A Tramp Abroad — Volume 03

by Mark Twain

  As the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up, but I thoughtmaybe we might make Hirschhorn, so we went on. Presently the sky becameovercast, and the captain came aft looking uneasy. He cast his eyealoft, then shook his head, and said it was coming on to blow. My partywanted to land at once--therefore I wanted to go on. The captain said weought to shorten sail anyway, out of common prudence. Consequently, thelarboard watch was ordered to lay in his pole. It grew quite dark, now,and the wind began to rise. It wailed through the swaying branches ofthe trees, and swept our decks in fitful gusts. Things were taking on anugly look. The captain shouted to the steersman on the forward log:

  "How's she landing?"

  The answer came faint and hoarse from far forward:

  "Nor'-east-and-by-nor'--east-by-east, half-east, sir."

  "Let her go off a point!"

  "Aye-aye, sir!"

  "What water have you got?"

  "Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard, two and a half scant onthe labboard!"

  "Let her go off another point!"

  "Aye-aye, sir!"

  "Forward, men, all of you! Lively, now! Stand by to crowd her round theweather corner!"

  "Aye-aye, sir!"

  Then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting, but theforms of the men were lost in the darkness and the sounds were distortedand confused by the roaring of the wind through the shingle-bundles. Bythis time the sea was running inches high, and threatening every momentto engulf the frail bark. Now came the mate, hurrying aft, and said,close to the captain's ear, in a low, agitated voice:

  "Prepare for the worst, sir--we have sprung a leak!"

  "Heavens! where?"

  "Right aft the second row of logs."

  "Nothing but a miracle can save us! Don't let the men know, or therewill be a panic and mutiny! Lay her in shore and stand by to jump withthe stern-line the moment she touches. Gentlemen, I must look to you tosecond my endeavors in this hour of peril. You have hats--go forward andbail for your lives!"

  Down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in spray and thickdarkness. At such a moment as this, came from away forward that mostappalling of all cries that are ever heard at sea:

  "MAN OVERBOARD!"

  The captain shouted:

  "Hard a-port! Never mind the man! Let him climb aboard or wade ashore!"

  Another cry came down the wind:

  "Breakers ahead!"

  "Where away?"

  "Not a log's length off her port fore-foot!"

  We had groped our slippery way forward, and were now bailing with thefrenzy of despair, when we heard the mate's terrified cry, from far aft:

  "Stop that dashed bailing, or we shall be aground!"

  But this was immediately followed by the glad shout:

  "Land aboard the starboard transom!"

  "Saved!" cried the captain. "Jump ashore and take a turn around a treeand pass the bight aboard!"

  The next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing for joy,while the rain poured down in torrents. The captain said he had been amariner for forty years on the Neckar, and in that time had seen stormsto make a man's cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never,never seen a storm that even approached this one. How familiar thatsounded! For I have been at sea a good deal and have heard that remarkfrom captains with a frequency accordingly.

  We framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks and admirationand gratitude, and took the first opportunity to vote it, and put itin writing and present it to the captain, with the customary speech. Wetramped through the darkness and the drenching summer rain full threemiles, and reached "The Naturalist Tavern" in the village of Hirschhornjust an hour before midnight, almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue,and terror. I can never forget that night.

  The landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be crusty anddisobliging; he did not at all like being turned out of his warm bed toopen his house for us. But no matter, his household got up and cookeda quick supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, to keepoff consumption. After supper and punch we had an hour's soothing smokewhile we fought the naval battle over again and voted the resolutions;then we retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs thathad clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom pillowcases mostelaborately and tastefully embroidered by hand.

  Such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent in Germanvillage inns as they are rare in ours. Our villages are superiorto German villages in more merits, excellences, conveniences, andprivileges than I can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in thelist.

  "The Naturalist Tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all the hallsand all the rooms were lined with large glass cases which were filledwith all sorts of birds and animals, glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and setup in the most natural eloquent and dramatic attitudes. The moment wewere abed, the rain cleared away and the moon came out. I dozed off tosleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl which was lookingintently down on me from a high perch with the air of a person whothought he had met me before, but could not make out for certain.

