glasses could see them floating alongside, horrible
to sight and fancy.

I am only dealing with facts facts which will
be confirmed by the testimony of many who
passed those broiling August days in that quaran-
tine. No physician could be found in Syra who
had humanity enough to hear the cry of that
suffering company, or venture on the plague-
stricken ship. They latterly got permission to
bury the dead, all but one mother and child, who
drifted loose, and were cast on some unknown



48 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

shore, or fed the fishes; subsequently a Danish
physician came, a volunteer from I regret to say
I know not where, nor even do I know his name.
I did not think then to enable myself to render
him the honour he deserves ; and finally the sick
were landed. There had been a hundred and forty
passengers on board when the ship left Alexandria,
and there were over a hundred when she came to
quarantine the untouched remaining on board
until they were attacked in their turn, and were
carried ashore to die. Their provisions, too, were
failing, and at last starvation came to help the
pestilence.

I sought distraction and pastime amongst the
sailors, of whom two had attracted my attention
during the run over. One of them I judged to be
an American at first sight, the incarnation of " go-
a-head" and nervous energy. I had seen him at
the wheel the first day out, as I sat aft taking my
fruit after dinner, and tempted him to affability
by a huge slice of melon, which he ate without
ever taking his eye for more than an instant from
the course of the schooner. The next day they
were apples that broke the silence ; when, abruptly
turning round to me, he asked if I was a free-
mason. He was, and evidently did not understand
how one could treat a sailor with courtesy or kind-
ness without some such motive as that mystic
brotherhood is supposed to furnish. He wore a
black wide-awake crowded close down to his eyes,
which looked sharp out from under black, clear-
drawn eyebrows. His nose was prominent, pointed,



EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE 49

and straight, and his mouth full of decision; lips
close-pressed, and chin small and slightly retreat-
ing. He carried his head habitually a little for-
ward, as if on the look-out, and reminded me in
his ensemble more of a clipper than anything I
ever saw in flesh. He was taciturn, however, and
absolutely refused to talk of himself. The other,
who responded to the name of Bill, was certainly
one of the best examples of the English sailor I
have ever met robust, thick-set, with large brain
and full beard, a frank blue eye, and an off-hand
manner familiar to all who permitted it, but re-
spectful to the highest degree, and speaking the
English of a man who had had some education.
In the first days of our imprisonment he had sur-
prised me not a little by offering to lend me some
old numbers of reviews and magazines, written
on the margins of which I found some shrewd
comments, and with some bits of drawing. I am
not going to write his story, and shall not repeat
what I learned of a life ruined by an uncontrol-
lable spirit of adventure and unimproved oppor-
tunities ; I have' only to do with him now as he
wove himself into the web of our quarantine
life.

It was from Bill that I learned what I first
knew of Aleck; that he was, as I supposed, an
American, had been in the Confederate service,
and had even served on the Alabama. After
finding out so much, I tried hard to make him
talk about himself, but in vain. He was respect-
ful, but not communicative on any subject, and



50 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

least so on himself. But the new excitement of
the cholera-ship and its horrors made a certain
difference. I certainly felt more like getting near
my fellow-men, and they, and especially Aleck,
were more oblivious of the difference between
them and me. The immediate cause of the break-
ing of the ice was the sight of a poor woman
standing on the poop of the cholera-ship as she
swung towards us from her anchorage, before a
slight easterly air, that brought the woman's
voice down to us in supplications which we could
from time to time partially distinguish, and which
were for bread, bread, bread! We could see
others on board climbing on the bulwarks, stand-
ing on the poop or forecastle, according to the
end of the ship which drifted nearest us ; but we
could hear no other voice, though we doubted
not that many were joined with hers. Beside
her we saw, later, another female figure, whom,
by the aid of the glass, I believed I could make
out to be her daughter. The latter made no
sound that we could hear, but sat mutely or stood
with her arm around the other, while ever and
anon we heard that heartrending cry, " Psomi I
psomi!" (bread! bread!). At sunset that day we
were all together on the forecastle, better friends
through our common pity. We proposed to our
taciturn guardiano to send some bread on board
the ship, but he absolutely refused to lend himself
to any such risk of contagion, and forbade any
attempt to communicate either with the ship or
the shore where the sick were; and, to tell the



EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE 51

truth, it was not pleasant to contemplate the
chances of being put in quarantine for an addi-
tional indefinite term, for having, even in a kindly
work, come in real or fancied contact with the
disease. But as the authority of the guardiano
was absolute, we could do nothing in the matter
openly, though it was determined in council by
us three to do something in some way, if relief
was not brought soon.

