On Having Clambered Over The Ship's Side And Found Myself On Deck, I Was
Somewhat Taken Aback With The Apparently
Inextricable confusion of
everything on board; the slush upon the decks, the crying, the kissing,
the mustering of the passengers,
The stowing away of baggage still left
upon the decks, the rain and the gloomy sky created a kind of half-
amusing, half-distressing bewilderment, which I could plainly see to be
participated in by most of the other landsmen on board. Honest country
agriculturists and their wives were looking as though they wondered what
it would end in; some were sitting on their boxes and making a show of
reading tracts which were being presented to them by a serious-looking
gentleman in a white tie; but all day long they had perused the first
page only, at least I saw none turn over the second.
And so the afternoon wore on, wet, cold, and comfortless - no dinner
served on account of the general confusion. The emigration commissioner
was taking a final survey of the ship and shaking hands with this, that,
and the other of the passengers. Fresh arrivals kept continually
creating a little additional excitement - these were saloon passengers,
who alone were permitted to join the ship at Gravesend. By and by a
couple of policemen made their appearance and arrested one of the party,
a London cabman, for debt. He had a large family, and a subscription
was soon started to pay the sum he owed. Subsequently, a much larger
subscription would have been made in order to have him taken away by
anybody or anything.
Little by little the confusion subsided. The emigration commissioner
left; at six we were at last allowed some victuals. Unpacking my books
and arranging them in my cabin filled up the remainder of the evening,
save the time devoted to a couple of meditative pipes. The emigrants
went to bed, and when, at about ten o'clock, I went up for a little time
upon the poop, I heard no sound save the clanging of the clocks from the
various churches of Gravesend, the pattering of rain upon the decks, and
the rushing of the river as it gurgled against the ship's side.
Early next morning the cocks began to crow vociferously. We had about
sixty couple of the oldest inhabitants of the hen-roost on board, which
were intended for the consumption of the saloon passengers - a destiny
which they have since fulfilled: young fowls die on shipboard, only old
ones standing the weather about the line. Besides this, the pigs began
grunting and the sheep gave vent to an occasional feeble bleat, the only
expression of surprise or discontent which I heard them utter during the
remainder of their existence, for now, alas! they are no more. I
remember dreaming I was in a farmyard, and woke as soon as it was light.
Rising immediately, I went on deck and found the morning calm and sulky-
-no rain, but everything very wet and very grey.
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