Fourth Day[75]

[Decoration: Grapevine, soda bottle, corkscrew and champagne glass][77]

LOG                         Fourth Day

Barometer dry and blistered. Mercury bubbling.

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At roll-call we were shy twenty passengers. The Captain thinks the ones unaccounted for fell overboard during the excitement at Larchmont.

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Hennessy Martel, Tom Ginn, and several others are in double irons for cheering the enemy. All the souse-renunciators are suffering tortures from the frightful drouth. Tom Ginn declares that he has had a regular stokehole thirst ever since we left Larchmont, and Hennessy [78] Martel offers to swap his Panhard and fifty shares of unassessable Hot Copper for three fingers of lumberjack rye.

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Poor Turner Van Newleaf was found sitting on the sprinkler trolling for wine-jellyfish and chattering to himself. Doctor Zoolak dry-cupped him and sponged his mouth with Blisterine.

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10 A. M.—Sighted a night school of whales galloping after the Lithia. The wise Mate says this is a sure sign of a Jonah on board. A committee of five, headed by the puzzle [79] editor of Golden Days, has been appointed to find the Jonah.

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Clark Dearborn, champion half-shot putter of the Chicago Athletic Club, claimed to have seen two swordfish fencing off the weather bow. Doctor Zoolak roped him, threw him, and tied him in thirty seconds, breaking the Montana record.

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2 P. M.—Made Delaware Water Gap.

The citizens of the Gap turned out in a body and gave us a royal [80] welcome. The Mayor, in a happy little speech, presented the freedom of the city and the great key to the water-works, both of which we were compelled to decline on account of the serious condition of our passengers.

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A chorus of young ladies, carrying a white banneret of watered silk, with the motto “Purity” and a crocheted picture of Moses smiting the rock, raised their sweet young voices in the affecting song:

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[81] Jack Redwood and Hy Jinks, of the ’Frisco Bohemian Club, cut in with a barber-shop tenor and a sterilized barytone, and were promptly and loudly hissed by the snakes in the trailer.

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Hennessy Martel hogged the limelight by offering to loop the Water Gap in a ball-bearing catamaran, without the aid of a net, and the Captain, scenting trouble, side-stepped the Gap and made a quick getaway.

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At 5 P. M. the lookout reported a sour mash freighter. The [82] passengers are kissing the hem of his cardigan jacket and calling him another Columbus.

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Later.—The sour mash freighter turns out to be a root-beer wagon on its way to a Sunday-school excursion. The enraged passengers are now kicking the hem of the lookout’s jacket.

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The Committee on Jonah reports progress.

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At 5.30 P. M. we ran into a [83] dust-gale, caused by an automobile party brushing their clothes after being chased by a bicycle cop. The air is thick with dust and whisk-brooms, and the Lithia’s passengers are lying, gasping, on the cravenette deck. The lookout sends word that he can’t see a pair of deuces.

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The Captain has ordered the rose-sprinkler turned on and the electric-fans started.

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The dust-fog lifted for a few moments, and the passengers were seen to be leaping overboard. The [84] Bos’un performed yoehoman service in rescuing the imperilled and helping the weak ones back on the Wagon. A collection was taken up to purchase him a silver-plated swinging ice-pitcher.

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6.45 P. M.—The Mate took soundings, and reported no bottom. The Captain announced that, from the depth of water, we must be nearing Wall Street. The Mate was ordered to ring for a messenger-boy and send him after a pilot.

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8 P. M.—The Mate boxed the [85] compass and the compass won on points.

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The Committee on Jonah have been through the vessel like a pack of ferrets, and report that the Jonah can be no other than Moxie Matzoon, alias Moxie Grandpa. The report of the Committee was accepted and ordered inscribed on the records. A special copy, engrossed on parchment, will be sent to the Hon. Bromo S. Emerson, of Baltimore.

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Very dull in the smoking-room to-night. Nothing doing but a game [86] of tiddlywinks on the O. P. side. Roderick Dhuar, a reformed Scotch barkeep, enlivened the hours by playing “Comin’ Through the Rye,” with variations, on the cash register. When he finished he found he owed the Steward $22.30. He gave his I O U.

Shortly after midnight the lookout reported a strange light on the port bow. It turned out to be an electric advertisement, reading,

WHEN ALL IN AND SPEECHLESS,
MAKE SIGNS FOR BRICKTOP RYE

[87] At this touch of the real thing, the Lithia’s passengers perked up considerably, and the yell that greeted the sign sounded like a dog being run over by a Mercedes.