From the forecastle next morning we saw in
the early light the two hapless creatures in the
same position. Bill, looking over into the water
thoughtfully, asked if there were many sharks in
those waters. I replied that I had never seen but
one, inquiring why he asked. "Why," said he,
"I think I could get some grub over to those
women if you could manage the guardiano." "It
isn't much of a swim," I replied, " but as to carry-
ing the prog, you will find that more difficult."
"Well," said he, "I have carried a pretty good
load in the water before now, and can float enough
to keep those women from starving. I lived in the
Sandwich Islands once, and though I don't stand
out of the water like a Kanaka, I have carried
my clothes on my head many a mile without
wetting them, and a few pounds of bread won't
sink me." Here his eye twinkled as if he had a
story to tell, and I waited for it. " I commanded
a lorcha transport during the last war in China,"
he began, after a moment, "and one day, while
we were in Canton, I was walking through one
of the streets with my mate, an Englishman,



52 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

and we stopped to look in a joss-house. There
was a joss there of pure silver, about fourteen
inches high, and I made up my mind to have
him. We two were the only Europeans on board,
and the first dark stormy night we took the boat
and went ashore well armed. The joss-house had
no guard but the priests, and the night was so
bad that we broke the door down and got in
without the outsiders knowing it, and carried
the joss off easily enough; but the next day we
had row enough to pay for it. Every vessel in
the river was searched, and if I had had him on
board he would have been found and we should
have caught it, for the officers were in earnest
about it, and the Chinese in a fury. I knew

there would be the d 1 to pay in the morning,

so I put a cord around his neck, and went down
and hung him to the lower pintle of the rudder,
and left him there till the hue-and-cry was over,
and then brought him up. He weighed forty-two
pounds. I think I could do more in this case
than then." "Do it then," said I; "I'll help you
all I can: but we won't let the captain or any
of the men know of it!" "Oh, I'll put that all
right," said Aleck. "Jones has the first watch
to-night, and I '11 change with him ; and as for the
guardiano, he's a sleepy cuss, and I reckon won't
give himself the trouble to look on deck after
he turns in he never has, any way ; and if you 'd
like to keep watch with me, sir, I think we can
manage it." "But, Bill," I added, "look out for
the guarda-costa : if they see anything in the



EXPERIENCE IN A GEEEK QUARANTINE 53

water moving between the vessels, they'll fire at
it, certainly." "That won't trouble me," replied
the imperturbable tar. " I have run the blockade
in the American war thirteen times, and had
bigger balls than that fellow can throw whizzing
about my head, and fired by better gunners than
they have got aboard there. Why, sir, we ran
almost into one of their Monitors one night, and
had eight 15-inch shot fired at us without being
hit; and in all the thirteen trips in and out we
never were hit but once, and then the ball only
took off the head of the look-out forward."

And so we arranged it that Bill should swim off
to the ship as soon as it was dark, and trusting
to fortune to get the provisions aboard without
discovery, we were to hang overboard a light for
him to swim back to.

"That ship reminds me," said Bill, after a long
pause, "of a trip I made once in an English ship
to Senegal. We went up the river to load, and
while we lay there waiting for cargo to come
down, we had one of the worst yellow fevers
break out on the ship I ever saw. The first man
who was taken with it died in three hours,
and that day two more were taken and died
before dark, and in three days we lost all but
seven of the crew, one after the other not one
was sick more than six hours and then the mate
was taken sick. The first thing I knew of it was
that he said to me, * Bill, give me a good glass
of grog, and fill my pipe ; I want one good smoke
and a drink before I die.' ' Oh, nonsense,' says I,