  But young Z did not get off so easily. He said that as he was sinkingdeliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows and developeda huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed, but crouching, with everymuscle tense, for a spring, and with its glittering glass eyes aimedstraight at him. It made Z uncomfortable. He tried closing his own eyes,but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept making him openthem again to see if the cat was still getting ready to launch athim--which she always was. He tried turning his back, but that was afailure; he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. So at last he hadto get up, after an hour or two of worry and experiment, and set the catout in the hall. So he won, that time.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  [The Kindly Courtesy of Germans]

  In the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in thedelightful German summer fashion. The air was filled with the fragranceof flowers and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie of the"Naturalist Tavern" was all about us. There were great cages populouswith fluttering and chattering foreign birds, and other great cages andgreater wire pens, populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign.There were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable ones they were.White rabbits went loping about the place, and occasionally came andsniffed at our shoes and shins; a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck,walked up and examined us fearlessly; rare breeds of chickens and dovesbegged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven hopped about witha humble, shamefaced mein which said, "Please do not notice myexposure--think how you would feel in my circumstances, and becharitable." If he was observed too much, he would retire behindsomething and stay there until he judged the party's interest had foundanother object. I never have seen another dumb creature that wasso morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor, who could interpret the dimreasonings of animals, and understood their moral natures better thanmost men, would have found some way to make this poor old chap forgethis troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art, and so had toleave the raven to his griefs.

  After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient castle ofHirschhorn, and the ruined church near it. There were some curious oldbas-reliefs leaning against the inner walls of the church--sculpturedlords of Hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn inthe picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages. These things aresuffering damage and passing to decay, for the last Hirschhorn has beendead two hundred years, and there is nobody now who cares to preservethe family relics. In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and thecaptain told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter oflegends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I do not repeat histale because there was nothing plausible about it except that the Herowrenched this column into its present screw-shape with his hands --justone single wrench. All the rest of the legend was doubtful.

  But Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. Thenthe clustered brown towers
perched on the green hilltop, and the oldbattlemented stone wall, stretching up and over the grassy ridge anddisappearing in the leafy sea beyond, make a picture whose grace andbeauty entirely satisfy the eye.

  We descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved thisway and that down narrow alleys between the packed and dirty tenementsof the village. It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering,unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and beggedpiteously. The people of the quarter were not all idiots, of course, butall that begged seemed to be, and were said to be.

  I was thinking of going by skiff to the next town, Necharsteinach; so Iran to the riverside in advance of the party and asked a man there ifhe had a boat to hire. I suppose I must have spoken High German--CourtGerman--I intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me. Iturned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike thatman's average, but failed. He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr.X arrived, faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied thissentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: "Can man boat gethere?"

  The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. I can comprehendwhy he was able to understand that particular sentence, because by mereaccident all the words in it except "get" have the same sound and thesame meaning in German that they have in English; but how he managed tounderstand Mr. X's next remark puzzled me. I will insert it, presently.X turned away a moment, and I asked the mariner if he could not finda board, and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the purestGerman, but I might as well have spoken in the purest Choctaw for allthe good it did. The man tried his best to understand me; he tried, andkept on trying, harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use,and said:

  "There, don't strain yourself--it is of no consequence."

  Then X turned to him and crisply said:

  "MACHEN SIE a flat board."

  I wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man did not answerup at once, and say he would go and borrow a board as soon as he had litthe pipe which he was filling.

  We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have to go. Ihave given Mr. X's two remarks just as he made them. Four of the fivewords in the first one were English, and that they were also German wasonly accidental, not intentional; three out of the five words in thesecond remark were English, and English only, and the two German onesdid not mean anything in particular, in such a connection.

  X always spoke English to Germans, but his plan was to turn the sentencewrong end first and upside down, according to German construction, andsprinkle in a German word without any essential meaning to it, here andthere, by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood. He couldmake those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand him, sometimes, wheneven young Z had failed with them; and young Z was a pretty good Germanscholar. For one thing, X always spoke with such confidence--perhapsthat helped. And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is calledPLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar to their earsthan another man's German. Quite indifferent students of German can readFritz Reuter's charming platt-Deutch tales with some little facilitybecause many of the words are English. I suppose this is the tonguewhich our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them. By and by I willinquire of some other philologist.

  However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men employed tocalk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but onlya crack between the logs--a crack that belonged there, and was notdangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disorderedimagination of the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a gooddegree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. As weswam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, we fell to swappingnotes about manners and customs in Germany and elsewhere.

