it was well for my immediate peace of mind that no prophet accosted me on my way down to the harbor next morning, to foretell the hungry days that were to be my portion in marseilles. one of the strikes that periodically tie up the seaport of southern france was at its height. dozens of sailing vessels rode at anchor in the little “old harbor”; the rade behind the great v-shaped breakwater was crowded with shipping; at the wharves were moored long rows of ocean-liners, among which the white, clipper-built steamers of the méssagéries maritimes predominated, their cargoes rotting in their holds. in a season of customary activity it would have been easy to “sign on” some ship eastward bound. on this november morning, a blind man must have known, from the silence of the port, that there was small prospect even of finding work ashore.
six sous rattled in my pocket. i squandered the half of them for a breakfast and set out on a tour of the warehouses on the wharves. but at every spot where twenty longshoremen were needed for the unloading of a mail steamer, there were hundreds surging around the timekeeper, clamoring for employment. i reached the front ranks of several of these groups by football tactics, only to be informed, when i shouted my name to the official on the top of a cask or bale, that he was hiring only those stevedores whom he knew personally, and could not find places for a fourth of them. as darkness came on, i gave over the useless tramping up and down the roadstead, wolfed a “stevedore’s hand-out” in one of the open-air booths of the place de la joliette, and utterly penniless at last, turned away to the asile de nuit, as the only refuge left me.
the night asylum of marseilles, situated beyond the avenue de la république, just off the silent wharves, was no such one-room hovel as housed the wanderer in cannes or cuers. it covered what would have been a block in an american city and rose to a height of three stories; a plain, cold structure above the door of which the legend, “asile de nuit,” cut in stone, seemed to suggest how permanent and 84irremediable is poverty. before the entrance were at least a hundred men of every age, from mere boys to wrinkled greybeards, chattering in groups, leaning against the building, seated on the sidewalk with their feet in the gutter, or strolling anxiously up and down. not all of them were vagabonds in outward appearance. here and there were men in comparatively clean linen and otherwise as faultless in attire as well-to-do merchants. a half-dozen of them wore dress-suits. they did not sit with their feet in the gutter; most of them held aloof from their ragged companions and strutted back and forth with the pompous air of successful politicians. but their conversation was, like that of the others, of the “grafts” of the road throughout the continent of europe.
the “dress-suit vagabond” was a type new to me then. he became a familiar figure long before my wanderings ended. wherever i met him, he hailed from the kaiser’s realm. the german is admitted by the vagabonds of every nationality to be the most successful beggar in “the profession.” it is this well-dressed tramp who awakens the blatant sympathy of english and american tourists—those infallible judges of human nature—the world over. “poor fellow!” will cry the hysterical lady abroad, when approached by one of this suave-mannered gentry; “he is, indeed, making a struggle to keep up in the world! let’s give him something worth while, arthur, for, surely, he cannot be ranked with those lazy, ragged tramps over there.” as a matter of fact, “those ragged tramps over there” are, more often than not, unpresumptuous sailors reduced to tatters by the rascalities of shipping companies or their able assistants, the land sharks of great ports. they would jump at any chance of employment, while the “poor fellow,” who has begged the very clothes that give him this false appearance of respectability, has been approaching just such hysterical ladies for years, fully intends doing so to the end of his days, and would not accept the presidency of a railroad.
the asile of marseilles was not controlled, as those of other french cities, by the gendarmerie, but was the branch establishment of a neighboring monastery. by eight o’clock the crowd before the building had doubled, the doors were thrown open, and we filed into an office where three monks, in cowl and soutane, sat behind a wicket. in europe, man’s fate often hangs on a few scraps of paper. the applicant for lodging in the asile was irrevocably turned out into the night unless he could show two of these all-important documents, one to establish his identity and nationality, and another to 85prove that he had been at work at a not-too-distant date. to forge certificates of employment is no unsurmountable task to those who cannot come by them honestly, and the most laudatory ones presented were those of the “dress-suit tramps.” a grey-haired frère read my papers rapidly and asked me, in english, with hardly a trace of foreign accent, if i spoke french. upon my affirmative reply he pushed the documents i had handed him to his younger colleague, who entered my name and biography in a huge book and gave me, with my papers, a check entitling me to a bed in the asile for eight nights.
i passed into the common room, a sort of chapel, the long benches of which were already half-filled with grumbling tramps. in front was a plain pulpit, around the walls fifteen large crucifixes, and at the back a table where several men were writing letters with materials furnished by the establishment. the room was crowded when nine o’clock sounded from the great asile bell. the outer door closed with a bang, the grey-haired monk marched in with a gigantic bible in his arms, mounted the pulpit, and launched forth in a service worthy of note for the length of its prayers and a drowsy discourse on the life of some saint or other, to which the assembled vagabonds listened with stolid tolerance as something which must be endured as a punishment for being penniless. a gong rang out in the hall at the end of the sermon. we mounted the stairs and each, according to his check, entered one of several large rooms containing fifty beds apiece. those who had registered at some previous date went at once to their cots. the newcomers filed by a frère in charge of a huge pile of bedding in the center of the room. as each one received two clean sheets and a pillow-case, he promptly sought out the cot assigned him, pulled off the soiled linen, carried it back to the monk, and returned to make up his bed. the cleanliness of the cots was truly monasterial. but they were so narrow that to turn over was a precarious operation, and so much harder than a plank bed as to suggest that they were filled with ground stone. in spite, however, of the chorus of snores which mocked the printed notices on the walls, commanding silence, i lay not long awake, for i had long since parted company with soft beds.
