looked passe, not to say soiled.

No German gunboat had come to the rescue up to the time of the gong sounding to dress for dinner on the fifth day.

When the bell rang to dress that day I ducked with the rest of the boys.

I sadly looked at that dress shirt, shook my head, and took a turn up and down the deck.

No use, there wasn't a speck on the horizon; no hope of being sunk before dinner.

I went back to my cabin and turned that shirt around, and blossomed out with it hind side fore.

I was a little nervous at first, until after soup, but it went. Didn't occasion any remark or flutter, and I felt that I was good for four days more.

At the end of the second four days, eight days out from Bombay, we had passed Aden.

We stopped there a few hours of a Saturday afternoon.

Everything was shut up – couldn't buy a shirt for love or money.

We were now in the Red Sea and no German gunboats had found us, as yet. By this time it wasn't the fear of German gunboats that was causing me anxiety. To dress for dinner with that bunch of Englishmen had gotten to be a mania with me, and there were five days more to Port Said before I could buy some dress shirts. My shirt would go one more time hind side to, but after that something would have to be done.

On the ninth day for dinner I turned that shirt inside out – and got by.

A mighty load was lifted from my soul. On a pinch she would last eight more days that way, four days inside out front to, four days inside out back to.

Safe for eight days more and we'd make Port Said in five!

We made Port Said all right – slipped past in the night; not so much as a fire-cracker to wake me up.

We were now in the Mediterranean, and Gibraltar our next stop – six days away.

Italy was still neutral. But I had got where I didn't give a tinker's dam about the neutrality of Italy – what I wanted was some clean dress shirts.

I'm ashamed to chronicle it, but all interest in the war seemed to dwindle with me. I was obsessed with one idea, one ambition – to make that shirt stand me until we could make Gibraltar.

Eighteen days from Bombay to Gibraltar, and I'd got by with sixteen of them. Two days more and we would be at Gibraltar, where I could get some dress shirts. There was no hope of being sunk, and getting out of it that way. The Mediterranean was as quiet as a duck pond.

I had found out by this time that the English would stand for anything in the shirt front, if the conventional dress-suit was on for dinner. So I contemplated that shirt fore and aft, inside and out, and used the best sides.

I was a good fellow and one of the boys. I had managed to dress every day for dinner, and while I felt like a thief in that shirt, it went, and I was accepted, and we got to Gibraltar.

But just before we anchored in the harbor at Gibraltar this notice was posted: "Only British subjects allowed ashore," and there were four more days to London!

I entreated the commander, I entreated the purser to give me a pass to go ashore.

They were adamant. The rules of war couldn't be broken. Only British subjects would be allowed ashore at Gibraltar.

I didn't wait for the gong to sound for dinner after leaving Gibraltar that day. Immediately after lunch I repaired to my cabin to consider my dress shirt.

Positively I didn't dare to risk it again. I was absolutely certain it wouldn't go another time on any of the four sides, and I was also just as absolutely certain that I was going to play the game right up to London.

Not dress for dinner the next four days on the P. & O. with my English friends? The spirit of Bunker Hill, Lexington, Cambridge, Ticonderoga, and the battle of the Oriskany fired my soul. With my jack-knife to rip, and some puckering strings, I went at it, right after lunch. I turned that shirt upside down – don't ask me how I managed. You can't stump a resolute man. I worked it – I won out.

We got up the Thames without striking a mine – I had no thought of mines.

I "dressed" for dinner the last day on board!

A judge, an elderly Englishman who had sat opposite me all the way from Bombay, and who wasn't in rugged health, neglected to dress for that last dinner. He apologized profusely for coming to dinner "not dressed." Owing to it being the last day, his age and indisposition, his apology was accepted by the Englishmen at table.

Also I finally accepted his apology, but I never want to have an apology accepted in just quite the frigid manner in which I overlooked the judge's lapse.