Harsh Are The Words Of Mercury After The Songs Of Apollo!
We were
a long while over the problem, shaking our heads and gloomily
wondering how a man could be such a fool; but at length he put us
out of suspense and divulged the fact that C and P stood for
Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate.
I think it must have been the riddle that settled us; but the
motion and the close air likewise hurried our departure. We had
not been gone long, we heard next morning, ere two or even three
out of the five fell sick. We thought it little wonder on the
whole, for the sea kept contrary all night. I now made my bed upon
the second cabin floor, where, although I ran the risk of being
stepped upon, I had a free current of air, more or less vitiated
indeed, and running only from steerage to steerage, but at least
not stagnant; and from this couch, as well as the usual sounds of a
rough night at sea, the hateful coughing and retching of the sick
and the sobs of children, I heard a man run wild with terror
beseeching his friend for encouragement. 'The ship 's going down!'
he cried with a thrill of agony. 'The ship's going down!' he
repeated, now in a blank whisper, now with his voice rising towards
a sob; and his friend might reassure him, reason with him, joke at
him - all was in vain, and the old cry came back, 'The ship's going
down!' There was something panicky and catching in the emotion of
his tones; and I saw in a clear flash what an involved and hideous
tragedy was a disaster to an emigrant ship. If this whole
parishful of people came no more to land, into how many houses
would the newspaper carry woe, and what a great part of the web of
our corporate human life would be rent across for ever!
The next morning when I came on deck I found a new world indeed.
The wind was fair; the sun mounted into a cloudless heaven; through
great dark blue seas the ship cut a swath of curded foam. The
horizon was dotted all day with companionable sails, and the sun
shone pleasantly on the long, heaving deck.
We had many fine-weather diversions to beguile the time. There was
a single chess-board and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as many
as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. Feats of
dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence, some arithmetical, some of
the same order as the old problem of the fox and goose and cabbage,
were always welcome; and the latter, I observed, more popular as
well as more conspicuously well done than the former. We had a
regular daily competition to guess the vessel's progress; and
twelve o'clock, when the result was published in the wheel-house,
came to be a moment of considerable interest. But the interest was
unmixed. Not a bet was laid upon our guesses. From the Clyde to
Sandy Hook I never heard a wager offered or taken. We had,
besides, romps in plenty. Puss in the Corner, which we had
rebaptized, in more manly style, Devil and four Corners, was my own
favourite game; but there were many who preferred another, the
humour of which was to box a person's ears until he found out who
had cuffed him.
This Tuesday morning we were all delighted with the change of
weather, and in the highest possible spirits. We got in a cluster
like bees, sitting between each other's feet under lee of the deck-
houses. Stories and laughter went around. The children climbed
about the shrouds. White faces appeared for the first time, and
began to take on colour from the wind. I was kept hard at work
making cigarettes for one amateur after another, and my less than
moderate skill was heartily admired. Lastly, down sat the fiddler
in our midst and began to discourse his reels, and jigs, and
ballads, with now and then a voice or two to take up the air and
throw in the interest of human speech.
Through this merry and good-hearted scene there came three cabin
passengers, a gentleman and two young ladies, picking their way
with little gracious titters of indulgence, and a Lady-Bountiful
air about nothing, which galled me to the quick. I have little of
the radical in social questions, and have always nourished an idea
that one person was as good as another. But I began to be troubled
by this episode. It was astonishing what insults these people
managed to convey by their presence. They seemed to throw their
clothes in our faces. Their eyes searched us all over for tatters
and incongruities. A laugh was ready at their lips; but they were
too well-mannered to indulge it in our hearing. Wait a bit, till
they were all back in the saloon, and then hear how wittily they
would depict the manners of the steerage. We were in truth very
innocently, cheerfully, and sensibly engaged, and there was no
shadow of excuse for the swaying elegant superiority with which
these damsels passed among us, or for the stiff and waggish glances
of their squire. Not a word was said; only when they were gone
Mackay sullenly damned their impudence under his breath; but we
were all conscious of an icy influence and a dead break in the
course of our enjoyment.
STEERAGE TYPES
We had a fellow on board, an Irish-American, for all the world like
a beggar in a print by Callot; one-eyed, with great, splay crow's-
feet round the sockets; a knotty squab nose coming down over his
moustache; a miraculous hat; a shirt that had been white, ay, ages
long ago; an alpaca coat in its last sleeves; and, without
hyperbole, no buttons to his trousers. Even in these rags and
tatters, the man twinkled all over with impudence like a piece of
sham jewellery; and I have heard him offer a situation to one of
his fellow-passengers with the air of a lord.
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