Here endeth the fourth day of the cruise.
[Decoration: bottles and glasses]

OMAR ON THE WAGON[89]

Fifth Day[95]

[Decoration: Grapevine, soda bottle, corkscrew and champagne glass][97]

LOG                         Fifth Day

The sun rose half an hour late. Eggley Monade, the ship’s wag, suggested that Old Sol’s safety-razor must have been out of whack. The Mate belted him with a piece of tarred rope, and Doctor Zoolak with the compass needle took seven stitches.

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Shortly before noon we picked up the Stock Exchange light, and the Lithia was slowed down.

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Took on Tom Lawson, the pilot, who knows right off the reel, without sounding, the depth of water at [98] every point in the dangerous channel of Wall Street. Tom brought aboard his magazine-gun, which he mounted at the bow, remarking jovially that he might take a crack at a pirate or two.

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Entered the channel, with Trinity cliffs astern. Pilot Lawson is at the wheel, looking very wise. Everybody’s watching him.

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An indignation meeting has been called on the two-for-a-quarter deck by excited passengers who promised their wives, sweethearts, and parents [99] to keep out of Wall Street. They demand that the vessel be put back. The Pilot remarked, grimly, that it is harder to get out of Wall Street than into it. He advises all hands to hang on and wait for a rise.

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A little before 3 P. M. the lookout shouted, “Maelstrom dead ahead!” A panic resulted, and the cry went up that Lawson was a bum pilot. Strong and willing hands tore him from the wheel, and, pursued by the infuriated passengers and crew, he ran down the deck and dove over the taffrail, yawping: “I will have something to say next month!”

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[100] “We are lost!” the Captain shouted, as he staggered down the stairs. Putting three chips on the red, he spun the wheel to starboard. Round and round in the clutches of the maelstrom spun the good ship Lithia. “Whee!” cried Hennessy Martel, “this is like old times. First good whirl my head’s had since the Lambs’ Club gambol.”

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2.56 P. M.—The Lithia seems hopelessly lost. The passengers, with blanched faces, are swapping farewells and keepsakes.

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2.58 P. M.—Gottlieb Kirschwasser, [101] of Milwaukee, lost his head, (the one he came aboard with), and, screaming, “Heute rot, Morgen tot! Auf wiedersehen!” hurled himself overboard.

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3 P.M.—Saved! The Stock Exchange bell struck three, and the maelstrom knocked off for the day. The Lithia’s passengers joyfully returned to one another the keepsakes and farewells, and Kirschwasser was fished out of the drink with a boat-hook and put in the boiler-room to dry.

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4 P. M.—We have left Wall Street, and are bowling along toward [102] White Rock Point, and kicking up an awful dust.

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The drouth has become intolerable, and the sufferings of the passengers are increasing hourly. The deck-planks are curling up, and the oakum is oozing from the seams.

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The barometer exploded with a loud pop, and Hennessy Martel, wild-eyed, ran up the main hatch, crying, “Is that George Kessler opening wine?” “No such luck,” gurgled Tom Ginn, who was spraying his throat with Blisterine.

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[103] Old Medford, the Water Wagon veteran, says he doesn’t remember a voyage attended by so many disasters. “We must get rid of the Jonah,” said he.

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4.44 P. M.—The Captain made a neat little speech from the bridge, and presented to each passenger a dry-point picture of the good ship Lithia. Most of them were flung overboard.

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After supper the Captain, a most considerate man, gave a smoker, in order to take the minds of the passengers off their fearful thirst. A [104] Keith circuit top-liner, who has a whole page and his picture in “Who’s Who on the Water Wagon,” gave an imitation of an actor refusing a drink. The audience overlooked the screaming absurdity of the plot in their admiration for the artistic performance.

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Professor Argus, the mind wizard, offered to read the minds of all the audience at one crack. Challenged to perform this astounding feat, the Professor smiled and said, “You are all thinking that it is almost time for a long cold highball.” Crackling shouts of admiration came from [105] the parched throats of the audience, and the protest, “Fake! Fake! Somebody must have told you!”

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Harvey Steele, a floor-walker in a wholesale anchor house, was the next entertainer. He gave a realistic imitation of a crooked barkeep playing on an upright cash register. When he finished the audience declared there was nothing in it.

