CHAPTER XI.
A VOYAGE TO MARSEILLES.
BETWEEN being a cabin boy with no responsibility beyond setting the table straight and keeping the cabin clean, and being a supercargo with a large and valuable cargo to look after, there is a wide step, as Kit realized when the North Cape lay once more at the wharf in front of Martin’s Stores. Harry Leonard set off gayly for home before the ship was fairly moored in her berth; but for his own part, with nominally far more liberty, he could not think of going further away than his employers’ office till all the cargo was out; and he could not tell whether even then he should be able to take a long enough holiday for a run out to Huntington.
“You see these things work both ways, Harry,” he said to the cabin boy before the latter set off. “You complained in London about not being able to go ashore, but I am just as badly off here, where I have so much to do that I cannot leave the wharf for a week at any rate.”
“But you don’t complain about it, Kit,” Harry answered. “I don’t believe you ever complain about anything.”
“Why should I complain about this,” Kit asked, “when it is my work that keeps me and I am glad to have the work to do? What would the owners think of the Captain if he said he could not sail on the day they ordered, because he had some business of his own to attend to? No, I am not complaining about it, but just telling you the fact. And I spoke of it because I want you to take a little bundle up to Huntington for me, and tell my folks that nothing but my work keeps me from going home at once. I shall know in a few days whether I can get home this trip, and of course I have written.”
There was no reason why the supercargo should explain to the cabin boy that the “little bundle” he sent home was the result of many visits to Peter Robinson’s, in Regent Street, and to another London place known as “Louise’s,” in the same street; and that it contained some things whose buying required as much care on his part as the stowing of a cargo. It was not such a little bundle, either, nor so light; but Harry took it cheerfully, and promised to deliver all of Kit’s messages.
Instead of Kit applying to the Captain now for information about the ship’s movements, it was rather the other way. As supercargo it was his business to know what the next cargo was to be, and where it was to be taken. But for some days neither of them knew, and it was impossible to learn, because the charterers did not yet know, themselves.
“I imagine from what I heard in the office to-day,” Kit said to the Captain one evening, “that they are thinking of sending us next to Marseilles.”
“Yes,” the Captain answered, “they are talking of it, I know. But nothing is settled yet.”
“I hope they will,” Kit went on; “that would give us a fine voyage into the Mediterranean and past Gibraltar. Marseilles must be a little further than London, of course.”
“Yes, it is just about four thousand miles,” the Captain answered. “It would be a good thing for you, for several reasons. The North Cape ought to go into dry-dock to be scraped and painted before crossing the ocean again, for one thing, and that would give you time to go home. For another thing, Marseilles is one of the most interesting places in the world. But our firm won’t take those things into consideration in making up their minds,” he added, laughing.
“What cargo should we probably take if we went to Marseilles, sir?” Kit asked.
“Oil,” the Captain replied; “and as Marseilles is one of the great olive-oil shipping ports, that would be carrying coals to Newcastle with a vengeance, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t quite understand, sir,” Kit answered.
“Well, you will soon see into it,” the Captain said, “if we go to Marseilles. You see they make a great deal of olive-oil all along that part of the Mediterranean coast. And it is shipped from Marseilles. Olive-oil, you understand, is a very expensive product. We make a great deal of cotton-seed oil in this country, and that is a very cheap product. So they buy our cotton-seed oil, and we take it over to them.”
“But you don’t mean that they mix our cotton-seed oil with their olive-oil, and sell it for pure oil, do you, sir?”
“I never saw them mix it,” the Captain said, laughing quietly to himself. “But when you put this and that together, and considering that they have no other use for cotton-seed oil over there, it certainly looks very much like it, doesn’t it?
“However, I don’t think you need worry your mind about our share in the transaction,” the Captain went on, seeing that Kit looked very thoughtful over it. “If they pay us for carrying the oil, we have nothing to do with the use they make of it. We might carry a cargo of cotton to Manchester; and if some dishonest cloth-maker there mixes a lot of it with his wool, that dishonesty cannot be laid on our shoulders.”
“Captain, do you think there is a really honest man in the world?” Kit asked.
“Yes, two,” the Captain laughed; “Christopher Silburn and Captain Griffith.”
The uncertainty about their next destination could not last long, for the cargo was nearly out; and on the same day that Kit was told definitely that he was to go to Marseilles, the Captain induced his charterers to let him have a week in dry-dock first for overhauling the ship. The supercargo, however, could not arrange for more than four days’ leave of absence, there being many things to see to; and that would give him only two full days at home.
Going out by train this time, for greater speed, Kit reached Bridgeport too late for the stage; but without hesitation he set off over the hills on foot, glad of the chance to see so much of the country just as the trees and grass were putting on their new spring suits; and when he stepped without warning into the little house opposite the church, his mother and Vieve were at the supper table.
