remorsefully admiring, cheered him
up by appearing on the platform of the station to wish him God-speed.

"Next year in Jerusalem!" he prophesied for them, too, recouping
himself for the poulterer's profane scepticism.

He went overland to Marseilles, thence by ship to Asia Minor. It was
a terrible journey. Piety forebade him to eat or drink with the
heathen, or from their vessels. His portmanteau held a little store of
provisions and crockery, and dry bread was all he bought on the route.

Fleeced and bullied by touts and cabmen, he found himself at last on
board a cheap Mediterranean steamer which pitched and rolled through a
persistent spell of stormy weather. His berth was a snatched corner of
the bare deck, where heaps of earth's failures, of all races and
creeds and colors, grimily picturesque, slept in their clothes upon
such bedding as they had brought with them. There was a spawn of
babies, a litter of animals and fowls in coops, a swarm of human
bundles, scarcely distinguishable from bales except for a protruding
hand or foot. There were Bedouins, Armenians, Spaniards, a Turk with
several wives in an improvised tent, some Greek women, a party of
Syrians from Mount Lebanon. There were also several Jews of both
sexes. But Aaron did not scrape acquaintance with these at first--they
lay yards away, and he was half dead with sea-sickness and want of
food. He had counted on making tea in his own cup with his own little
kettle, but the cook would not trouble to supply him with hot water.
Only the great vision drawing hourly nearer and nearer sustained him.

It was the attempt of a half-crazy Egyptian Jewess to leap overboard
with her new-born child that brought him into relation with the other
Jewish passengers. He learnt her story: the everyday story of a woman
divorced in New York, after the fashion of its Ghetto, and sent back
with scarcely a penny to her native Cairo, while still lightheaded
after childbirth. He heard also the story of the buxom, kind-hearted
Jewess who now shadowed her protectingly; the no less everyday story
of the good-looking girl inveigled by a rascally Jew to a situation in
Marseilles. They contributed with the men, a Russian Jew from
Chicago, and a German from Brindisi, to give Aaron of Manchester a new
objective sense of the tragedy of wandering Israel, interminably
tossed betwixt persecution and poverty, perpetually tempted by both to
be false to themselves: the tragedy that was now-