Chapter 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.