at five in the morning, long before daylight, we were awakened by a clanging bell and a trio of frères who marched up and down the room, shouting to us to be up and away. woe betide the man who turned over for another nap, for one of the monks was upon him in an instant and, with an agility and a force that suggested that he 86had been a champion wrestler before taking orders, dumped him unceremoniously on the floor. when we had made up our beds and soused our faces at a hydrant in the outer courtyard, we were driven out into the dreary streets.
i had fallen in with a stranded english sailor at the asile. not even on shipboard can one strike up acquaintances as quickly as in a band of sans-sous. for an hour we wandered about the city, shivering in the chill that precedes the dawn, and then made our way down to the harbor. a british merchantman was discharging a cargo at one of the wharves. we slunk on board and, keeping out of sight of the officers, dodged into the forecastle. the crew was struggling to do away with a plentiful breakfast.
“i sye, shipmites,” cried my companion, “any show for a bite?”
“sure, lads!” shouted several of the sailors, with that hearty unselfishness of the english seamen the world over. “eat up and give the old ship a good name!”
“english? eh, lad?” asked the old tar who gave me his seat at the table.
“my mate is, but i’m an american,” i answered, a bit dubiously.
“oh, hell,” rumbled the veteran salt, heaping his plate in front of me, “english or american! what’s the bloody difference? i mean you’re not a dago or a dutchman? how long have you been on the beach?”
we did full justice to the ship’s good name and left her with bread and meat enough in our pockets to stave off the hunger engendered by a day of tramping up and down the wharves. next morning the only english vessel in harbor lay well out in mid-stream, and we subsisted on unroasted peanuts and broken cocoanut-meat imported for its oil, of which several vessels from the orient were discharging whole shiploads.
penniless sailors swarmed in the place de la joliette and the place victor gélu, the rendezvous of seamen in marseilles. as my acquaintance with these “beachcombers” increased, i picked up knowledge of the “grafts” of the port. on my fourth morning in the city i was aroused from a nap against the pedestal of the bronze gélu by a brazilian sailor, who had been long stranded in the city.
“hóla! yank,” he shouted, “are you coming for breakfas’?”
“busted!” i answered, shortly.
“con?o, me too,” he returned; “come along.”
he led the way round the vieux port and far out along the beach 87by a steep road. in that section of marseilles known as les catalans, once the home of dumas’ monte cristo, we joined a crowd before a granite building above the entrance of which was a sign reading, “bouchée de pain.” when the door opened we filed through an anteroom where a man handed each of us a wedge of bread, de deuxieme qualité, from several bushel baskets of similar wedges, and we passed silently on into an adjoining room. the two rough tables it contained were each garnished with a jar of water, which, as we ate our bread, passed from hand to hand. on the walls hung copies of the rules governing the bouchée de pain, and in various parts of the room stood officials who strove to enforce them to the letter. the important ones were as follows:
“1. no talking is allowed in the bouchée de pain.
“2. the bread must be eaten at the tables and not carried away.
“3. anyone bringing other food into the bouchée de pain to eat with his bread will be summarily ejected.
“4. bread will be served daily at ten and at three to those who do not forfeit their right to the kind charity of the city of marseilles by disobeying these rules.”
but, as he who has come into contact with tramps and adventurers knows, it is difficult to suppress the inventive talents of the genus vagabundus by mere printed statutes, even with a cohort of officers to enforce them. the second of the rules, especially, was not strictly adhered to. the crowds that reported daily at the institution were so great as to fill the tables a third and even a fourth time. the wily ones about me, knowing that this was only the “first table,” nibbled their wedges ever so slowly, until the uninitiated had finished their portions and the officers cried “allez,” when they tucked what was left under their coats, and tumbled with the rest of us through a back door, there to trade the wedge for tobacco, or to eat it with what they had picked up about the city.
“vámonos, hombre,” said the brazilian; “now for the soup.”
a full two miles we walked over another steep hill to find, before a building styled “cuillère de soupe,” much the same crowd as had been at the bouchée de pain. the soup was more carefully doled out than the bread had been. an officer at the door called for our papers, set down our names in his register, and handed us tickets which entitled us to soup at eleven and four daily, but only for eight days.
