Chapter XXXII: Beating the Game with One Shirt

We will land at Tilbury (London) in an hour, and I have beaten the game with one shirt.

The English are great in many respects, but in nothing do they excel more thoroughly than in dressing for dinner. Now we, of the great American "proletariat," are not strangers to the dress-suit. We do, on occasions, don it.

At evening weddings we put it on.

When a town magnate gives an evening reception, those of us who are counted among the elect and get an invitation, put on a dress-suit.

Occasions of this kind may happen three or four times a year, and, to make sure that everything is in order, after the invitations are out and we have received ours, our wives, who are more solicitous about this thing than we men, dig up hubby's dress suit and give it an airing.

Our dress shirt is sent to the laundry so as to have it fresh for the occasion, and a day or two before the event hubby gets into the spirit of the game, and at the earnest solicitation of the female portion of the house, submits to a dress rehearsal to make sure that shirt, studs, special collar, tie and all the toggery appertaining to the deal will be in order at the last moment prior to the final plunge.

Now our English cousin's familiarity with the dress-suit breeds contempt--that is, contempt for any exhilaration incident to getting into the thing on state occasions.

While it is not a criminal offense not to dress for dinner, it is something in the nature of a misdemeanor, and a rigid rule prescribes the dress-suit for dinner.

Nowhere on earth is this rigid rule more thoroughly observed than on the P. & O.

I was not a stranger to this rule--the P. & O. and I are not strangers. Nor am I a stranger to the customs of the Far East.

As the years have gone by I have added to the dress shirt a sufficient number to take care of the situations one meets with on world tours.

When I got to Bombay I found that the strenuous dobes had practically annihilated all but one of my dress shirts, so I presented those wrecked shirts to Lal, along with my bedding purchased in Calcutta, for which I had no further use, to take back to Calcutta with him.

If Mark Twain were alive today I'd be willing to bet him dollars to doughnuts that the dobes had succeeded in breaking stones clear across India with my dress shirts.

I had many things to do to get ready to sail on this ship, and one would have been enough--that consular invoice.

To lay in a bale of dress shirts was one of the items that should have been attended to, as I knew I was in for a twenty-two days' sail on a P. & O. to London; if all went well after boarding her.

But somehow, other things pressed more heavily.

I thought of the dress shirts several times, but I seemed to have a vague sort of an idea that dress-suits wouldn't cut much ice this trip, so I dismissed dress shirts with the idea that I had one, and the gloomy outlook was such that I must have decided that one shirt would last two days--three on a pinch--and that we were due to be sunk by that time, and if we were, a dress-suit would be of secondary importance to me--anyway I got aboard with only one dress shirt.

After clearing from Bombay for Aden, along about ten o'clock in the forenoon, the day slipped by without my realizing that I had started on a twenty-two days' voyage on a crack P. & O. liner with only one dress shirt.

The careful reader who has followed me in these travel letters will have gathered in my last that dress shirts were not weighing as heavily on my mind as some other things.

It was a doughty lot of Englishmen, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen, that made up the passenger list, about a score of men. You might say it was a picked lot--sifted, as it were--English colonials going home to England for a holiday. Judges seemed to predominate--an especially good lot of fellows--and brave.

After tea that day (by the way, I've attended twenty-two "he" tea parties on this voyage, the Englishman's tea and his dress-suit are twin brothers), shortly after tea the bell rang to dress for dinner.

I had a hazy idea that the ceremony might be waived on this voyage.

I couldn't see any occasion to put on the glad rags--a handful of men, probably sailing to their doom--to get into gala attire seemed almost sacrilegious.

But every last man ducked for his cabin to get into his dress-suit.

Under the circumstances the Frenchmen wouldn't kick, no matter how they felt about it--they all ducked too.

I had no enthusiasm to dress for dinner.

Couldn't see the use.

I felt, unless we were sunk, I couldn't play the game right more than three or four days with one shirt.