“You gave me a great start when you came in, Kit,” Mrs. Silburn declared after the first greetings were over. “You walk exactly as your father did; my first thought was that he had come home. And upon my word you are just his size. My, my, what a man you have grown! I have no little Kit any more, but a big grown man.”
“Don’t speak of growing!” Kit retorted. “Where’s the little sister I left at home? What have you done with her? This great big girl can’t be Vieve, can she? And you are looking so much better, too, mother. I’m afraid those little things I got you in London are about four sizes too small.
“I wanted to get you some really good things in England,” he went on, “but those letters you sent me from Bridgeport and Washington made me more careful of my money. If that mysterious man in New Zealand should really prove to be father, we would need all the money we could possibly raise to bring him home comfortably. I don’t feel as if my wages belonged to myself, exactly, till that thing is settled.”
“Oh, it was such a comfort, Kit, the way you managed those letters,” his mother declared. “We did not know what to do at all. I don’t feel so much now as if I had no one to depend upon.”
“Well, the Captain advised me,” Kit modestly answered. “He always knows what ought to be done. You must not set your heart too much upon it, but still there is a chance. Since one man escaped from the wreck of the Flower City, why not another? It will take weeks and weeks, perhaps months, to get an answer from the consul at Wellington; and until it comes, we can do nothing but wait patiently.”
The next morning Kit settled himself in his father’s armchair by the window, with a big volume in his hands.
“It’s a good thing father bought this set of cyclopædias,” he said, “for I think it will give me just the information I want. Our next voyage is to be to Marseilles (did I tell you last evening?), and I want to find out something about the place. You’ve no idea what a help it is in going to a new city to read everything you can find about it beforehand. All the way over to London, when I had any spare time, I read the Captain’s books about it and studied the maps, and by the time I got there I knew a great deal about it.”
“Harry Leonard must have been a great help to you there,” Vieve suggested slyly; “he says he showed you around so much.”
“Does he?” Kit laughed. “That’s just like Harry! He makes a very good cabin boy, but he hasn’t quite got over his boasting habit yet. The only visit he made to London was when I got leave for him one day and took him for a trip on the underground railway. We took the wrong train, too, by the way, and went about fifteen miles round to get a mile across town. But let’s see about this place in France. M-a-r; here we are—‘Marseilles, the third city of France, population about four hundred and fifty thousand. Well situated in a valley on the shore of the Mediterranean. Chief city of the Department of Bouches-du-Rhone. Marseilles is one of the oldest cities in Europe, having been founded about 600 B.C.’
“Think of that, mother! This place I am going to was founded six hundred years before the time of our Saviour!
“‘The first settlement,’” he continued to read, “‘is usually ascribed to the Phœnicians. Lazarus is said to have been one of the early bishops of Marseilles, and a skull purporting to be his is still preserved in a portion of the original church in which Lazarus preached. Aside from this, the most remarkable building in Marseilles is the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, which, standing on the summit of a high hill, is church and fort combined, and is reached by hydraulic elevators. Marseilles is the scene of the principal part of Alexander Dumas’ remarkable story of the “Count of Monte Cristo.” The Castle d’If, in which Monte Cristo was confined in a dungeon for fourteen years, stands on a rocky islet in the harbor, and is still in a good state of preservation. The chief articles of commerce are olive-oil, figs, dates, almonds, and wine. Marseilles is one of the principal ports of the Mediterranean, from thirty to fifty vessels entering or leaving daily. The Peninsular and Oriental steamers call here on their way to and from India and Australia.’
“I tell you there’s going to be something to see, in a place like that!” Kit exclaimed, as he closed the book. “Six hundred years before those things happened that we read about in the New Testament! A fellow can hardly get that into his head. I hope I’ll have a chance to see that church on the hill, that’s both church and fort. And Lazarus! That’s going it a little strong, it seems to me; I don’t remember reading anything in the Bible about Lazarus being a bishop. But I should like to see that old church.”
“Oh, I wish they had ‘cabin girls’ on ships!” Vieve declared; “I’d like to go and see these queer places the way you do. Girls never have a chance to see anything.”
“They’re a very lucky lot,” Kit answered. “They only have to stay at home and be comfortable, while their fathers and brothers go away to work for them.”
“Now, children, I’ll have to punish you both if you begin to quarrel,” Mrs. Silburn laughed. “The most important thing is when you will be back from this next voyage, Kit; and that you haven’t told us yet.”
“We can safely say in about two months,” Kit replied, “if all goes well. And by that time I think we ought to have an answer from New Zealand.”
Those two days at home were many hours too short, but there was no help for it. Kit had nearly two months’ wages to hand over to his mother, and after taking a good look at the outside of the house he suggested that she should get some one to mend the two or three broken places and then have it painted.