88the fates preserve me from ever again tasting the concoction, misnamed soup, which was set before me when i had gained admittance. a bowl of water, grey in color, and of the temperature which the doctor calls for when he has by him neither a stomach-pump nor a feather with which to tickle the patient’s throat, contained one leaf—and that the very outside one—of a cabbage, half an inch of the top of a carrot with the leaves still on it, and three sprigs of what looked like grass. when i had made a complete inventory of my own dish, i turned to peer into that of the brazilian. he had the selfsame portion of a carrot, a companion to my cabbage-leaf, and three quite similar blades of grass. certainly, one could not accuse the soup officials of partiality, and if the cook was sparing of specimens from the vegetable kingdom he made up for it in ingredients from the world of minerals. there was salt enough in my mess to have preserved a side of beef, and pebbles of various sizes and shapes chased each other merrily around behind the spoon with which i stirred up the mixture. i know not who supplied the establishment with water, but the beach was not far distant.
several times i returned to the bouchée de pain before i left marseilles behind; the cuillère de soupe i struck off my calling list at once.
the city of marseilles has established these two institutions in an attempt to reduce the begging class, and to provide an alternative for the indiscriminate asking of alms, which is strictly forbidden in the city. the buildings have purposely been placed in the most inconvenient sections of the municipality and far apart, in the hope that only those who are in dire want will visit them. as small an amount of food is given as will sustain life, because it is fancied that this arrangement will cause the penniless to redouble their efforts to become self-supporting. yet the plan is not entirely a success, though the authorities may not know it. many a man i have seen at these places whom i knew had money enough on his person to buy a dozen hotel dinners—money wheedled out of soft-hearted and soft-headed tourists, which he would have considered it a sin to pay out for food when cool, green absinthe could be bought with it. the “dress-suit tramps,” if they had no “bigger game on the string,” made this walk their daily exercise, and referred to it as their “constitutional.” those who wished really to look for work found that the long tramp twice a day used up both their time and their strength, until they had little of either left to prosecute their search.
89the strike broke and business was slowly and half-heartedly resumed. all my efforts to find work, however, turned to naught. it became evident that if ever i “shipped” for the orient it must be through the assistance of someone of better standing. a few of the “beachcombers” signed on, but every captain who wandered through the place victor gélu to pick up a sailor was at once surrounded by a half-hundred seamen headed by their “boarding masters,” and chose his man long before an “outsider” could gain a hearing. in many a city of europe i had been advised by fellow-wayfarers to appeal to the american consul. in the opinion of my english companion and others: “that’s all the bloody loafers are shipped over here for, anyway, to give we honest chaps a lift when we’re down.” not quite sharing this view, i had, thus far, thanked the advisers and gone my way. but when i had seen several “beachcombers” sail away through the assistance of higher authorities, i determined to make my existence known to our marseilles representative.
accordingly, on my return from the bouchée de pain one morning, i stopped in at the consulate. my papers were inspected by a negro secretary in the outer office, passed on to the vice-consul, and finally to the consul-general. that official, calling me inside to satisfy himself as to my nationality, gave me a note to one “portuguese joe,” whom i would find “hanging around on the place victor gélu.” joe, the consul explained, was master of a sailors’ boarding house, who undertook to shelter and feed such penniless mariners as the consul could vouch for, until he found them berths, and took his reward in a month’s advance on their wages—the regular blood-money system that is in vogue in almost every port.
i found joe “hanging around” as the consul had promised, hanging around a lamp-post in the center of the place, and if he had not been able to find some such support he would have been lying around the same public spot. he was a big, greasy, half-breed nigger—i should hate to say negro—and he had what, in jack tar’s parlance, is known as “a full cargo.” in a ring about him were a score of sailors of various nationalities and colors, from plain new yorkers and baltimore negroes, to east indians and men from the congo free state, who were making the boarding master the butt of their raillery. these same men, except, perhaps, the anglo-saxons, would have quailed before this maudlin rascal, sober, whom they were repaying, now, by their ridicule, for many a perfidious trick he had played them.
i received a franc from the drunken lout as soon as i had made him 90understand the note from the consul, and lost no time in leaving it in a restaurant. that night i slept on the floor of joe’s house, with a huge antigua negro as a roommate. the house was a shack bordering on the fish-market and the red-light district, a quarter requiring six policemen to the block. several times during the night i started up at some piercing scream or long-drawn wail, and i borrowed a morning paper fully expecting to read of deeds of unusual violence. but it was only the customary list of minor misfortunes that was chronicled; a carousing sailor run down in that street, an italian stabbed by a fellow-countryman in this, a demi-mondaine thrown out of a window in a third.
portuguese joe was a totally different being the next morning from the besotted wretch that i had seen the day before. fat and pompous, dressed as if to attend a fancy ball, he paraded up and down the seamens’ rendezvous, interviewing a captain here, stopping for a tête-à-tête with another boarding master or a runner there, and scowling haughtily at the common sailors who ventured to approach him.
