The Prince and the Prosecutor: The Mark Twain Mysteries #3. Peter J. Heck
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ready to leave, and they still aren’t ready to let anybody on board. And when they finally do start letting us on, half the damn-fool passengers will charge the gangplank as if they were staking out mining claims, instead of going to cabins they’ve already reserved. We’ll be lucky if nobody gets drowned. Any man with a lick of sense would find a quiet place to sit, so he won’t get knocked down and stepped on. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
I followed him to a corner of the dock, somewhat out of the press, where he sat down on a wooden box and began loading his corncob pipe. From here we had a fine view of the ship, and I realized just how large she was. While City of Baltimore was not the American Line’s largest or fastest ship (City of New York and City of Paris shared those distinctions), she measured close to five hundred feet long. And, as I knew from the steamship line’s advertisements, she could comfortably house over a thousand souls, counting passengers and crew, for the week-long Atlantic crossing.
But I was more surprised to find that a machine—for that is all a giant ocean liner really is—could appear so graceful. Having grown up by a seaport, I had been around ships and boats all my life, from the humblest of fishing dories to the blue-blooded racing yachts that used to come down from Newport in the summer, not to forget the ferryboats and freighters plying New London Harbor. I had seen a different style of nautical design out on the Mississippi, where the riverboat builders had outdone one another in the search for baroque splendor. But nothing had quite prepared me for the sleek elegance of City of Baltimore. For size, power and pure geometrical beauty, she outdid anything I had ever seen. (I later learned that she was considered a mere drudge in comparison to her sister ship, City of Rome.)
In contrast, the crowd gathering to board her seemed to be made up of tiny, unruly beings, scrambling about between their piles of luggage, pushing and shoving and bawling in an amazingly heterogenous mixture of languages. On the face of it, one could hardly credit that the great ship had been designed and built by such creatures, and existed only for their convenience in crossing the ocean. And yet, for the most part this was the cream of our American society, captains of industry and leading professional men (with their families and servants) on their way to visit the Old World, whether for enjoyment or for trade and profit. Relatively few passengers were likely to travel in steerage on an eastward crossing—the Land of Opportunity lay on this side of the Atlantic.
As often when looking at a large crowd, I began to wonder whether anyone I knew might be among the group. I would not have been surprised to find some of my schoolfellows along the dock. In fact, the crowd included a fair number of young men and women of about my age, and I began to reflect with some pleasure on the prospect of having agreeable companionship for the voyage. While Mr. Clemens’s company was by no means onerous, one shares a certain bond with others of one’s own age and class. It struck me that my mother would be much mollified to learn that, despite my having betrayed her hopes of a respectable career, I would at least be traveling with exactly the sort of person she most approved of.
Then my eye lit on a familiar face—and not one I was pleased to see. Not fifteen feet away, wearing a dramatic cape and scowling through a monocle, stood Prinz Heinrich Karl von Ruckgarten, who had made such a nuisance of himself during my previous visit to the docks. Evidently he had decided to travel on City of Baltimore after all. Most likely, he would be on the same first-class deck as Mr. Clemens and I. Well, with any luck, he would leave us alone, and we could make the crossing without any unpleasant encounters with this particular fellow traveler.
But as the prince swept his gaze over the crowd, he turned to look in our direction, and to my dismay, his eye fell on Mr. Clemens and his face lit up in a smile. As he stepped in our direction, I bent over and whispered to my employer, “Be careful with this fellow—I’m afraid he’s going to be difficult.” But Mr. Clemens merely nodded and held his ground, puffing on the corncob pipe.
“Meinherr Mark Twain!” said the prince, stopping in front of us and making a little half-bow. “I am Prinz Heinrich Karl von Ruckgarten, at your service. Am I correct in assuming we are to have the honor of your presence on the crossing to England?”
“I’m not sure how much honor there’ll be to it,” said Mr. Clemens, raising his bushy white eyebrows. “According to the New York papers, I’m a failure in business, and according to the Boston press, I’m a corrupter of American youth. I haven’t read the reports from New Orleans, but after my last visit I wouldn’t be surprised if they listed me as an enemy of polite society. I’ll be on board the Baltimore, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The prince threw back his head and gave a hearty laugh, much to my surprise—I wouldn’t have expected him to have the least sense of humor. “Oho, Herr Twain!” he said, still chuckling. “You are every bit as amusing as I could have asked. I am very much pleased to know you will be one of the company. I had feared the voyage would be ever so tedious, but now I know otherwise.” His countenance was measurably less obnoxious with a smile upon it. Perhaps the fellow’s display of temper at the ticket office had been an aberration. If he were this jovial most of the time, he might not be such bad company after all.
“Well, I hope I don’t disappoint you,” said my employer. “I don’t plan to exert myself any. I’ll have to spend a lot of time in my cabin, finishing up a book. Other than that, I’ll do as little as I can get away with. I’ve just come off a long lecture tour, and I plan to take it easy.” Even so, I could see from Mr. Clemens’s smile that the man’s flattery had hit its target.
“An excellent plan,” said the German, nodding. “With your permission, I will see that a bottle of the best champagne on board is sent to your cabin, so you can begin your voyage in a proper state of relaxation. Please call me Karl—all the men in my family are named Heinrich, so the second name I use with friends, so to avoid confusion. Oho, I do look forward to our ocean voyage, Mark Twain.” He gave another of his little bows, spun on his heel, and strode off purposively in the direction of the ship.
Mr. Clemens looked after him with a surprised expression for a moment, then said, “Well, that fellow may be a bit stiff, but he introduces himself graciously enough, and doesn’t intrude or linger. I doubt he’s going to be as difficult as you say, Wentworth. Nothing like a taste of champagne to start off an ocean voyage, especially when somebody else pays for it!”
“I suppose you’re right,” I replied. But privately, I wondered what Prinz Karl might want in return for his generosity.
At last City of Baltimore blew her whistle, signaling that it was time for boarding. As my employer had predicted, there was a great rush among the throng lining the dock, with everyone shouting and trying to push forward at once. I was ready to grab my bag and make my way forward, until Mr. Clemens said, “Feel free to join in the riot, if you want. You can get a black eye or a broken nose as easily here as on the football field, so maybe you’ll enjoy it. I used to get up and scuffle with the best of ’em, but I’m too old for that kind of entertainment.”
Somewhat reluctantly, I sat back down. While I could understand his disinclination to shove his way through a large crowd, I had no reason to believe it would be any thinner if we waited to board. At least I’d had the foresight to send our heavy trunks ahead, to be loaded by the crew, so we each had only a small carpetbag to carry. Even so, I didn’t fancy the notion of struggling aboard in the middle of a last-minute rush.
But it only took twenty minutes for the crowding to subside, and then Mr. Clemens knocked out his pipe and said, “Well, I reckon we can get on the boat, now.” I had to admit that he had gauged the situation exactly.
We took our carpetbags and walked toward the gangplank, actually a long stairway leading from the pier to a large door well up the side of the ship. But even before we got there, I could see there was some sort of trouble in the boarding area. At the foot of the gangplank I could hear raised voices. I knew the signs of an argument when I saw them, and as I might well have expected, Prinz Heinrich Karl von Ruckgarten was right in the middle of it. I was surprised to see another familiar face: Mr. Julius Babson, the man who had so graciously lent us his coach a few days ago in the rainstorm.
Prinz Karl was standing chest to chest