Liz and Nellie

by Shonna Slayton

  After completing my toilet, I lie on the bed in the dark. Faint rhythmic breathings of the music come to my chamber window. It is in moments like this that I marvel anew that I am traveling alone around the world. The quick decisions that went into such a feat!

  What if Charles Wetmore meets a smartly-gowned blond girl of his own while I am gone, for surely there are parties galore to choose from in New York?

  At the same time, there is something romantic about changing over to a new year when one is on an adventure such as this. It is an experience I will always look back on in awe.

  The night is hot and silent – full of musky perfumes, of vague ghostly stirrings, of “old unhappy far-off things,” that move one with poignant mysterious memories. At some point, I feel myself drifting away from the old year and know I will wake up in the new.

  MORNING! – THE NEW year is coming in a beautiful green dawn. A chrysoberyl sky, translucent golden green, a misty green sea, and an ocean of feathery green plumes tossing noiselessly, as with a great silent joy, in the morning wind.

  I have sprung out of bed to receive a letter – my first one from home. A few lines, scrawled on the other side of the world, that I lean from the window to read in the faint early light. How beautiful they make the new year seem.

  Blessed Molly. She calculated where I would be and timed the letter perfectly. I forgive her for all the fun she is having at home without me. Whatever this coming year will contain of grief and rebuffs, at least it has begun with one good moment, and for that it is well to be grateful.

  At Ceylon the Australian mail-ship Britannia waits for us. She is one of the enormous Peninsular and Oriental vessels built in Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee year and is on her way home to England.

  Here again farewells: to the dear little old lady from Boston and to my kind and charming friend the Ceylon tea-planter, who has placed me under an endless debt of gratitude by his many courtesies.

  “Remember,” says Mrs. Kelly. “Visit me in Boston, and we will walk in the Commons together.”

  “Yours is an offer difficult to resist,” I tell her. “I’ll have to wait and see what my next assignment is when I get home.” I walk with the crowd to the Britannia and turn to give my friends one last farewell wave. We have made many memories together.

  It is four o'clock in the afternoon of the 1st of January when we swing out of the harbor and direct our course towards Africa. Africa!

  The height of luxury is achieved on these Peninsular and Oriental steamships. No steerage travel being provided for, space is not stinted to first-class passengers. Saloons, decks, and bedrooms are ample and handsome. The ship's company, Australians on their way home to England, have made themselves thoroughly at home for the six weeks' cruise.

  Their rooms they have hung with photographs and drapery and bits of bric-à-brac, and on deck each one has a long bamboo lounging-chair, a little table, and a tea-service for that beautiful ceremony of five-o'clock tea – all being made possible by the fact that the sea is smooth as glass and the decks level as a drawing room floor.

  A particularly friendly matron known by the name of Mrs. Detmold stops me as I am touring the ship. She is elegant with her silver hair pulled up and tucked into a straw hat banded with a navy ribbon.

  “Are you alone?” she asks. “You must join me for this afternoon tea.”

  After I agree, she explains where I will find her. Then she adds, “I will introduce you to our favorite person on board.” She smiles and her eyes dance. “You might have your heart stolen away.”

  “Oh?” I reply. I am not sure that I am prepared for such a happening. The lady from Boston harbored a small wish that her son would steal my heart, but it seems my heart is not so easily lost.

  After learning both the layout of the vessel and the list of entertainments: three times a week, the band plays for dancing on deck; tableaux, private theatricals, and fancy balls fill the evenings, and in the afternoons the after-part of the ship is lively with games of cricket, I go to afternoon tea.

  I meet Mrs. Detmold where she is holding court on deck and soon discover that the principal personage on board is not this graceful woman, nor an eligible young man as I had supposed, but a grandchild, Miss Ethel Roma Detmold, aged two and a half years, and familiarly known as Baby Detmold.