54 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

'you are no more likely to die than I am.' 'I
know very well I have got it,' said he ; ' and when
I am dead bury me deep enough so that the land
crabs can't dig me up.' Sure enough he died that
afternoon, and we took him ashore before night
and buried him in a good deep grave. In two
days more there were only the captain and I
alive on the ship. And there we lay ten days
till we heard that an English man-of-war was
off the mouth of the river, and the captain sent
a native boat down to ask him to send up men to
work the ship out of the river. The man-of-war
sent word that they wouldn't send men up the
river, but if we could work her down with natives,
they would give us men to get the ship home to
England, and so we got out, but a deuce of a time
we had of it getting down. I suppose they feel
on that ship pretty much as I did those ten days."
All day long we heard at intervals that pitiful
cry, "Bread! bread!" faintly coming over the
water. It was more tolerable than the day
before, because we knew that relief would go
with nightfall. And so, as the dark came, we
made up a packet of hard bread with a little
cold meat and a bottle of wine, and binding it
securely between Bill's shoulders, and with a
pointed stick on top of it, in case, as he said, "a
shark should want to take the prog from him,"
he slipped down into the water, stripped to his
drawers, and struck out for the cholera-ship so
quietly that you might have thought it a little
school of guard-fish.



EXPEEIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE 55

We sat on the forecastle watching and waiting.
I said nothing, and where two are together and
one will not talk, the other sometimes will. Aleck
finally broke silence with "Women are mighty
curious things. I'll bet that old one don't touch
a mouthful till t'other has eaten, and I don't
believe she would have made half the fuss she
did if she had been alone. In the beginning of
the American war I belonged to a regiment of
mounted riflemen, and we were sent into Eastern
Tennessee, where there was a good deal of bush-
whacking about that time. We were picketed
one day in a line about two miles long across
country, and I was on the extreme left. I took
my saddle off, holsters and all, and hung it on
a branch of a peach-tree, and my carbine on
another. We knew there were no Yankees near,
and so I was kind o' off guard, eating peaches.
By-and-by I saw a young woman coming down
to where I was, on horseback. She wanted to
know if there were many of the boys near, and
if they would buy some milk of her if she took
it down to them. I said I thought they would,
and took about a quart myself ; and as she hadn't
much more, I emptied the water out of my canteen
and took the rest. Says she, ' If you 11 come up
to the house yonder, I've got something better
than that : you may have some good peach brandy
some of your fellows might like a little.' I said
I'd go, and she says, 'You needn't take your
saddle or carbine, it's just a step, and they are
safe enough here there's nobody about.' So I



56 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

mounted bareback, and she led the way. When
we passed the bars where she came in, she says,
1 You ride on a step, and 1 11 get down and put up
the bars.' I went on, and as she came up behind,
she says pretty sharp, 'Ride a little faster, if you
please.' I looked round, and she had a revolver
pointed straight at my head, and I saw that she
knew how to use it. I had left everything behind
me like a fool, and had to give in and obey orders.
'That's the house, if you please,' she says, and
showed me a house in the edge of the woods a
quarter of a mile away. We got there, and she
told me to get down and eat something, for she
was going to give me a long ride into the Yankee
lines, about twenty miles away. Her father came
out and abused me like a thief, and told me that
he was going to have me sent into the Federal
lines to be hung. It seems he had had a son
hung the week before by some of the Confeder-
ates, and was going to have his revenge out of
me. I ate pretty well, for I thought I might need
it before I got any more, and then the old fellow
began to curse me and abuse me like anything.
He said he would shoot me on the spot if it
wasn't that he'd rather have me hung; and in-
stead of giving me my own horse, he took the
worst one he had in his stables, and they put
me on that with my feet tied together under
his belly. Luckily they didn't tie my hands, for
they thought I had no arms, and couldn't help
myself; but I always carried a small revolver
in my shirt bosom. The girl kept too sharp



EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE 57

watch on me for me to use it. She never turned
her revolver from me, and I knew that the first
suspicious move I made I was a dead man. We
went about ten miles in this way, when my
old crow-bait gave out and wouldn't go any
farther. She wouldn't trust me afoot, and so
had to give up her own horse, but she kept
the bridle in her own hands, and walked ahead
with one eye turned back on me, and the revolver
cocked with her finger on the trigger, so that I
never had a chance to put my hand in my bosom.
We finally came to a spring, and she asked me
if I wanted to drink: I didn't feel much like
drinking, but I said yes, and so she let me down.
I put my head down to the water, and at the
same time put my hand down where the revolver
was, and pulled it forward where I could put my
hand on it easily ; but she was on the watch and
I couldn't pull it out. I mounted again, and the
first time she was off her guard a little I fired,
and broke the arm she held the pistol in. 'Now,'
says I, 'it's my turn: you'll please get on that
horse and we'll go back.' She didn't flinch or say
a word, but got on the horse, and I tied her legs
as they had mine, and we went back to the
house. The old man he heard us come up to
the door and looked out of the window. He
turned as pale as a sheet and ran for his rifle.
I knew what he was after, and pushed the door
in before he was loaded. Says I, ' You may put
that shooting-iron down and come with me.' He
wasn't as brave as the girl, but it was no use to



58 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

resist, and he knew it ; so he came along. About
half-way back we met some of our fellows who
had missed me, and come out to look me up.
They took them both, and He paused a

moment, and lowering his tone, added, " I don't
know what they did with them, but I know
d - well what they would have done with me."
I replied, after a pause, "I suppose they hanged
them both?" Aleck nodded his head without
looking up, and seemed anxious to drop the
subject.

"But," said I, rather disposed to work the vein
of communicativeness, but not anxious to hear
any more such adventures, "I thought you Imd
been in the Confederate navy?" "I was," said
Aleck. " I was with Semmes everywhere he went ;
I was in the naval brigade and blockade-running,
and on the Alabama all the while he commanded
her." " But not when she sank, I suppose ? " I
rejoined. " Well, I was, and was picked up with
him by the Deerhound." "It was a pretty sharp
fight, wasn't it?" I suggestingly asked. "It was
that," replied Aleck, but he didn't care about
enlarging. "I suppose it was the eleven-inch
shells that did her business?" "Oh, no," said
he, coming to a kind of confessional, " we
never had any chance; we had no gunners to
compare with the Kearsages. Our gunners fired
by routine, and when they had the gun loaded,
fired it off blind. They never changed the eleva-
tion of their guns all the fight, and the Kearsage
was working up to us all the while, taking



EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE 59

advantage of every time she was hid by smoke
to work a little nearer, and then her gunners
took aim for every shot." "Then it isn't true
that the Alabama tried to board the Kearsage?"
"No, sir; she did her best to get away from her
from the time the fight commenced: we knew
well that if we got in range of her Dahlgren
howitzers she would sink us in ten minutes."
"But," I asked, "don't you believe that Semmes
supposed he would whip the Kearsage when he
went out to fight her?" "No: he was bullied
into it, and took good care to leave all his
valuables on shore, and had a life-preserver on
through the fight. I saw him put it on, and
I thought if it was wise in him it wouldn't be
foolish in me, and I put one on too. When
Semmes saw that the ship was going down, he
told us all to swim who could, and was one of
the first to jump into the water, and we all
made for the Deerhound. I was a long way
ahead of Semmes, and when I came up to the
Deerhountfs boat they asked me if I was Semmes
before they would take me in. I said I wasn't,
and then they asked me what I was on the
Alabama. Said I, 'No matter what I was on
the Alabama, I shall be a dead man soon if
you don't take me in.' They asked me again
if I was an officer or a seaman, and wouldn't
take me in until I told them that I was an
officer." "But," said I, "did they actually refuse
to pick up common seamen, and leave them to
drown ? " " They did that," replied he wrath-



60 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

fully, " and as soon as they had Semmes on board
they made tracks as fast as they knew how,
and left everybody else to drown or be picked
up by the Kearsage"

