'That's A Bonny Hornpipe Now,' He Would Say, 'it's A Great
Favourite With Performers; They Dance The Sand Dance To It.' And
He Expounded The Sand Dance.
Then suddenly, it would be a long,
'Hush!' with uplifted finger and glowing, supplicating eyes, 'he's
going to play "Auld Robin Gray" on one string!' And throughout
this excruciating movement, - 'On one string, that's on one string!'
he kept crying.
I would have given something myself that it had
been on none; but the hearers were much awed. I called for a tune
or two, and thus introduced myself to the notice of the brother,
who directed his talk to me for some little while, keeping, I need
hardly mention, true to his topic, like the seamen to the star.
'He's grand of it,' he said confidentially. 'His master was a
music-hall man.' Indeed the music-hall man had left his mark, for
our fiddler was ignorant of many of our best old airs; 'Logie o'
Buchan,' for instance, he only knew as a quick, jigging figure in a
set of quadrilles, and had never heard it called by name. Perhaps,
after all, the brother was the more interesting performer of the
two. I have spoken with him afterwards repeatedly, and found him
always the same quick, fiery bit of a man, not without brains; but
he never showed to such advantage as when he was thus squiring the
fiddler into public note. There is nothing more becoming than a
genuine admiration; and it shares this with love, that it does not
become contemptible although misplaced.
The dancing was but feebly carried on. The space was almost
impracticably small; and the Irish wenches combined the extreme of
bashfulness about this innocent display with a surprising impudence
and roughness of address. Most often, either the fiddle lifted up
its voice unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be footing it
and snapping fingers on the landing. And such was the eagerness of
the brother to display all the acquirements of his idol, and such
the sleepy indifference of the performer, that the tune would as
often as not be changed, and the hornpipe expire into a ballad
before the dancers had cut half a dozen shuffles.
In the meantime, however, the audience had been growing more and
more numerous every moment; there was hardly standing-room round
the top of the companion; and the strange instinct of the race
moved some of the newcomers to close both the doors, so that the
atmosphere grew insupportable. It was a good place, as the saying
is, to leave.
The wind hauled ahead with a head sea. By ten at night heavy
sprays were flying and drumming over the forecastle; the companion
of Steerage No. 1 had to be closed, and the door of communication
through the second cabin thrown open. Either from the convenience
of the opportunity, or because we had already a number of
acquaintances in that part of the ship, Mr. Jones and I paid it a
late visit. Steerage No. 1 is shaped like an isosceles triangle,
the sides opposite the equal angles bulging outward with the
contour of the ship. It is lined with eight pens of sixteen bunks
apiece, four bunks below and four above on either side. At night
the place is lit with two lanterns, one to each table. As the
steamer beat on her way among the rough billows, the light passed
through violent phases of change, and was thrown to and fro and up
and down with startling swiftness. You were tempted to wonder, as
you looked, how so thin a glimmer could control and disperse such
solid blackness. When Jones and I entered we found a little
company of our acquaintances seated together at the triangular
foremost table. A more forlorn party, in more dismal
circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion here in the
ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often
overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round
and round and tossed the shadows in masses. The air was hot, but
it struck a chill from its foetor.
From all round in the dark bunks, the scarcely human noises of the
sick joined into a kind of farmyard chorus. In the midst, these
five friends of mine were keeping up what heart they could in
company. Singing was their refuge from discomfortable thoughts and
sensations. One piped, in feeble tones, 'Oh why left I my hame?'
which seemed a pertinent question in the circumstances. Another,
from the invisible horrors of a pen where he lay dog-sick upon the
upper-shelf, found courage, in a blink of his sufferings, to give
us several verses of the 'Death of Nelson'; and it was odd and
eerie to hear the chorus breathe feebly from all sorts of dark
corners, and 'this day has done his dooty' rise and fall and be
taken up again in this dim inferno, to an accompaniment of
plunging, hollow-sounding bows and the rattling spray-showers
overhead.
All seemed unfit for conversation; a certain dizziness had
interrupted the activity of their minds; and except to sing they
were tongue-tied. There was present, however, one tall, powerful
fellow of doubtful nationality, being neither quite Scotsman nor
altogether Irish, but of surprising clearness of conviction on the
highest problems. He had gone nearly beside himself on the Sunday,
because of a general backwardness to indorse his definition of mind
as 'a living, thinking substance which cannot be felt, heard, or
seen' - nor, I presume, although he failed to mention it, smelt.
Now he came forward in a pause with another contribution to our
culture.
'Just by way of change,' said he, 'I'll ask you a Scripture riddle.
There's profit in them too,' he added ungrammatically.
This was the riddle-
C and P
Did agree
To cut down C;
But C and P
Could not agree
Without the leave of G;
All the people cried to see
The crueltie
Of C and P.
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