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An amateur hypnotist was the next to oblige. “Will some gentleman kindly step up and assist the [106] Professor in this demonstration?” he requested. Dead silence; nobody made a move. The Professor smiled patiently, and repeated his request; no takers. Finally the Captain, who had drifted in, stepped up, remarking, “Try your stunt on me, Professor.” (Deafening applause.) The amateur hypnotist took the Captain in hand and made a few passes at him, and he took the count in six seconds. “Happy man!” cried the Professor, fixing the subject with his glittering eye. “Happy man! you are soused for fair, and are opening vintage wine.” “Whee!” said the Captain, bracing himself against Davy Jones’s locker. “Frappe two [107] more quarts! Line up, boys!” (Tumultuous applause, and cries of “Don’t wake him up!”) But the Professor did wake him up, and the Captain bowed sheepishly and returned to the wheel-house. “Will some other gentleman kindly step up?” asked the Amateur Hypnotist. The scramble that followed made the rush-hour at the Brooklyn Bridge look like a chess tournament. In the jam the Professor’s shoulder was dislocated, putting him out of business.

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2 A. M.—Hennessy Martel has tied a string around his thumb to [108] remind himself to take a drink the minute he gets off the Wagon.

Here endeth the fifth day of the cruise.
[Decoration: bottles and glasses]

“THE DARKEST HOUR”[109]

When a gentleman is deposited on his door-mat by a friendly copper, like a cake of ice or a jar of milk, his sense of humour is wonderfully acute. To tip over an aquarium of goldfish on his way through the hall strikes him as the height of the ridiculous, and the flopping of the little fishes and turtles on the Persian rug throws him into spasms of stifled mirth. He chuckles himself into hiccoughs over his vain attempts to unlace his shoes while lying on his back, and his progress up-stairs on all fours is [110] accompanied by joyous giggles. When he loses his equilibrium and rolls back down-stairs, he sits up and says: “God pity the men at sea on a night like this!”

He is now serious. He turns on all the electric lights and remarks, censoriously: “Here it is broad daylight, the front stoop unswept, and not a soul in the house up.” In this spirit of criticism he ascends to his wife’s room, and, as she raises her head from the pillow for one comprehensive glance, he says, sternly: “Things are going from bad to worse in this house.”

To her icy rejoinder, “Is that any reason why you should come home in this condition?” he replies, with unruffled importance: “The kitchen fire is out; the canary hasn’t [111] been fed; the piano isn’t dusted; and look at this!” He holds up a ravelling. “Found it right in the middle of the hall! What kind of housekeeping do you call that? Why, if I tried to run my business that way, we’d all be in the poor-house.”

Softly and soothingly his spouse returns: “Frank, if you’ll lay the two goldfish on the bureau and come to bed, we’ll have a long talk about it in the morning.”

And they do.

Sixth Day[113]

[Decoration: Grapevine, soda bottle, corkscrew and champagne glass][115]

LOG                         Sixth Day

The morning opened as still and dry as Boston after 11 P. M. The sun rose red as an auction flag against a cold-gravy sky, and the atmosphere is heavy with something doing. The Captain, solemn as a night-clerk in a Raines Law hotel, is at the wheel, and the Lookout is pop-eyed. A few insomniacal passengers are pacing the deck like a man who has been called for margin, and are bothering the Captain with fool questions. The Captain has put on a pair of plush ear-muffs.

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11 A. M.—Dirty weather ahead. The Lithia is logging her limit, in [116] an effort to weather White Rock Point before the storm breaks.

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11.20 A. M.—The Lookout reports a siphon-shaped cloud off the weather bow. The air is laden with dust, and is coming in dry hot puffs. Tom Ginn thinks we are running into another automobile party, but Old Medford says we are up against worse than that.

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11.30 A. M.—The wind has risen to half a gale, and the dust is settling on the Lithia’s decks like the soot from a smoking nickel-plated [117] banquet-lamp. Most of the passengers have turned out, prepared for anything.

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Gottlieb Kirschwasser has just made his will, bequeathing his collection of dried butterflies and a set of Schiller’s works to the Milwaukee Gemuthlich Society.

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11.45 A. M.—The pink rats are deserting the ship.