  As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us, byobserving and noting and inquiring, diligently and day by day, hadmanaged to lay in a most varied and opulent stock of misinformation. Butthis is not surprising; it is very difficult to get accurate details inany country. For example, I had the idea once, in Heidelberg, to findout all about those five student-corps. I started with the White Capcorps. I began to inquire of this and that and the other citizen, andhere is what I found out:

  1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none but Prussians areadmitted to it.

  2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason. It hassimply pleased each corps to name itself after some German state.

  3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only the White CapCorps.

  4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth.

  5. Any student can belong to it who is European by birth.

  6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he be a Frenchman.

  7. Any student can belong to it, no matter where he was born.

  8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood.

  9. No student can belong to it who cannot show three full generations ofnoble descent.

  10. Nobility is not a necessary qualification.

  11. No moneyless student can belong to it.

  12. Money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has never been thoughtof.

  I got some of this information from students themselves--students whodid not belong to the corps.

  I finally went to headquarters--to the White Caps--where I wouldhave gone in the first place if I had been acquainted. But even atheadquarters I found difficulties; I perceived that there were thingsabout the White Cap Corps which one member knew and another one didn't.It was natural; for very few members of any organization know ALL thatcan be known about it. I doubt there is a man or a woman in Heidelbergwho would not answer promptly and confidently three out of every fivequestions about the White Cap Corps which a stranger might ask; yetit is a very safe bet that two of the three answers would be incorrectevery time.

  There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing courteouslyto strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. Thisbow startles a stranger out of his self-possession, the first timeit occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something, in hisembarrassment, but it pleases him, nevertheless. One soon learns toexpect this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it; but tolearn to lead off and make the initial bow one's self is a difficultmatter for a diffident man. One thinks, "If I rise to go, and tender mybow, and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads to ignorethe custom of their nation, and not return it, how shall I feel, in caseI survive to feel anything." Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sitsout the dinner, and makes the strangers rise first and originate thebowing. A table d'hote dinner is a tedious affair for a man who seldomtouches anything after the three first courses; therefore I used to dosome pretty dreary waiting because of my fears. It took me months toassure myself that those fears were groundless, but I did assure myselfat last by experimenting diligently through my agent. I made Harris getup and bow and leave; invariably his bow was returned, then I got up andbowed myself and retired.

  Thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not forHarris. Three courses of a table d'hote dinner were enough for me, butHarris preferred thirteen.

  Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed theagent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties. Once at Baden-BadenI nearly lost a train because I could not be sure that three youngladies opposite me at table were Germans, since I had not heard themspeak; they might be American, they might be English, it was not safeto venture a bow; but just as I had got that far with my thought, one ofthem began a German remark, to my great relief and gratitude; and beforeshe got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciouslyreturned, and we were off.

  There is a friendly something about the German character which is verywinning. When Harris and I were making a pedestrian tour through theBlack Forest, we stopped at a little country inn for dinner one day;two young ladies and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us
.They were pedestrians, too. Our knapsacks were strapped upon our backs,but they had a sturdy youth along to carry theirs for them. All partieswere hungry, so there was no talking. By and by the usual bows wereexchanged, and we separated.

  As we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at Allerheiligen, nextmorning, these young people entered and took places near us withoutobserving us; but presently they saw us and at once bowed and smiled;not ceremoniously, but with the gratified look of people who have foundacquaintances where they were expecting strangers. Then they spoke ofthe weather and the roads. We also spoke of the weather and the roads.Next, they said they had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding theweather. We said that that had been our case, too. Then they said theyhad walked thirty English miles the day before, and asked how many wehad walked. I could not lie, so I told Harris to do it. Harris toldthem we had made thirty English miles, too. That was true; we had "made"them, though we had had a little assistance here and there.

  After breakfast they found us trying to blast some information outof the dumb hotel clerk about routes, and observing that we were notsucceeding pretty well, they went and got their maps and things, andpointed out and explained our course so clearly that even a New Yorkdetective could have followed it. And when we started they spoke out ahearty good-by and wished us a pleasant journey. Perhaps they were moregenerous with us than they might have been with native wayfarers becausewe were a forlorn lot and in a strange land; I don't know; I only knowit was lovely to be treated so.