"Time to show the light, I reckon," said Aleck,
after his ebullition had subsided, and proceeded
to put over the bows the light agreed on. Half-
an-hour after Bill had started on his voyage we
heard his whistle from below the forechains, and
heaving him a line brought him in cautiously.
He slipped down to change his clothing and add
to it, and then came up to render an account
of his doings. He had, as he anticipated, found
more difficulty in getting on board the ship than
in getting to it. He had found the poor women
on the quarter-deck all order and shipkeeping
abandoned, and no look-out anywhere. The pas-
sengers were sleeping on deck or sitting around
it, moaning and weeping. He dared not call to
the women for fear of disturbing the guardiani
and of attracting the attention of the other pas-
sengers, to whom his small supply would have
been but a mouthful. He swam round and round
looking for a loose rope's-end in vain, and finally
did what we should have supposed certain to
lead to his discovery climbed up the cable and
over the bows, throwing over his shoulders the
first garment he found on the disorderly deck,
and slowly walked the whole length of the ship:
when, having deposited the provisions at the side
of the unfortunate ones, signifying that they
were to inform no one and keep them to them-



EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE 61

selves, as well as his few words of Greek would
let him, he dropped overboard by a line from
the quarter, and leaving them in mute and
motionless wonder, came back as quietly as he
had gone. Bill couldn't resist the temptation
next morning of waving a big white cloth at
the ship, a signal which attracted the immediate
attention and suspicion of our watchful guardi-
ano, who, with an effervescence of useless Greek,
delivered his mind on the subject of contumacia
and communication, at which we all laughed:
we felt merrier that morning than for many
days past.

In fact, though we saw for several days more
the boat going back and forwards from the ship
to the shore, and knew that they went to bury
the dead, could see them buried even with our
glasses, we never felt so oppressed by the horror
of it since Bill's chivalric swim. We finished
without other incident our appointed two weeks,
and had soon the satisfaction of knowing that
public clamour had obliged Syra to recognise the
claims of humanity, and send food to the starving.

We had to undergo a five days' " observation "
behind the lighthouse island off the port, in
company with the English steamer, which was,
moreover, threatened with a third fortnight;
which she escaped only by the energetic remon-
strances of the British consul, backed up by the
Legation at Athens, who persuaded the central
government to send orders to Syra that the
steamer should be admitted to pratique. A Greek



62 EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUARANTINE

man-of-war was accordingly sent from the Piraeus
to Syra with a commission to ascertain the truth
of the complaints of Mr. Lloyd, and finding them
well - founded, ordered the admittance of the
steamer to pratique; but so great was the terror
of the population and the timidity of the com-
mission, that the latter ceded to the threats of
a revolution, and compromised on admitting the
passengers to the lazaretto of Syra and sending
the ship away. If all these things are not
recorded in the chronicles of that city, they are
in the minds of many who were martyrs to the
inhuman cowardice of Syra, and who will bear
me testimony that every occurrence of which public
recognition could be taken in the above narrative is
strictly true. As for the yarns, I tell them, as
nearly as I can remember, as they were told
me, and believe them.



AN AMERICAN'S REVERIE OVER LONDON

WHAT survives of the seven wonders of the
world may mainly be seen in London, itself the
eighth and greatest, not only for what of the
Old World and older times it holds, but for the
living, growing marvel that it is, the highest
achievement of the agglomerating human spirit.
With all the years I have known it, and the
times I have been in and out of it, I find at
every return that I scarcely know how great
it is, or realise how wise and how wicked, how
noble and how stolid. Mighty and wealthy
beyond any dreams of Arabian Nights; wrapping
in its tortuous folds all extremes of human
existence; by turns, a city of palaces, and the
nest of the highest and divinest human impulse,
and the smoke-blackened, fog-wrapped, dingy,
gloomy capital of Cimmeria ; plague latent in its
alleys, and utter destitution driving their people
to death and all degradation in clouds like the
flies that perish it seems the very focus of
life-and-death ferment, quickening and releasing
at once what is divinest and most infernal in
the human heart, and ripening both as no other
city built by human hands has done.

Visit it for the first time from the south, if
possible, in the autumn, and towards the close of

63



64 AN AMERICAN'S REVERIE OVER LONDON

day, when the grey incertitude lies on the
mighty city. You will have come through the
lovely country of Kent, Hampshire, and Surrey,
garden of England, the little compact villages
twinkling by the railway side, the ever-green
fields chasing the parks, and the parks following
the downs, in an unbroken succession of lovely
landscapes; then the villages come closer to-
gether, and you see the houses begin to lose
their pagan aspect and grow up storeys higher