But I decided to be game and not cross a bridge till I came to it. I could hold out with my one shirt for three or four days and not be thrown overboard, and by that time we would all go down together.

After four days that shirt looked _passe_, not to say soiled.

No German gunboat had come to the rescue up to the time of the gong sounding to dress for dinner on the fifth day.

When the bell rang to dress that day I ducked with the rest of the boys.

I sadly looked at that dress shirt, shook my head, and took a turn up and down the deck.

No use, there wasn't a speck on the horizon; no hope of being sunk before dinner.

I went back to my cabin and turned that shirt around, and blossomed out with it hind side fore.

I was a little nervous at first, until after soup, but it went. Didn't occasion any remark or flutter, and I felt that I was good for four days more.

At the end of the second four days, eight days out from Bombay, we had passed Aden.

We stopped there a few hours of a Saturday afternoon.

Everything was shut up--couldn't buy a shirt for love or money.

We were now in the Red Sea and no German gunboats had found us, as yet. By this time it wasn't the fear of German gunboats that was causing me anxiety. To dress for dinner with that bunch of Englishmen had gotten to be a mania with me, and there were five days more to Port Said before I could buy some dress shirts. My shirt would go one more time hind side to, but after that something would have to be done.

On the ninth day for dinner I turned that shirt inside out--and got by.

A mighty load was lifted from my soul. On a pinch she would last eight more days that way, four days inside out front to, four days inside out back to.

Safe for eight days more and we'd make Port Said in five!

We made Port Said all right--slipped past in the night; not so much as a fire-cracker to wake me up.

We were now in the Mediterranean, and Gibraltar our next stop--six days away.

Italy was still neutral. But I had got where I didn't give a tinker's dam about the neutrality of Italy--what I wanted was some clean dress shirts.

I'm ashamed to chronicle it, but all interest in the war seemed to dwindle with me. I was obsessed with one idea, one ambition--to make that shirt stand me until we could make Gibraltar.

Eighteen days from Bombay to Gibraltar, and I'd got by with sixteen of them. Two days more and we would be at Gibraltar, where I could get some dress shirts. There was no hope of being sunk, and getting out of it that way. The Mediterranean was as quiet as a duck pond.

I had found out by this time that the English would stand for anything in the shirt front, if the conventional dress-suit was on for dinner. So I contemplated that shirt fore and aft, inside and out, and used the best sides.

I was a good fellow and one of the boys. I had managed to dress every day for dinner, and while I felt like a thief in that shirt, it went, and I was accepted, and we got to Gibraltar.

But just before we anchored in the harbor at Gibraltar this notice was posted: "Only British subjects allowed ashore," and there were four more days to London!

I entreated the commander, I entreated the purser to give me a pass to go ashore.

They were adamant. The rules of war couldn't be broken. Only British subjects would be allowed ashore at Gibraltar.

I didn't wait for the gong to sound for dinner after leaving Gibraltar that day. Immediately after lunch I repaired to my cabin to consider my dress shirt.

Positively I didn't dare to risk it again. I was absolutely certain it wouldn't go another time on any of the four sides, and I was also just as absolutely certain that I was going to play the game right up to London.

Not dress for dinner the next four days on the P. & O. with my English friends? The spirit of Bunker Hill, Lexington, Cambridge, Ticonderoga, and the battle of the Oriskany fired my soul. With my jack-knife to rip, and some puckering strings, I went at it, right after lunch. I turned that shirt upside down--don't ask me how I managed. You can't stump a resolute man. I worked it--I won out.

We got up the Thames without striking a mine--I had no thought of mines.

I "dressed" for dinner the last day on board!

A judge, an elderly Englishman who had sat opposite me all the way from Bombay, and who wasn't in rugged health, neglected to dress for that last dinner. He apologized profusely for coming to dinner "not dressed." Owing to it being the last day, his age and indisposition, his apology was accepted by the Englishmen at table.

Also _I_ finally accepted his apology, but _I_ never want to have an apology accepted in just quite the frigid manner in which I overlooked the judge's lapse.