With Poor Immigrants in America. Stephen Graham
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whippet-racing and ledgers and prizes and his pet dog.
"As soon as a get tha monny a'll enter that dawg aht Sheffield. A took er to Durby; they wawn't look at 'er there. There is no dawg's can stan' agin her. At Durby they run the rabbits in the dusk, an' the little dawg as 'ad the start could see 'em, but ourn moight a been at Bradford fur all she could see. A'll bet yer that dawg's either dead or run away. She fair lived fer me. Every night she slep in my bed. Ef ah locked 'er aht, she kick up such a ra. Then I open the door an' she'd come straight an' jump into bed an' snuggle 'erself up an' fall asleep. … "
The dirtiest cabins in the ship were allotted to the Russians and the Jews, and down there at nine at night the Slavs were saying their prayers whilst just above them we British were singing comic songs or listening to them. Most of us, I reckon, also said our prayers later on, quietly, under our sheets; for we were, below the surface, very solitary, very apprehensive, very child-like, very much in need of the comfort of an all-seeing Father.
The weather was stormy, and the boat lost thirty-six hours on the way over. The skies were mostly grey, the wind swept the vessel, and the sea deluged her. The storm on the third night considerably reduced the gaiety of the ship; all night long we rolled to and fro, listening to the crash of the waves and the chorus of the spring-mattresses creaking in all the cabins. My boy who had left the "dawg" behind him got badly "queered up." He said it was "mackerel as done it," a certain warm, evil-looking mackerel that had been served him for tea on the Tuesday evening. Indeed the food served us was not of a sort calculated to prepare us for an Atlantic storm—roast corned beef, sausage and mash, dubious eggs, tea that tasted strongly of soda, promiscuously poked melting butter, ice cream. On tumultuous Tuesday the last thing we ate was ice cream! We all felt pretty abject on Wednesday morning.
Our sickness was the stewards' opportunity. They interviewed us, sold us bovril and hawked plates of decent ham and eggs, obtained from the second-class table or their own mess. The British found the journey hard to bear, though they didn't suffer so much as the Poles and the Austrians and the Russians. I found the whole journey comparatively comfortable, stormy weather having no effect on me, and this being neither my first nor worst voyage. Any one who has travelled with the Russian pilgrims from Constantinople to Jaffa in bad weather has nothing to fear from any shipboard horror on a Cunarder on the Atlantic.
Only two of the Russians went through the storm happily, Alexy and Yoosha. They had worked for nights and months on the Caspian Sea in a little boat, almost capsizing each moment as they strained at their draughts of salmon and sturgeon; one moment deep down among the seas, the next plunging upward, shooting over the waves, stopping short, slithering round—as they graphically described it to me.
When the storm subsided the pale and convalescent emigrants came upstairs to get sea air and save themselves from further illness. Corpse-like women lay on the park seats, on the coiled rope, on the stairs, uttering not a word, scarcely interested to exist. Other women were being walked up and down by their young men. A patriarchal Jew, very tall and gaunt, hauled along a small, fat woman of his race, and made her walk up and down with him for her health—a funny pair they looked. On Wednesday afternoon, about the time the sun came out, one of the boisterous Flemings tied a long string to a tape that was hanging under a pretty French girl's skirts, and he pulled a little and watched her face, pulled a little more and watched the trouble, pulled a little more and was found out. Then several of the corpse-like ones smiled, and interest in life was seen to be reviving.
Next morning when I was up forward with my kodak, one of the young ladies who had been so ill was being tossed in a blanket with a young Irish lad of whom she was fond, struggling and scratching and rolling with a young fellow who was kissing her, whilst four companions were dangerously hoisting them shoulder high, laughing and bandying Irish remarks. Life only hides itself when these folk are ill; they will survive more than sea-sickness.
The white dawn is haggard behind us over the black waves, and our great strong boat goes thundering away ahead of the sun. It is mid-Atlantic, and we stare into the same great circle of hungry emptiness, as did Columbus and his mariners. Our gaze yearns for land, but finds none; it rests sadly on the solitary places of the ocean, on the forlorn waves lifting themselves far away, falling into nothingness, and then wandering to rebirth.
Nothing is happening in the wide ocean. The minutes add themselves and become hours. We know ourselves far from home, and we cannot say how far from the goal, but still very far, and there is no turning back. "Would there were," says the foolish heart. "Would I had never come away from the warm home, the mother's love, the friends who care for me, the woman who loves me, the girl who has such a lot of empty time on her hands now that I have gone away, her lover." How lonely it is on the steerage deck in the crowd of a thousand strangers, hearing a score of unknown tongues about your ears, hearing your own language so pronounced you scarce recognise it!
The mirth of others is almost unpardonable, the romping of Flemish boys, pushing people right and left in a breakneck game of touch; the excitement of a group of Russians doing feats of strength; the sweet happiness of dainty Swedish girls dancing with their rough partners to the strains of an accordion. How good to escape from it all and trespass on the steward's promenade at the very extremity of the after-deck, where the emigrants may not go, and where they are out of sight and out of hearing.
The ocean is retreating behind us with storm-scud and smoke of foam threshed out from our riven road. Vast theatres of waves are falling away behind us and slipping out of our ken backward into the homeward horizon. Above us the sky is grey, and the sea also is grey, waving now and then a miserable flag of green.
What an empty ocean! There is nothing happening in it but our ship. And for me, that ship is just part of my own purpose: there is nothing happening but what I willed. The slanting red funnels are full of purpose, and the volumes of smoke that fly backward are like our sighs, regrets, hopes, despairs, the outward sign of the fire that is driving us on.
Up on the steward's promenade on Thursday morning I fell into conversation with a young Englishman, and he poured out his heart to me. He was very homesick, and had spoken to no one up till then. He was in a long cloak, with the collar turned up, and a large cloth cap was stuck tightly on his head to keep it from the wind. His face was red with health, but his forehead was puckered, and his eyes seemed ready to shed tears.
"Never been so far away from the old country before?" I hazarded.
"No."
"Would you like to go back?"
"No."
"Are you going to friends in America?"
He shook his head.
"I'm going on my own."
"You are the sort that America wants," I ventured. He did not reply, and I was about to walk away, snubbed, when another thought occurred to me.
"I once left the old country to seek my fortune elsewhere," said I. "I felt as you do, I expect. But it was to go to Russia."
He looked up at me with an inquisitive grimace. I suggested that I knew what it was to part with a girl I loved, and a mother and friends and comforts, and to go to a strange country where I knew no one, and thought I had no friends. At the mention of parting with the girl he seemed to freeze, but curiosity tempted him and he let me tell him some of my story.
"I reckon that England's pretty well played out," said he.
"Not whilst it sends its sons out into the world—you to America, and me to Russia," said I with a smile. "It will only be played out when we haven't the courage to go."
"Well," said he, "I reckon I had to go, there wasn't anything else for me to do. It wasn't courage on my part. I didn't want to go. I reckon there ought to be room in England for the likes of me. It isn't as if I had no guts. I'm as fit as they make them, only no good at figures. I think I had the right to a place in England and a decent screw, and England might be proud of me. I should always have been ready to fight against the Germans