joe was a fair example of the type that is the visitation of seamen ashore. jack tar is the most prodigal of existing beings, either with the earnings in his pocket or with those he has yet to toil for, and he bears with far too much resignation the knavery of these shipping masters. with all its romance, life on the ocean wave is a dreary and precarious enough existence to the man before the mast, yet many are the nations that enhance the misery of his lot by tolerating these human sharks and their nefarious practices in their ports. when jack comes ashore, his one desire, in most cases, is to spend his accumulated earnings as soon as possible. at sea, money is the most worthless of commodities. the man in the forecastle on a long voyage would not sell his share of the soggy “plum-duff” that comes with his sunday dinner for a month’s wages in cash. small wonder, then, that he is lavish with his pounds and shillings during his few days ashore, and that he rarely thinks of shipping again until his last coin is spent. it is then that the careless prodigal falls an easy prey to portuguese joe and his ilk. joe boasted of “never having done a tap of work” in his life. his mixture of portuguese and negro blood had made him a tolerably quick-witted fellow, with considerable tact, as that quality goes among seafaring men. he had picked up a practicable use of most of the european languages, and enough knowledge of the niceties of french law to know how far he 91could go with impunity in fleecing his victims. in various ways he had ingratiated himself with captains and the agents of ships sailing from marseilles, until he had become one of several absolute monarchs in that port over slow-witted, spendthrift jack tar. was business going badly? then joe was down aboard some ship talking his way with his oily tongue into a seat at the captain’s table. were sailors in demand? then he was picking them up everywhere, giving them a meal or two, and shipping them off with nothing but a bag of ragged “gear” to show for the month or six weeks’ advance on their wages, which he hastened back to throw on the gambling table or to spend in the nasty vices of a great seaport. to be sure, some of this money would have gone the same way if the sailor had received it. but one could more easily have tolerated its squandering by the man who had undergone the sufferings and privations of a long voyage to earn it, and at least we “beachcombers” should have been spared the sight of portuguese joe and his cronies, strutting back and forth across the place victor gélu, and putting their heads together to evolve new schemes for robbing other victims.
there were few accommodations in joe’s hovel, and on the second day i was transferred to a seamens’ boarding house in the dingy backwater of the avenue de la république. the establishment was run by joe’s brother, a burly mulatto known in all the lower quarters of the city as “portuguese pete” who, like his brother, lay claim to no family name; and by his wife, a slatternly white woman of french parentage. in the windowless upper story were a score of foul nests that ranked as beds. the one to which i was assigned was a broken-backed cot. after a vain attempt to sleep, doubled up like a pocketknife, amid the uproar of my roommates, who were snoring in several languages, i crept down stairs to borrow a plank from the kitchen wood-pile, and propping up the pallet, fell asleep. some time must have passed, for i was in deep slumber and not even the house cat was stirring, when the cot, mattress, bedding, and prop came down with a crash that certainly awakened the policeman in the next block, and left me entangled in a gordian knot of sheets and counterpanes of the width of a ship’s hawser. i slept on the floor during the rest of my stay with portuguese pete.
there was one advantage—and one only—gained by the change from the asile to this new lodging. the habits of pete and his spouse were by no means as austere as those of the monks who turned us out into the cold, grey dawn. the meals we were to pay so dearly for, 92when we shipped, were on a par with the sleeping accommodations. each morning, after taking turns in pounding on the proprietor’s door for an hour or two, we usually succeeded in inducing his consort to descend, in négligé and a vicious temper, to serve us each a cup of tepid water with a smell of chickory about it, and a wedge of bread. at noon and night we did duty alternately before the black, smoky fire-place, in assisting madame pete to prepare the soup and macaroni that were served in painfully meager quantities with bread and brackish wine. like the pupils of squeers, we dared not ask for more, lest we call down upon our heads the mighty wrath of pete.
pete spoke a cosmopolitan language, an esperanto of his own making, concocted from all the tongues represented around his board, with no partiality or predeliction for any particular one. he who did not know at least french, english, italian, and portuguese or spanish, with something of the patois of provence, had small chance of catching more than the drift of pete’s remarks. english words with italian endings, portuguese words with a french pronunciation, french words that started out well enough but ended with a nondescript grunt, all uttered in a voice that made the rafters ring and the wine-glasses on the table dance excitedly, were the daily accompaniments of our gatherings. yet pete, with all his bellow, was the exact antithesis of his brother. he had spent years before the mast and had been rated an excellent sailor, before he drifted into marseilles and became the understudy of unscrupulous joe. he was as slow of wit as the seamen who quailed before his wife’s bleary eye—and as for tact! the only influence or coercion which pete could bring to bear on those of his fellow-men who did not heed the roar of his mighty voice were his no less mighty fists. more than once he had threatened, like the giant antiguan, to use these powerful arguments on his brother’s anatomy; for joe had never hesitated, when there was something to be gained by it, to entrap pete in the meshes of his machiavelian plots. as when, during a season of sharp demand for sailors, he had generously served pete with “knock-out drops,” dragged him on board a ship bound for the fever-infected, west-african coast, and made merry with the two months’ advance offered for any seaman that could be captured. but joe let himself be caught only in the glare of daylight and on the public squares, and there the wrath of pete and many another who had fought his way back to marseilles with the avowed intention of throttling the rascally half-breed, had vanished at the sound of that 93oily tongue. pete was kind-hearted and prodigal by nature, and years in the forecastle had by no means cured him of these faults. those who knew told tales of his favors to boarders and of the groaning of his table in the days of prosperity. but evil times had fallen on marseilles and, like my fellow-boarders, i always left pete’s hovel with a gnawing hunger, and divided my days between following the clue of some job and wandering with envious eyes through the market-places.