  There are other infants aboard, but merely “the common or garden” baby, not to be mentioned with this blue-and-gold girl child who sparkles out upon us a morning vision in a white frock and an enigmatic smile.

  “Lellow hat!” she exclaims, showing me her grandmother’s bonnet.

  At that simple declaration, I have joined her merry band of followers and know this portion of my trip will be delightful.

  Watching her for the smallest amount of time, I learn the entire male force of the ship is her slave, and trailing about after her, humbly suing for favors she is most cautious in granting, she possessing already the secret of power over her kind in an airy, joyous indifference to anyone's attentions and services, which we therefore persist in thrusting upon her.

  The cook makes a rare appearance, bringing up his pet chicken to be admired. “Would you like to hold her?” he asks. Baby Detmold watches carefully as several people attempt to meet the chicken, who forthwith flies away. Then, laughing with glee, she lunges for the chicken, which allows itself to be hauled about by one leg and then squeezed violently to her youthful bosom, and, far from protesting, looks foolishly flattered by the notice of this imperious cherub.

  All women are not borne free and equal. There is some subtle force in this tiny turquoise-eyed coquette which will secure for her without effort, her life through, devotion other women may not win with endless sacrifices or oceans of tears.

  Always above and below us it is intensely blue, hot, and calm. Flights of film-winged fishes rise from our path and flit away like flocks of sea-sparrows. Sometimes a whale blows up a column of shining spray and leaves a green wake to show his hidden path. But nothing marks the passing of the hours save the coming and going of light.

  When the azure blossom of the day dies in irised splendors, rosy clouds float up over the horizon's edge like wandering fairy islands drifting at will in a golden world – vanishing when the moon appears.

  Magical white nights of ineffable stillness and purity fade into the blaze of daffodil dawns. Time goes by in lotus dreams that have no memory of a past or reckoning of a future 'til we wake suddenly and find anchor cast in the Gulf of Aden.

  Red barren masses of stone, broken and jagged “like an old lion's cheek teeth.” The land is astonishing dry, all the more startling by contrast with the fierce verdure of the lands we have last seen. Not a drop of rain has fallen here in three years, and no green thing lives in the place.

  Even the tawny hills rot and fall to dust. The earth is an impalpable dun powder that no roots could grasp; the rocks are seamed, cracked, and withered to the heart, the dust and bones of a dead land.

  As a coaling station and harbor from which warships may guard the entrance of the Red Sea, Aden is valuable; and therefore, like Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang, Ceylon – like everything much worth having in this part of the world – it is an English possession.

  There are wharves of heavy masonry; the governor's residence, a bungalow with a large veranda protected by green shutters, standing on a little eminence some distance back from the water; and one narrow street of heavy white stone houses with flat roofs, fringing the shore.

  The Detmolds hire a carriage to convey us to the Tanks – the only bit of sightseeing to be done at Aden. These Tanks are of unknown antiquity and are variously attributed to Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, the Arabs, and – as a last guess – to the Phoenicians.

  Historians, when in doubt, always accuse the Phoenicians.

  In this rainless region, where water falls only at intervals of years, it was necessary to collect and preserve it all, and someone built among the hills huge stone basins with capacity of hundreds of thousands of gallons.
These basins are quite perfect still, though the name of the faithful builder thereof has long ago perished.

  The road winds upward from the sea to a barrier of rocks, and pierces them with a black echoing pass two hundred feet high and fifteen wide, where the English fortifications lie – a place to be held by twenty men against an army. Here we find Tommy Atkins again, still clad in white linen from top to toe and still rosily swaggering.

  “Miss.” One especially young example tilts his hat at me as I walk past.

  On the other side of the wall of hills is the town, a motley assemblage of more flat-topped stone dwellings, all lime-washed as white as snow. In the midst is a well where women in flowing drapery with tall jars draw water as if posing for Bible illustrations and a camel market in which fifty or more of the brown, ungainly beasts have been relieved of their burdens and lain down for the night – doubled into uncomfortable heaps.

