“If that is so,” she answered, “you had better get another job, for you are not fit to handle even wild animals, let alone kind-hearted, sensitive people like these, who are not to be blamed if everything, even your speech, is strange to them.” [Illustration: Rushing Immigrants on Barges—Inspectors and Immigrants at Ellis Island] CHAPTER XVIII THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND Cooped up in the barge, we waited till the sun got down into the smoke of Bayonne and Elizabeth and was a great red ball only, so dull that the eye could contemplate it pleasantly. Then came the shadows of night, and we began to dread that our turn to be disembarked would come so late that we should either be taken back to the steamer or be kept on the island until morning. Myriads of lights were shining in the great buildings. Each time the old ferry-boat floundered across from the Battery it brought a crowd of friends of immigrants who had been summoned from New York and elsewhere to meet the newly arrived ones. All the races of Europe seemed to be represented in the crowds on the ferry-boat as it passed close to us when bound back to the Battery. The babies had sobbed themselves to sleep, worn-out mothers sat with their heads drooped on the children they held to their breasts, and among the men mirth and song had died away, though now and then a voice would be heard inquiring if any one knew when or where we would get something to eat. “All ready for the last _Irenes_,” sang out a voice somewhere in the darkness up by the buildings, and there was a clatter of feet overhead and on the wharf. The doors of the barge were opened. The barge hands dragged out the plank. The ropes restraining the crowd were dropped, and the weary hundreds, shouldering their baggage yet once again, poured out of the barge on to the wharf. Knowing the way, I led those of our group who were with my wife and myself straight to the covered approach to the grand entrance to the building, and the strange assemblage of Old World humanity streamed along behind us, an interesting procession indeed. When we came to the doorway I halted our section, and we piled the baggage and waited. Antonio had all the papers for the Squadritos, and with him also was Salvatore Biajo, who, thanks to the short-change game worked on him by the draft-sellers at Naples, must have some money advanced to him before we got inside. If the officials there saw me giving him money they would want to know about it, and I did not wish to attract attention to myself. Antonio and Camela were meantime madly hunting us about the wharf, and just as the official at the doorway had ordered us to go on in, regardless of the others, each party caught sight of the other.