The port doctor refused to allow our baggage to go aboard, as it was fraudulently passed; but in the end I got it into his dull head that if he did as he threatened, kept us there to testify, and held our baggage for evidence, he would not get any testimony from us; and when sufficient consular pressure had been brought to bear to show him that we had been parties to the fraud in order to catch the counterfeiters and make the case, he relinquished his hold on us and our belongings. We found sixty-eight other pieces of baggage, with the fraudulent labels on, in the enclosure. They could be told by a slight imperfection in the red labels. The yellow counterfeits of the United States seals were perfect. At last we were free to go aboard. CHAPTER XIV THE VOYAGE Struggling up the steep incline of the gangplank, set from the masonry of the quay of the Capitaneria of the port of Naples to the gap in the railing of the after deck of the _Prinzessin Irene_, came hundreds of men, women, and children, one and all weighted with luggage. Some staggered under the weight of great cloth-wrapped bundles; others lugged huge valises by the grass ropes which kept them from bursting open because of their flimsy construction; and even the tots carried fibre-baskets of fruit, straw-cased flasks of wine, cheese forms looped with string, and small rush-bottomed chairs for deck sitting, bought on the quay for twenty cents each, or home-made ones from the villages. There were people of all the bloods of southern Europe, though the southern Italian predominated in the shipload, just as they predominate in every shipload from Mediterranean and even from French ports at times. His nose and upper lip wrinkled up with too much sunlight, there came an Oriental youth, nominally a Turk, probably a hybrid, and in addition to a fez and a pair of yellow slippers his array was naught but an embroidered jacket and a pair of voluminous silk trousers. I found myself wondering what the temperature in New York would be on the 14th of October, the day we were due.