the band that rose from our table to follow pete to the ship-chandler’s office or to tramp at joe’s heels, by night or by day, to the far end of the breakwater, in pursuit of a rumor that a ship was “signing on,” was as variegated in experience as in color. two hulking, good-hearted baltimore negroes were the heroes of the party. in a strike riot of two months before they had been arrested for killing a gendarme, a crime of which they were really, though unintentionally, guilty. the prosecution, however, had not succeeded in proving a case against them. the older had been sentenced to sixty days and the younger, who had been shot during the mélée, was left to recuperate in the city hospital. they burst in upon us almost at the same time during my first days at pete’s, and took the head of the board at once. two nights later the hospital patient—a youth of nineteen—gave an exhibition of cool, collected grit that is rarely equaled even among seafaring men. a half-dozen of us had stepped into a cabaret in the unconventional section of the city. a quarrel began over some question of racial dislike. in the free-for-all battle that ensued an italian drew a long, double-edged sheath knife and sprang for the youth from baltimore. the latter had scarcely finished knocking down another assailant but, without stepping aside ever so little, he calmly grasped the finely ground blade in his left hand, and while the blood gushed down his forearm, as the italian strove to twist the knife out of his grip of iron, he drew from his hip-pocket a razor, opened it behind his back as tranquilly as for a morning shave, and slashed his opponent from ear to chin. with the italian’s necktie bound tightly around his wrist, he marched homeward, singing plantation ballads at the top of his voice, washed his mutilated palm in a bucket, tied it up with the tail of a shirt, and sallied forth in quest of new adventures.
as near-heroes, there was a stocky little spaniard, once a banderillero, who had abandoned the bull-ring for the forecastle with a dozen scars from sharp horns on his neck and body. his tales were rivaled 94by a jamaican negro, the only survivor of a shipwrecked crew, who had risen to power in a south-sea island, and by an australian who was credited with having thirty-six wives. an italian who had been on the operatic stage—what for, we could not find out; a finn who chewed tobacco while he ate; and a runaway boy from madeira, who flooded his macaroni with tears so regularly that his portion was always served unsalted, were likewise on exhibition. then there was “antoine de la ceinture” (tony of the belt). tony was one of the last-but-not-least sort. were we bound for the chandler’s office? then tony could be trusted to bring up the rear. was dinner late in being served? it was because tony had not yet put in an appearance. was joe lining us up for inspection before some skipper? then everyone knew without looking that it was tony who answered to his name at the end of the line. but tony’s most remarkable feature was his belt. many of the workmen of france wear in lieu of suspenders, long, gaily-colored sashes. yet no belt in the length and breadth of france could rival tony’s. it was as red as the blood that flowed on the night of the mélée—when tony had lived up to his reputation by being the farthest from the center of action;—it was a good yard wide and longer than the longest royal brace ever rove through a block; and forty times each day tony must unwind it from around his waist, give an end to one of us, with a warning to keep it stretched to its full width, and march off down the street with the other end. there he would take the first turn around his body, pull the sash taut; and with a flutter of coat-tails and arms, up the street would come tony, spinning round and round as if carried along by a whirlwind, until he reached his temporary valet, when he would heave a sigh of regret because the belt was not longer, or brighter, or wider, or didn’t make him look enough like the spool on which a bolt of cloth is wound, or for some other reason quite beyond our comprehension; and, tucking in the end, would tag at the queue of our company to some other section of the city, there to unwind and wind himself up again.