“That will not cost very much,” he said, “for it is a small house. And if—if that should—well, you know what I mean. We want everything looking nice if he comes home.”
Silas did not go down to Bridgeport with his stage in time to catch the 9.15 train, the one that Kit wanted to take; so he walked down as he had walked up, glad to have another two or three hours among the green fields after so much blue water.
From the time of his reaching New York again the young supercargo had very little time to himself until the North Cape cleared for Marseilles, for the cargo began to arrive next day, and he had to give his attention to it.
“It hardly seems to me as if we had been home,” he said to Captain Griffith as they stood on the bridge, watching the gradual fading away of the Navesink Highlands. “They keep us going so fast; to-day in Barbadoes, to-morrow in London, next day in Marseilles. I see you have the ‘Count of Monte Cristo’ among your books, Captain. I will get you to let me read it when I am through with my work. I have been reading everything I could find about Marseilles.”
“Oh, yes, you can take it,” the Captain answered. “You will find it a very interesting story, particularly when you are bound for Marseilles. But there is something about it that to me is of more interest than the story itself. I won’t tell you what it is; you can find that out for yourself.”
For four or five days Kit was busy with his manifests, but after that his time was his own, except for an occasional visit to the hold to see that his cargo was in good order—his “magic oil,” he called it; for as far as he could make out it was to go into Marseilles nothing but plain cotton-seed oil, and return to New York “pure olive-oil,” worth two dollars a gallon.
The ocean seemed a vast desert of water on this voyage. They were far out of the usual track of vessels crossing the Atlantic, except those bound for the far East by way of the Suez Canal; and in the eighteen days before Gibraltar was sighted they passed only three sails. But in those days Kit put all his papers in order and read the “Count of Monte Cristo” with great care.
“I should not have spent so much time on an ordinary story,” he said when it was finished, “but this tells so much about Marseilles. And I wanted to find out what you considered of more interest about it than the story itself.”
“And did you find it out?” the Captain asked.
“I think so, sir,” Kit replied. “The story was evidently written about the middle of this century, or less than fifty years ago. I think the author wanted to show what wonderful things could be accomplished by a man with fabulous wealth. So after the hero had been imprisoned in that Castle d’If a great many years, he made his way through the walls to the dungeon of a very wise priest who was confined there. The priest became so attached to him that before he died he told him of the secret hiding-place of an immense treasure; and after the hero escaped he went to the island and got the treasure. As nearly as I can make out, the treasure amounted to about three million dollars, and he did all his wonderful things with that money. The interesting thing is, as I understand it, that less than fifty years ago, a great author, living in Paris, when he wanted to write about a man with as much money as anybody could imagine, much less really have, gave him only three million dollars, which in those days seemed beyond belief; whereas now within a single lifetime, some of our American millionaires are so much richer that three million dollars would seem like a small sum to them.”
“That’s it, exactly,” the Captain replied; “I am glad you caught the idea. It just shows how the wealth of the world has increased in the last fifty years—or perhaps how it has fallen into comparatively few hands. Half a century ago three millions was as great a fortune as could be imagined; now when a man gets three he is not satisfied till he turns it into thirty.”
“It has made me anxious to see that Castle d’If and its dungeons,” Kit said.
“I hope to have another look at it myself,” the Captain answered. “I was there once, but it was many years ago—long before you were born. We will go out together some day.”
When Gibraltar was reached, the hoisting of two or three flags caused a telegraphic message to be sent by cable to London and thence to New York, “Passed, steamer North Cape, New York for Marseilles. All well,” so that the ship’s owners and the crew’s friends knew within a few hours that she had once more crossed the Atlantic in safety.
“I should hardly like to be sailing past here in a ship that that tremendous fort was trying to keep out,” Kit declared. “It looks as if nothing could get past, with those great tiers of guns commanding this narrow passage. This is the strangest thing I have seen yet—Africa just across the channel, Spain on this side, and that great tall rock at the end of the peninsula belonging to England. I have read how the rock is full of underground passages and hidden batteries. They call it the impregnable fortress; don’t they, sir?”
“Impregnable is a very good word, Silburn,” the Captain answered, “but no place is impregnable in these days. That rock has been taken and retaken a number of times, so it cannot be impregnable. The English have fortified it very strongly, because it is an important point; but in case of attack they would have to depend largely upon their navy to defend it. A few dynamite cartridges thrown against the rock would soon reduce it.”
“Well, it doesn’t really look as if the English had any business with a big fort right on the best corner of Spain,” Kit went on.
“You will soon find yourself in deep water if you go into such questions as that, young man,” Captain Griffith laughed. “What business have the English in India, or Egypt, or Africa? What business have the Spaniards in Cuba? What business have we in America, for that matter, which belonged to the Indians? You will save yourself trouble by taking things as you find them. You’ll be saying next that the Phœnicians ought to own Marseilles, instead of the French, because they founded it.”
