in an old indecent anecdote got no welcome; nobody
answered. The poor man hadn’t wit enough
to see that he had blundered, but asked his question
again. Again there was no response. It
was embarrassing for him. In his confusion he
chose the wrong course, did the wrong thing—began
the anecdote. Began it in a deep and hostile
stillness, where had been such life and stir and warm
comradeship before. He delivered himself of the
brief details of the diary’s first day, and did
it with some confidence and a fair degree of eagerness.
It fell flat. There was an awkward pause.
The two rows of men sat like statues. There
was no movement, no sound. He had to go on;
there was no other way, at least none that an animal
of his calibre could think of. At the close of
each day’s diary, the same dismal silence followed.
When at last he finished his tale and sprung the
indelicate surprise which is wont to fetch a crash
of laughter, not a ripple of sound resulted.
It was as if the tale had been told to dead men.
After what seemed a long, long time, somebody sighed,
somebody else stirred in his seat; presently, the men
dropped into a low murmur of confidential talk, each
with his neighbor, and the incident was closed.
There were indications that that man was fond of his
anecdote; that it was his pet, his standby, his shot
that never missed, his reputation-maker. But
he will never tell it again. No doubt he will
think of it sometimes, for that cannot well be helped;
and then he will see a picture, and always the same
picture—the double rank of dead men; the
vacant deck stretching away in dimming perspective
beyond them, the wide desert of smooth sea all abroad;
the rim of the moon spying from behind a rag of black
cloud; the remote top of the mizzenmast shearing a
zigzag path through the fields of stars in the deeps
of space; and this soft picture will remind him of
the time that he sat in the midst of it and told his
poor little tale and felt so lonesome when he got through.
Fifty Indians and Chinamen asleep in a big tent in
the waist of the ship forward; they lie side by side
with no space between; the former wrapped up, head
and all, as in the Indian streets, the Chinamen uncovered;
the lamp and things for opium smoking in the center.
A passenger said it was ten 2-ton truck loads of dynamite
that lately exploded at Johannesburg. Hundreds
killed; he doesn’t know how many; limbs picked
up for miles around. Glass shattered, and roofs
swept away or collapsed 200 yards off; fragment of
iron flung three and a half miles.
It occurred at 3 p.m.; at 6, L65,000 had been subscribed.
When this passenger left, L35,000 had been voted
by city and state governments and L100,000 by citizens
and business corporations. When news of the
disaster was telephoned to the Exchange L35,000 were
subscribed in the first five minutes. Subscribing
was still going on when he left; the papers had ceased
the names, only the amounts—too many names;
not enough room. L100,000 subscribed by companies
and citizens; if this is true, it must be what they
call in Australia “a record”—the
biggest instance of a spontaneous outpour for charity
in history, considering the size of the population
it was drawn from, $8 or $10 for each white resident,
babies at the breast included.