truth," said the Jew.
"Yes," said a Russian called Alexy Mitrophanovitch, "he can have all our rights if he renounces his faith."
"If I am baptized to get your rights what use is that to you? Why do Christians ask for such an empty thing?"
"All the same," said another Russian, "in going to America you will break your faith, and so will we. I have heard how it happens. They don't keep the Saints' days there."
Alexy Mitrophanovitch was a fine, tall, healthy-looking peasant workman in a black sheepskin. With him, and as an inseparable, walked a broad-faced Gorky-like tramp in a dusty peak-hat. The latter was called Yoosha.
"You see, all I've got," said Alexy to me, "is just what I stand up in. Not a copeck of my own in my pocket, and not a basket of clothes. My friend Yoosha is lending me eighty roubles so as to pass the officials at New York, but of course I give it back to him when we pass the barrier. We worked together at Astrakhan."
"Have you a bride in Russia?"
No, he was alone. He did not think to marry; but he had a father and a mother. At Astrakhan he had been three thousand versts away from his village home, so he wouldn't be so much farther away in America.
He was going to a village in Wisconsin. A mate of his had written that work was good there, and he and Yoosha had decided to go. They would seek the same farmer, a German, Mr. Joseph Stamb—would I perhaps write a letter in English to Mr. Stamb? …
Both he and Yoosha took communion before leaving Astrakhan. I asked Alexy whether he thought he was going to break his faith as the other Russians had said to the Jew. How was he going to live without his Tsar and his Church?
He struck his breast and said, "There, that is where my Church is! However far away I go I am no farther from God!"
Would he go back to Russia?
He would like to go back to die there.
"Tell me," said he, "do they burn dead bodies in America? I would not like my body to be burned. It was made of earth, and should return to the earth."
The man who slept parallel with me in my cabin was an English collier from the North Country. He had been a bad boy in the old country, and his father had helped him off to America. Whenever he had a chance to talk to me, it was of 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