After two days of skirting the Spanish coast the North Cape sighted the Balearic Isles; and two days more took her into the Gulf of Lyons, within a few hours of Marseilles. The last half of her journey in the Mediterranean, however, was not as pleasant as the first; for a heavy wind from the northwest made the air raw and chilly, even in that warm climate, and stirred up a heavy sea.
“It is the Mistral,” the Captain explained. “That is the name they give the cold north wind all along this coast. It comes up very suddenly once every six or eight weeks, and makes the natives shiver. I am just as well satisfied to have it now, for it only lasts a day or two, and we will be pretty sure of fine weather in port.”
As they approached Marseilles, Kit recognized many of the points from what he had read. There was the semicircle of mountains at the rear, forming a vast amphitheatre in which the city lay—desolate, barren-looking mountains of grayish-white rock, with hardly any traces of vegetation. And there was the church on the summit of a high hill rising from the valley, with a great gilded statue of the Virgin Mary on top; he knew that must be Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, from the descriptions of it, and imagined that the long straight lines running up the side of the hill must be the track of the elevators. Then when they drew nearer he saw the long breakwater, extending a mile or more along the shore, which makes Marseilles one of the best ports in Europe. And to the right lay a group of three rocky islands, some distance apart, one of which he was sure must be the island of the Castle d’If.
“I suppose we run in behind the breakwater, Captain?” he asked. “I see there is quite a forest of masts in there.”
“No,” the Captain answered, “we go into the Old Port—the Vieux Port, as they call it here, vieux being the French word for old. That was the original port, of course, that was the making of Marseilles; and a very curious place it is; a natural basin running right up into the heart of the city, with a narrow entrance. However, you will soon see it all for yourself.”
It was before ten o’clock in the morning that the ship ran between the two old-fashioned forts, one on each side of the narrow entrance, and ploughed her way slowly up the Old Port. It did not look to Kit as if there could possibly be room for another steamer on any of the three sides, so thickly were the vessels crowded in—big steamers and little, sailing-ships, tugs, beautiful yachts, fishing-boats, excursion boats, every sort of craft he could think of. All around, except at the entrance, were broad streets full of people, lined with tall buildings of light stone, many of them looking as if they might have stood since the old Phœnician days. But room was found on the east side for the North Cape, and as soon as she was made fast, both the Captain and Kit went ashore—the former to attend to his custom-house business, and Kit to find his agents.
Within ten minutes they were both back at the ship, each with a disgusted look in his face.
“Well, did you find your agents, Silburn?” the Captain asked. “Just about as much as I got into the Custom House, I suppose. Every business place is shut up tight as a drum. This is some saint’s day or other, and all business is stopped; the only places open are the cafés and tobacco shops. They don’t care very much for Sundays in these Catholic countries, except as a time for bull-fights and the opera; but just give them a saint’s day, and you couldn’t induce one of them to work. This is a wasted day for us, and I don’t like it.”
“Nor I,” Kit answered; “but I suppose we must put up with it. It wouldn’t be so bad if we had some work to do on board.”
“No, there is nothing to do,” the Captain growled. It was not hard to see that he was very much annoyed at the delay. “We might as well go out and see some of the sights, I suppose. How would you like to go up to that church on the hill? or would you rather go out to Castle d’If?”
“Why, I should much rather go out to Monte Cristo’s castle, sir,” Kit answered, wondering that circumstances had made the trip possible on his very first day in port.
“Then Monte Cristo it is!” the Captain exclaimed. “I’ll be getting angry at these saintly Frenchmen pretty soon if I don’t do something to work it off. Then you step ashore, Silburn, and find out how we can get there. There used to be a little steamboat or two going out, and I suppose they still run. Just find out what time they start.”
Kit returned in a few minutes with a longer face than before.
“No boats to-day, Captain,” he reported. “They are all afraid of the rough water outside.”
“Right enough for them,” the Captain answered, “since they are small excursion boats and made for smooth water. But there’s nothing outside to-day to hurt a good sea-boat. Step over there to the head of the port where you see those sail-boats to hire, and see whether you can get a boatman to take us over.”
Kit was gone longer this time, but once more he returned with bad news.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to give it up, Captain,” he said. “Not one of the boatmen will venture outside the port. I made them understand by saying ‘Castle d’If,’ and pointing out; but they only shook their heads and answered ‘Le Mistral! le Mistral!’”
“Well,” the Captain exclaimed, with an expressive shrug of the shoulders, “this town is pretty well closed to-day, isn’t it? But I think I can find a way to get to that island. Lower away the longboat, Mr. Mason.”