my entrance into paris in the corduroy garb and with the usual amount of baggage of the first months of the trip
“tony of the belt”
workers were a drug on the market in marseilles. there was one happy day when, in wandering about the vieux port, where the fleet of “windjammers” was rolling and pitching in a heavy gale, i was promised extraordinary wages by the captain of a clumsy barkentine, flying the checkerboard greek flag, to help his depleted crew move the craft to a safer mooring. he had picked up the antiguan and—strange to relate—tony of the belt; and together we tugged 95at hawser and brace for several hours, while the barkentine under our feet seemed undetermined after each roll whether to right herself again or turn turtle. but we got her re-moored at last, and the three francs which the skipper dropped into my hand had a merry jingle which i had almost forgotten. a day’s work in the fish-market won me as much more, and i seemed to have struck prosperity when, the following morning, i spent three hours in rolling wine-barrels onto harbor trucks. but the only reward which the truckman and the official taster offered when the task was done was “all the wine you can hold,” and my humble capacity forced me to accept much less than union wages. the six-franc fortune dwindled gradually away, though i spent it sparingly to supplement the meager fare of pete’s table, or for an occasional investment of two sous in tobacco. the french government does not sell the weed in such small quantities. but “beachcombers” hesitated to spend a half-franc all at once, especially as the invariable word of greeting from seemingly countless acquaintances was, “any smokin’ on you, jack?” and the dealers—indifferent to the law and with an eye to business—broke up the legal ten-sous packets into ten two-sous lots, in their own wrappings. there were fellow-boarders who laughed at my extravagance. they sallied forth in the morning before the street-sweepers had made their daily round, and tramped up and down the cannebière, a main thoroughfare which evening promenaders littered with cigar and cigarette butts. but the anglo-saxons, for the most part, refused to employ their talents in “shooting snipes on the can o’ beer.”
the boarding-masters of marseilles refused to believe my assertion that i was bound away from, and not towards, my native land. three times during my stay with pete, i was called upon to sign on—once on a collier for algiers, and twice on tramps bound for the “states.” my refusal to accept these berths aroused the ire of joe; and, on the day following the sailing of the last craft, i was turned out dinnerless from pete’s domicile on a world that had grown decidedly cold for a southern country. i could not greatly regret this ejection; it left joe unable to make a demand on my wages, should i ever sign on. my list of acquaintances had increased; on some occasions i had spent a few sous to relieve the hunger of some unhoused beachcomber, and the thoughtfulness stood me now in good stead. as i wandered from pete’s house down to the place de la joliette, i fell upon one of these, a little, wizened alexandrian jew, who had “just made a haul of a franc” which, with that unselfishness 96universal “on the beach,” he offered at once to share. that night i found myself again in the crowd before the asile de nuit.
quarrels were frequent among the destitutes who collected at the asylum, but not often was it the scene of such a tragedy as was enacted on this frosty evening. five minutes after i had joined the group before the building, a begrimed and tattered youth strolled up to within a few feet of me, glanced about him, pulled a revolver from his pocket, fired instantly at a group of vagabonds who chatted on the curb ten feet away, and dashed off towards the harbor. the victim, a german who could not have been over twenty, fell with scarcely a groan, rolled off the sidewalk into the gutter, gave a few convulsive kicks, and lay still. a doctor arrived as he was being carried into the office. he had been shot directly through the heart. my first impulse, when two gendarmes began inscribing the names of witnesses, was to offer my testimony. luckily, it occurred to me in time that justice is a slow process in france, and that authorities are none too kind in their methods of assuring the presence in court of such witnesses as lodge at an asile de nuit. to be delayed in marseilles several months would have put an end to my wanderings before they had well begun; i backed towards the outskirts of the increasing crowd and made answer to the excited officer with the book;—“moi, monsieur? je viens d’arriver.”
the assassin was taken, before morning, and his story added to the annals of “the road.” the dead man had been his companion during his wanderjahre in servia. the few dollars that had been their common possession he had trusted to his comrade—no unusual custom among tramps. at a dismal mountain village the treasurer had decamped, leaving the other to the tender mercies of the servian police. when he was released from several weeks of imprisonment as a vagrant, the deserted man determined to have revenge. by methods peculiar to trampdom, and with a persistency that would have done credit to the best of detectives, he had tracked the absconder through montenegro, the turkish coast-towns, and italy, only to lose all trace of him in genoa. a chance meeting put him on the trail again; he tramped to marseilles and ran the german youth to earth five months after his act of treachery. the sympathy of the beachcombers was entirely with the assassin. in the moral code of “the road” there are few crimes more iniquitous than that of the dead man. but sympathy availed him nothing, for months afterward the youth was guillotined in the place victor gélu, that dreary square in 97which portuguese joe and penniless seamen were accustomed to “hang around.”
when excitement had abated somewhat, the asile was thrown open—not for me, however. the second frère received my papers from his superior, as on the first night, but squinted at me above his glasses.
“lodged here before?” he demanded.
“yes.”
“when?”
“two weeks ago.”
“then i can’t admit you.”
“but i only stayed five of my eight days.”