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A tidal wave of dust swept over us, carrying away the life-boat and [118] Kirschwasser’s meerschaum pipe with a galloping horse carved on it. Kirschwasser says he won it at a pinochle tournament in Munich, and is crazed by the loss. Nobody else seems to caradam.

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The Steward has distributed auto goggles, but the passengers are still unable to see three fingers before their faces.

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The Captain has turned the wheel over to the Mate, and has gone among the passengers, striving to reassure them. It seems we are off [119] the Axminster Carpet Cleaning Works, beside which Cape Hatteras is a goldfish aquarium.

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The sufferings of the passengers baffle description. Everybody feels that this is his last trip on the Wagon. Hennessy Martel has tied another string around his thumb, to remind himself to make it two drinks when he gets off.

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Old Medford, who is as mad as a conductor when you give him five pennies, insists that the Jonah be dumped overboard. A dogged, [120] determined committee has gone below to yank out Moxie Grandpa, who, as old Medford says, is an interloper, anyway, and has no more business on the Water Wagon than a trousers stretcher in a young ladies’ seminary.

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Later.—Old Matzoon has been dragged up from the hold, kicking and clawing, and the passengers are balloting on the proper disposition of him.

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While the ballot was being taken, another tidal wave of dust broke [121] over the hapless Lithia, and the enraged passengers and crew cried in chorus, “Over with the Jonah!” The wretched Moxie fiend was thereupon flung into the trailer, despite the protests of the magenta elephant and the Scotch-plaid guinea-pig.

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At 1.20 P. M. the Lithia grounded with a fearful crash, and the billows of dust that broke over her carried away the sprinkler and all the spokes in the aft wheel. A composite picture of John B. Gough and Carrie Nation fell to the cabin floor and was totally wrecked.

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[122] Buried in dust from deck to trucks, the Lithia lay on her side, pounding like a farmer at Coney Island on a “Try Your Strength” machine. The good old Wagon was doomed. Nothing could hold in such a simoom.

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The Captain shouted down-wind, “Cut away the trailer!” The ship’s Carpenter, with hammer and cold-chisel, severed the tow-line, and the menagerie vanished in the dust.

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At 1.35 the Lithia sprung a bunch of leaks, and every drop of water [123] ran out of her. We are now high and horribly dry. Hennessy Martel has tied still another string around his thumb, to remind himself to make it three drinks when he gets off. His hand is beginning to look like a hammock.

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At 1.50 P. M. orders were given to lighten ship. We threw over ten bales of temperance pledges, fifty cases malted milk, thirty-two cases sarsaparilla, eighteen carboys root beer, twenty-seven vats lemon soda, two hundred and thirty-five gallons mineral water, the library, the band, the cash register, seventy-five [124] bundles of blue ribbons, the water-cooler and three tons of cracked ice, the pianola, Gottlieb Kirschwasser, and Doctor Zoolak. The Lithia righted, and it looks as if the gallant craft will ride it out. Cheers are rattling from the warped throats of passengers and crew.

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2 P. M.—We are lost! A fresh consignment of boarding-house carpets has just been thrown under the slapsticks at the Cleaning Works. This is the limit of dirty weather.

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Hurrah! A St. Bernard dog with [125] a little brown jug tied to his neck is battling his way toward the doomed Water Wagon. Good old Nero!

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The St. Bernard has leaped aboard. Merciful heavens! the jug contains arnica! We have torn off Nero’s license tag and chucked him overboard.

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Hennessy Martel is maudlin and weeping on my pleated shirt-front. “In case you pull through, old man,” he says, “tell my poor little wife (the tall one) that my [126] insurance policy is in the kitchen clock with the milk tickets.”

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2.20 P. M.—We have launched the life-raft, and stocked it hastily with the following supplies: One case Jack Spratt’s assorted dog biscuits, two dozen golf balls, a crate of sponges, two telephone books, one “Little Giant” gas-stove, one “Little Gem” safety lawn-mower, six dozen Lady Macbeth lamp-chimneys, one Prospect Park croquet set, four wheelbarrows, one roll-top desk, and one Colonial highboy with glass knobs. This outfit will keep us going for a few days.

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[127] At 2.30 P. M. we cut away the life-raft and pushed off, and we are now pitching and tossing on the dusty billows. Heaven only knows how much longer our sufferings will be prolonged.

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I am parched and weary, and my pencil is worn to the quick. Ho, Steward, fetch me a milk-bottle with a patent stopper! I must commit these writings to the restless sea.