trip, sometimes lasting as long as three years; and
they cannot sign off and receive their discharges
until they reach the home port, which is England.
Their wages are low, their food is bad, and their
treatment worse. Very often they are really forced
by their captains to desert in the New World or
the colonies, leaving a handsome sum of wages
behind them, a distinct gain, either to the captain
or the owners, or to both. But whether for this
reason alone or not, it is a fact that large numbers
of them desert. Then, for the home voyage, the
ship engages whatever sailors it can find on the
beach. These men are engaged at the somewhat
higher wages that obtain in other portions of the
world, under the agreement that they shall sign off on
reaching England. The reason for this is obvious;
for it would be poor business policy to sign them
for any longer time, since seamen s wages are low
in England, and England is always crowded with
sailormen on the beach. So this fully accounted
for the American seamen at the Salvation Army
barracks. To get off the beach in other outlandish
places they had come to England, and gone on the
beach in the most outlandish place of all.

There were fully a score of Americans in the
crowd, the non-sailors being tramps royal, the men
whose mate is the wind that tramps the world.
They were all cheerful, facing things with the pluck

[[126]]

p125 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p126w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p127

v?