“?a ne fait rien! when you have been admitted once you can’t come back again for six months. allez-vous en!”
this mandate proved inexorable. when i attempted to argue the matter a burly doorkeeper sent me spinning into the street. i wandered away through the city and, towards midnight, turned down to the wharves. an empty box car stood behind a warehouse. i crawled inside to find it already occupied by three english sailors of former acquaintance. to sleep was impossible, for it was bitter cold. after a couple of hours of shivering on the icy floor of the car, we crept out and took to tramping up and down the streets and byways—that most dismal experience, known professionally as “carrying the banner”—until daybreak.
long, hungry days passed, days in which i could scarcely withstand the temptation to carry my kodak to the mont de piété just off the sailors’ square. among the beachcombers there were daily some who gained a few francs, by an odd job, by the sale of an extra garment, or by “grafting,” pure and simple. when his hand closed on a bit of money, the stranded fellow may have been weak with fasting. yet his first thought was not to gorge himself, but to share his fortune with his companions under hatches. in those bleak november days, many a man, ranked a “worthless outcast” by his more fortunate fellow-beings, toiled all day at the coal-wharves of marseilles, and tramped back, cold and hungry, to the place victor gélu to divide his earning with other famished misérables, whom he had not known a week before. more than one man sold the only shirt he owned to feed a new arrival who was an absolute stranger to all. these men won no praise for their benefactions. they expected none, and would have opened their eyes in wonder if they had been told that their actions were worthy of praise. the stranded band grew to be 98a corporate body. by a job here and there i contributed my share to the common fund, and between us we fought off gaunt starvation. in a dirty alley just off the place was an inn kept by a greek, in which one could sleep on the floor at three sous, or in a cot at six; and every evening a band of ragged mortals might have been seen dividing the earnings of some of them into three-sou lots as they made their way towards l’auberge chez le grec.
one spot in all marseilles was the sole oasis in this desert of dreariness and desolation, the sailors’ home. here, as winter drove us away from the sunny side of the breakwater, where we had been able to swim in early november, we congregated around the roaring stove to discuss the hopelessness of the situation, and to peruse the newspapers that kept us somewhat in touch with the moving world outside. but when dusk fell, the doors were closed behind us, and the biting air and the squalor of other quarters were only increased by contrast. i turned in at the home one morning, to find that misfortune had overtaken the three englishmen of the box car. my first acquaintance had arrived in marseilles in the thinnest of overalls and jumper. man can endure far more than most of us suspect; but night after night out of doors in such garb had broken the health of the englishman, and the gendarme who had found him unconscious on the wharf had bundled him off to the home. sick as he was, it took four days of official red-tape and nonsense to get him admitted to the hospital, and it was only by strenuous efforts that we were able to pay his bad chez le grec while the question was pending. his two companions had deserted from the british navy in buenos ayres, changed in name and dress, and signed on a “windjammer” for genoa. to escape the king’s service had cost them months of labor and danger, a year’s wages, and their possessions. nothing will better indicate the misery of marseilles on strike than the fact that, with six months’ imprisonment at gibraltar and a re-serving of their time in prospect, they had resolved to endure “the beach” no longer, and had marched up to the consul’s office to give themselves up. they were held under arrest at the home for the first british steamer for the rock.
there were those among the beachcombers who would not be outdone by the force of circumstances, who put on a bold front and set out to get the “living the world owed them.” in beggardom as in the world at large, the brazenface carries the day, and the modest and unassuming are pushed into the background. among the first victims 99of this class, in foreign ports, are the consuls. there was in marseilles a certain welshman who won fame for his exploits during this season. signed off in barcelona, he had made his way to the french port, and had received from the british consul, within an hour of his arrival, two francs and a promise of clothes, next day. in the morning, as per promise, he was well fitted out and given another franc. he promptly hunted up a pawn shop, got back into his rags, and made tracks for the nearest wine-shop. next morning, penniless, he was back early to see the consul, spun a pathetic yarn, and came out with two more francs. this amount, however, could not last long in a café. the welshman pocketed the money, marched over to the american consulate, and proved so satisfactorily that pittsburg was his home that two more francs were added to his collection. day after day new variations of his story were sprung in all sections of the city. on his ability to speak some german, he “worked” the austrian, swiss, and german consuls, besides several foreign charitable societies. these institutions gave only clothing for the most part, but one of the welshman’s experience had little difficulty in turning them into money.
meanwhile, he was “pumping” his own consul, who twice more fitted him out, only to have him turn up again next morning as ragged and unkempt as ever. the consul was not blind, but when a vagabond sits down in your office and refuses to move until he receives a franc, it is often cheaper to give it than to take time to throw him out. the day came, however, when the consul determined to put an end to this system of blackmail, and, after giving the customary franc one morning, he ordered the welshman not to come back again under pain of arrest. bright and early the next morning the “beachcomber” turned up, a strong smell of absinthe entering the room with him.
“good morning, consul,” he burst out, gaily, and loud enough to be heard by those of us who were listening outside, “i wonder if you can spare me a couple of francs for a morning bite?”
the consul stepped to the telephone and called for a policeman. a few minutes later, a gendarme pushed past us, stepped inside, and received orders to put the offender under arrest. but the welshman, who lolled undisturbed in an office chair through all this, had taken the trouble to make himself familiar with the fine points of international law. he grasped a heavy ruler from the table as the officer approached.