  The camels are a curiosity for Baby Detmold, and she squeals with delight until they answer her back with bubbling and moaning of querulous discontent. She nestles her little face into her granny’s puffed sleeves, and we love her all the more.

  We rattle through the silent, dusty town and find beyond it a garden where a dozen feeble trees have by constant watering been induced to grow as high as our heads, but appear discouraged and drooping and ready to give up the effort at any moment.

  Behind these are the irregular bowls of masonry set in the clefts at the foot of the rocks, and stretching enormous thirsty mouths open to the arid hills and rainless sky. The tanks are terraced down the sides with steps by which the retreating water – when there is water – can be followed.

  “We see only thirteen tanks today,” says our guide. “Though there were many more in the past. The British have restored these ones here, hoping to use them as they were once used to gather the water and protect the town from flooding. However, their restored nature did not live up to everyone’s hopes. Instead, the people here rely on the condensing-engine and the inexhaustible supply of the sea.”

  Night is coming on. There is a crystalline luminosity in this dry air that the vanished sun leaves faintly golden-green. Every fold and crevice of the red rock wall overflows with intense violet shadows that still are full of light.

  There is no evening mistiness of vision: the little flat white town, the shore, the turbaned figures moving to and fro in the streets, the ships afloat on the glassy sea, the tawny outline of the rocks – all standing out with keen clearness through the deepening of the twilight.

  So might have looked some Syrian evening of long ago, and, as if to answer the thought, there slowly lifts itself above the crest of the hills, in the green dusk, a huge white planet – the Star in the East!

  The dusk has vanished when we reach the wharf for our return to the ship – “At one stride comes the dark” just as in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and suddenly, in an instant, innumerable glittering hosts rush into the heavens with a wild, astonishing splendor, startling as the blare of trumpets, unimaginable myriads, unreckonable millions.

  As our oars dip, the water answers with equal multitudes of wan sea-stars that whirl and wimple through the flood. Our guide suggests that we return to the Tanks again by moonlight. “You are already here,” he says. “I can assure you that those who see the Tanks by night speak of their unending beauty when they return home.”

  Though I am unsure if our guide’s desire is for us to see the Tanks by a different light, or to ensure his livelihood, I agree to go again. For he is correct on one account. I am here, and soon I will be home and will not have the chance again.

  When the silver fire of a full moon, by whose light one can read and see colors, has swallowed up this glittering pageant, we go again to the Tanks – this time without Baby Detmold, who is sleeping – passing on the route a loaded train of camels lurching away to the desert through the black shadows of the pass, and, stepping beside them, lean, swarthy Arabs, draped stately in white – such a caravan as might have gone down into Egypt to buy corn from Pharaoh four thousand years ago – nothing in the interval changed in any way.

  Our footsteps and our voices echo in hollow whispers from the empty Tanks and the mysterious shadows of the hills, though we walk lightly and speak softly, awed by the vast calm radiance of the African night. Other than this, it is very silent in this dead and desert spot: not a leaf to rustle, not an insect to cry – and even the sea has no speech. The world grows dreamlike and unreal in the white silence.

  We should feel no surprise to come suddenly among the rocks upon a gaunt Hebrew with wild eyes, clothed in skins, and wrestling in the desert with the old unsolvable riddles of existence – a prophet whose scorching words should wither away in one terrible instant all the falsities and frivolities of our lives, leaving us gaping aghast in the awful visage of Truth.

  Nor should we start to hear the thin, high voice of a wandering lad with the shadow of a crown above his brow, who should come chanting psalms of longing for green pastures and still waters.

  It is a night and a place for such things as these, and I am glad I chose to bear witness.

