"And no accident up to now?
"No accident."
"And what may be in those cases, if you please?
"In those cases? Ah! There is the thirty-seventh!" he exclaimed, and he ran out to meet a truck which had just come onto the quay.
There was a good deal of bustle about, and all the animation of departures and arrivals. Baku is the most frequented and the safest port on the Caspian. Derbent, situated more to the north, cannot keep up with it, and it absorbs almost the entire maritime traffic of this sea, or rather this great lake which has no communication with the neighboring seas. The establishment of Uzun Ada on the opposite coast has doubled the trade which used to pa.s.s through Baku. The Transcaspian now open for pa.s.sengers and goods is the chief commercial route between Europe and Turkestan.
In the near future there will perhaps be a second route along the Persian frontier connecting the South Russian railways with those of British India, and that will save travelers the navigation of the Caspian. And when this vast basin has dried up through evaporation, why should not a railroad be run across its sandy bed, so that trains can run through without transhipment at Baku and Uzun Ada?
While we are waiting for the realization of this desideratum, it is necessary to take the steamboat, and that I am preparing to do in company with many others.
Our steamer is called the _Astara_, of the Caucasus and Mercury Company. She is a big paddle steamer, making three trips a week from coast to coast. She is a very roomy boat, designed to carry a large cargo, and the builders have thought considerably more of the cargo than of the pa.s.sengers. After all, there is not much to make a fuss about in a day"s voyage.
There is a noisy crowd on the quay of people who are going off, and people who have come to see them off, recruited from the cosmopolitan population of Baku. I notice that the travelers are mostly Turkomans, with about a score of Europeans of different nationalities, a few Persians, and two representatives of the Celestial Empire. Evidently their destination is China. .
The _Astara_ is loaded up. The hold is not big enough, and a good deal of the cargo has overflowed onto the deck. The stern is reserved for pa.s.sengers, but from the bridge forward to the topgallant forecastle, there is a heap of cases covered with tarpaulins to protect them from the sea.
There Ephrinell"s cases have been put. He has lent a hand with Yankee energy, determined not to lose sight of his valuable property, which is in cubical cases, about two feet on the side, covered with patent leather, carefully strapped, and on which can be read the stenciled words, "Strong, Bulbul & Co., Now York."
"Are all your goods on board?" I asked the American.
"There is the forty-second case just coming," he replied.
And there was the said case on the back of a porter already coming along the gangway.
It seemed to me that the porter was rather tottery, owing perhaps to a lengthy absorption of vodka.
"Wait a bit!" shouted Ephrinell. Then in good Russian, so as to be better understood, he shouted:
"Look out! Look out!"
It is good advice, but it is too late. The porter has just made a false step. The case slips from his shoulders, falls--luckily over the rail of the _Astara_--breaks in two, and a quant.i.ty of little packets of paper scatter their contents on the deck.
What a shout of indignation did Ephrinell raise! What a whack with his fist did he administer to the unfortunate porter as he repeated in a voice of despair: "My teeth, my poor teeth!"
And he went down on his knees to gather up his little bits of artificial ivory that were scattered all about, while I could hardly keep from laughing.
Yes! It was teeth which Strong, Bulbul & Co., of New York made! It was for manufacturing five thousand cases a week for the five parts of the world that this huge concern existed! It was for supplying the dentists of the old and new worlds; it was for sending teeth as far as China, that their factory required fifteen hundred horse power, and burned a hundred tons of coal a day! That is quite American!
After all, the population of the globe is fourteen hundred million, and as there are thirty-two teeth per inhabitant, that makes forty-five thousand millions; so that if it ever became necessary to replace all the true teeth by false ones, the firm of Strong, Bulbul & Co. would not be able to supply them.
But we must leave Ephrinell gathering up the odontological treasures of the forty-second case. The bell is ringing for the last time. All the pa.s.sengers are aboard. The _Astara_ is casting off her warps.
Suddenly there are shouts from the quay. I recognize them as being in German, the same as I had heard at Tiflis when the train was starting for Baku.
It is the same man. He is panting, he runs, he cannot run much farther.
The gangway has been drawn ash.o.r.e, and the steamer is already moving off. How will this late comer get on board?