“if that frog-eater touches me, i’ll brain ’im,” he shouted, “i’m a 100british subject on british soil, and no bloody frenchman can arrest me!”
the consul knew only too well the truth of this assertion. a french officer has no more authority within the borders of a foreign consulate than on london bridge, and any injury which the welshman might do the gendarme in resisting arrest would come under the head of justifiable self-defense. the consul, however, had police powers in his own office. he took the belligerent seaman by the arm, led him outside onto the soil of france, and turned him over to the policeman. the officer conducted him to the station-house across the way, while several of us tagged after him.
“where was he arrested?” demanded the sergeant.
“in the british consulate, monsieur.”
“vraiment! and the british consul has sent money for his keeping while he is shut up, eh?”
“non, monsieur.”
“non? then what do you mean by bringing him over here? allez! vous!” and the welshman, who knew all this process, move by move, made a deep bow to the sergeant, stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his tattered vest, strutted out across the park, and back into the consulate.
“good morning, consul!” he cried, with the blandest of smiles, and extending a gnarled and far from clean hand. “i’ve just escaped from grave danger, consul, and i’ve come back to see if, perhaps, you haven’t changed your mind about that couple of francs.”
the consul looked him over, glanced at the stack of letters and official papers that demanded his attention, and, with the sheepish look of a man who feels he is being made game of, admitted that he had.
there ran through the shipping quarters one morning the rumor that the “dag” was signing on a crew. she was a tiny wooden brigantine under norwegian colors, anchored in the vieux port. she carried a mere handful of men, was reported as “the hungriest hell that ever weighed an anchor,” and did not look seaworthy enough to cross an inland lake. moreover she was bound for madagascar by way of the cape of good hope, a six-month trip at least. this was not the route i had mapped out for myself. but it was eastward, twenty-five days in marseilles had left me ready to jump at any chance, and i raced down to the old harbor with the rest. it was only a chance meeting with “dutch harry,” another of the rascally boarding masters of the 101port, that saved me from putting my name on the “dag’s” articles. “dutch” had a contract with the agents of a tramp steamer from boston to supply a force of seamen to paint the vessel in harbor; and an hour later i was hanging over the side on a swinging plank with the waves of the rade washing over my feet, daubing paint on the rusty hull. the boarding master received six francs a day for our labor—and paid us two and a half. but we took our meals with the crew—whenever the captain was ashore—and i saved enough to come to the assistance of several of my fellow destitutes, among whom was the wizened jew, who had once more fallen on evil days.
this work lasted several days. i was mixing paint on deck, one afternoon, when the chief mate, strolled by, sauntered back, turned to look away across the harbor as though he had not seen me within five feet of him, and muttered as to himself, “we’re going out to-night, homeward bound for boston. the company don’t allow us any too many men. if some of these painters was found stowed away on ’er after the pilot left ’er, i don’t suppose the old man would do a hell of a lot o’ kicking.” then he turned until he could glance at me out of the tail of his eye, looked off across the harbor once more, swung round on his heel, and marched aft.
if the ship had been eastward bound, the mate’s hint would have fallen on fertile soil. several painters disappeared during the afternoon and they did not go ashore. i took supper with the crew when the day was done, watched from the pier-head as the newly-painted vessel turned her prow to the open sea, and hurried back to the dwelling of the boarding master. “dutch” was indeed wrathy—especially as i had called for two and a half francs that he had considered safe in his pocket. when i opened the door of his wine-shop, he stared at me from behind a dense cloud of smoke and a tall bottle of greenish contents for several moments. then with a roar that only portuguese pete of all marseilles could have equaled, he burst out, “why, you damn fool, why in hell didn’t you stow away on that tub? didn’t you know she was boston bound?”
“aye,” i answered. “but i told you, you remember, i’m not homeward bound.”
several ships bound for egypt signed on a man or two during the next few days, but they were all “boarding-house stiffs.” when the mate of the p & o yacht vectis sent to the home for an english quartermaster, i fancied my time had come, as there was not another english-speaking sailor “on the beach” after the arrest of the deserters. 102but the p & o ships only britons. the next day my first acquaintance was released from the hospital and secured the berth.
the last day of november, a month after my arrival in marseilles, found me still gazing out upon the chateau d’if and up at the ship’s ball on the summit of notre dame de la garde, and still tramping sorrowfully up and down the breakwater and the endless wharves. but with the new month my luck changed. the warwickshire of the bibby line, plying between england and burma, put in at marseilles to await her overland passengers and sent out a call for a sailor. i was the first man on board, displayed my discharge from the cattle boat, and was called into the cabin.
“it don’t tell in this discharge whether you are an a. b. or not,” said the mate. “are you?”
“i am an a. b.,” i replied, though i meant quite a different sort of a. b. from what the mate understood by my answer. i was signed on at once, and the next day i watched the familiar harbor of marseilles grow smaller and smaller until it faded away on the horizon.