  The town, beyond which shines the silver sea, is white as pearls in the moonlight, with here and there a yellow gleam from a lamp through an open door. The population is gathered in the square playing dominoes and games of chance at little tables and drinking coffee – liquor being forbidden to these Mohammedans. There are bearded Arabs with delicate features and grave, sad eyes, who fold their white woolen cloaks called burnouses about them with a wonderful effect of dignity, and more jovial and half-naked Negroes of every tint and race – from Zanzibar, the Sudan, Abyssinia.

  The Sudanese with beardless mouths full of ivory teeth and long wool combed straight out and vividly red, made so by being plastered down for a week under a coat of lime. Egypt and England know well how these men fight; yet when I lean forward and take into my hand the little case of camel-skin hanging on the muscular black breast of one of these gigantic Africans, and ask “What is in here?” he laughs the same mellow, amiable laugh I should hear from a Negro at home on the plantation, did I show a like familiarity and interest. “Verses from the Koran.”

  Our way home lies through a tunnel beneath the fort. The port is fast asleep, and in the distance a man-of-war is slowly steaming out of the harbor on its way to the lower coast to over-awe the Portuguese making futile protests against English domination in the neighborhood of Delagoa Bay.

  Quite in a moment it seems, it is tomorrow – our last day in the tropics – and I go up on deck before the sun has risen, into the delicious moist warmth of the equatorial morning.

  A young man is lounging in one of the bamboo chairs in a negligee of India silk – drinking a tiny cup of coffee and enjoying the early freshness. No one else is visible.

  I hesitate a moment, conscious of the dishevelment of locks beneath the lace scarf tied under my chin, but think better of the hesitation and remain. I may never see this again, this world, where one is really for the first time “Lord of the senses five,” as Tennyson suggests – where the light of night and of day have a new meaning; where one is drenched and steeped in color and perfume; where the husk of callous dullness falls away and every sense replies to impressions with a keenness as of new-born faculties.

  The young man's silky black head is ruffled too, and his yellow eyes still sleepy as he comes and leans over the rail. He is holding a little black pipe in a slim olive hand that is tipped with deep-tinted onyx-like nails, and with it he points to the first canoe putting out from shore. It is a long brown boat, very narrow, and filled with oranges heaped up in the centre. It is cutting a delicate furrow along the pearly lilac of the glass-like sea.

  A faint gray mist, scarcely more than a film, lies along the shore. Above it the red rocks stand up sharply against the white sky, which the coming sun is changing to gold.

  The young man turns and smiles, showing a row of white teeth through lips as red as pomegranate flowers. He is Engl
ish, but takes on here certain warm tones of color like a Spaniard.

  Every moment I have spent in the tropics is to me just as vivid as this. I see everything. Not a beauty, not a touch of color, escapes me. Every moment of the day means intense delight, beauty, life, and I don’t regret my decision to race around the world. It is well to have thus once really lived.

  Soon, the deck swarms with native merchants selling ostrich feathers, grass mats and baskets from Zanzibar, ornaments of shells, boxes of Turkish Delight, embroideries, photographs, and a three-months-old lion cub in a wooden cage.

  The Bombay mail, for which we waited, has arrived, and new passengers come ashore with mountains of luggage. Among them is a man with a heavy, smooth, pink face, an overhanging upper lip and long white hair.

  “Do you know who that is?” asks a man I recognize from our trip to the Tanks, a soft-spoken Mr. Goodman.

  “I’m sure you will tell me.”

  “It is Bradlaugh, the famous atheist. He fought the whole House of Commons and forced it to admit him without taking the oath.”

  “And who is that with him?” I ask, testing his superior knowledge.

  “His colleague, Sir William Wedderburn. He is a Scotch baronet whose heart is overflowing with vague tenderness for all mankind.” He waved his hand as if dismissing the baronet. “They are returning from India. Some such congress of natives agitating for representative government. But do you know who we are really waiting for?”

  “I cannot imagine.”

  “Why, Mr. Stanley!”

  “Mr. Henry Stanley?” His was a name I recognized. A fellow American journalist made famous for finding the missionary Dr. Livingstone. “What has he been doing?”