Luckily there is a rope out astern which still keeps the _Astara_ near the quay. The German appears just as two sailors are manoeuvring with the fender. They each give him a hand and help him on board.
Evidently this fat man is an old hand at this sort of thing, and I should not be surprised if he did not arrive at his destination.
However, the _Astara_ is under way, her powerful paddles are at work, and we are soon out of the harbor.
About a quarter of a mile out there is a sort of boiling, agitating the surface of the sea, and showing some deep trouble in the waters. I was then near the rail on the starboard quarter, and, smoking my cigar, was looking at the harbor disappearing behind the point round Cape Apcheron, while the range of the Caucasus ran up into the western horizon.
Of my cigar there remained only the end between my lips, and taking a last whiff, I threw it overboard.
In an instant a sheet of flame burst out all round the steamer The boiling came from a submarine spring of naphtha, and the cigar end had set it alight.
Screams arise. The _Astara_ rolls amid sheaves of flame; but a movement of the helm steers us away from the flaming spring, and we are out of danger.
The captain comes aft and says to me in a frigid tone:
"That was a foolish thing to do."
And I reply, as I usually reply under such circ.u.mstances:
"Really, captain, I did not know--"
"You ought always to know, sir!"
These words are uttered in a dry, cantankerous tone a few feet away from me.
I turn to see who it is.
It is the Englishwoman who has read me this little lesson.
CHAPTER IV.
I am always suspicious of a traveler"s "impressions." These impressions are subjective--a word I use because it is the fashion, although I am not quite sure what it means. A cheerful man looks at things cheerfully, a sorrowful man looks at them sorrowfully. Democritus would have found something enchanting about the banks of the Jordan and the sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea. Herac.l.i.tus would have found something disagreeable about the Bay of Naples and the beach of the Bosphorus. I am of a happy nature--you must really pardon me if I am rather egotistic in this history, for it is so seldom that an author"s personality is so mixed up with what he is writing about--like Hugo, Dumas, Lamartine, and so many others. Shakespeare is an exception, and I am not Shakespeare--and, as far as that goes, I am not Lamartine, nor Dumas, nor Hugo.
However, opposed as I am to the doctrines of Schopenhauer and Leopardi, I will admit that the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian did seem rather gloomy and dispiriting. There seemed to be nothing alive on the coast; no vegetation, no birds. There was nothing to make you think you were on a great sea. True, the Caspian is only a lake about eighty feet below the level of the Mediterranean, but this lake is often troubled by violent storms. A ship cannot "get away," as sailors say: it is only about a hundred leagues wide. The coast is quickly reached eastward or westward, and harbors of refuge are not numerous on either the Asiatic or the European side.
There are a hundred pa.s.sengers on board the _Astara_--a large number of them Caucasians trading with Turkestan, and who will be with us all the way to the eastern provinces of the Celestial Empire.
For some years now the Transcaspian has been running between Uzun Ada and the Chinese frontier. Even between this part and Samarkand it has no less than sixty-three stations; and it is in this section of the line that most of the pa.s.sengers will alight. I need not worry about them, and I will lose no time in studying them. Suppose one of them proves interesting, I may pump him and peg away at him, and just at the critical moment he will get out.
No! All my attention I must devote to those who are going through with me. I have already secured Ephrinell, and perhaps that charming Englishwoman, who seems to me to be going to Pekin. I shall meet with other traveling companions at Uzun Ada. With regard to the French couple, there is nothing more at present, but the pa.s.sage of the Caspian will not be accomplished before I know something about them.
There are also these two Chinamen who are evidently going to China. If I only knew a hundred words of the "Kouan-hoa," which is the language spoken in the Celestial Empire, I might perhaps make something out of these curious guys. What I really want is some personage with a story, some mysterious hero traveling _incognito_, a lord or a bandit. I must not forget my trade as a reporter of occurrences and an interviewer of mankind--at so much a line and well selected. He who makes a good choice has a good chance.
I go down the stairs to the saloon aft. There is not a place vacant.
The cabins are already occupied by the pa.s.sengers who are afraid of the pitching and rolling. They went to bed as soon as they came on board, and they will not get up until the boat is alongside the wharf at Uzun Ada. The cabins being full, other travelers have installed themselves on the couches, amid a lot of little packages, and they will not move from there.