Would come a
heavy wave against the ship's side, close to my ears, as if trying the
strength of her timbers.
Crash! crash! as we occasionally shipped heavy
seas, would the waves burst over the lofty bulwarks, and with a fall of
seven feet at once come thundering down on the deck above. Then one sound
asserted its claim to be heard over all the others - a sound as if our
decks were being stove - a gun or some other heavy body had broken loose,
and could not be secured. The incessant groaning, splitting, and heaving,
and the roar of the water through the scuppers, as it found a tardy egress
from the deluged deck, was the result of merely a "head-wind" and "an ugly
night."
Late on the second evening of our voyage, I walked on deck. It was the
"fag-end" of a gale, and the rain was pouring down upon the slippery
planks. Brightly a skyrocket whizzed upwards from a distant ship, and
burst in a shower of flame, followed by two others, signalling our old
acquaintance the Canada, bound from Liverpool to Boston. We sent up some
fireworks in return, and soon lost sight of the friendly light on her
paddle-box. She was the only ship that we saw till we reached the Irish
coast.
With some of the other passengers, I was on deck at five in the morning,
to see the lights on the heads of Halifax harbour. It was dark and
intensely cold and wet. A shower of rain had frozen on deck during the
night, and as it began to melt the water ran off in little sooty rills.
Slowly, shivering figures came on deck, men in envelopes of fur, and
oilskin capes and coats, with teeth chattering with cold, with wrinkled
brows, and blue cold noses. And slowly lightened the clear eastern sky,
and the crescent moon and stars disappeared one by one, and gradually the
low pine-clad hills of Nova Scotia stood out in dark relief against the
light, when, all of a sudden, "like a glory, the broad sun" rose behind
the purple moorlands, and soon hill and town and lake-like bay were bathed
in the cold glow of a winter sunrise. It was now half-past seven - the
morning-gun had boomed from the citadel, and, in honour of such an
important event as the arrival of the European steamer, it might have been
supposed that the inhabitants of the quiet town of Halifax would have been
astir. In this idea a Scotch friend and I stepped ashore with the
intention of visiting an Indian curiosity-shop. In dismal contrast to the
early habits which prevail in the American cities, where sleep is yielded
to as a necessity, instead of being indulged in as a luxury, we found the
shops closed, and, except the people immediately connected with the
steamer, none were stirring in the streets but ragged negroes and squalid-
looking Indians.
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