Every Now And Again, However, Some Song That Touched The Pathos Of
Our Situation Was Given Forth; And You Could Hear By The Voices
That Took Up The Burden How The Sentiment Came Home To Each, 'The
Anchor's Weighed' Was True For Us.
We were indeed 'Rocked on the
bosom of the stormy deep.' How many of us could say with the
singer, 'I'm lonely to-night, love, without you,' or, 'Go, some
one, and tell them from me, to write me a letter from home'!
And
when was there a more appropriate moment for 'Auld Lang Syne' than
now, when the land, the friends, and the affections of that mingled
but beloved time were fading and fleeing behind us in the vessel's
wake? It pointed forward to the hour when these labours should be
overpast, to the return voyage, and to many a meeting in the sanded
inn, when those who had parted in the spring of youth should again
drink a cup of kindness in their age. Had not Burns contemplated
emigration, I scarce believe he would have found that note.
All Sunday the weather remained wild and cloudy; many were
prostrated by sickness; only five sat down to tea in the second
cabin, and two of these departed abruptly ere the meal was at an
end. The Sabbath was observed strictly by the majority of the
emigrants. I heard an old woman express her surprise that 'the
ship didna gae doon,' as she saw some one pass her with a chess-
board on the holy day. Some sang Scottish psalms. Many went to
service, and in true Scottish fashion came back ill pleased with
their divine. 'I didna think he was an experienced preacher,' said
one girl to me.
Is was a bleak, uncomfortable day; but at night, by six bells,
although the wind had not yet moderated, the clouds were all
wrecked and blown away behind the rim of the horizon, and the stars
came out thickly overhead. I saw Venus burning as steadily and
sweetly across this hurly-burly of the winds and waters as ever at
home upon the summer woods. The engine pounded, the screw tossed
out of the water with a roar, and shook the ship from end to end;
the bows battled with loud reports against the billows: and as I
stood in the lee-scuppers and looked up to where the funnel leaned
out, over my head, vomiting smoke, and the black and monstrous top-
sails blotted, at each lurch, a different crop of stars, it seemed
as if all this trouble were a thing of small account, and that just
above the mast reigned peace unbroken and eternal.
STEERAGE SCENES
Our companion (Steerage No. 2 and 3) was a favourite resort. Down
one flight of stairs there was a comparatively large open space,
the centre occupied by a hatchway, which made a convenient seat for
about twenty persons, while barrels, coils of rope, and the
carpenter's bench afforded perches for perhaps as many more. The
canteen, or steerage bar, was on one side of the stair; on the
other, a no less attractive spot, the cabin of the indefatigable
interpreter.
I have seen people packed into this space like herrings in a
barrel, and many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells,
when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all must go to
roost.
It had been rumoured since Friday that there was a fiddler aboard,
who lay sick and unmelodious in Steerage No. 1; and on the Monday
forenoon, as I came down the companion, I was saluted by something
in Strathspey time. A white-faced Orpheus was cheerily playing to
an audience of white-faced women. It was as much as he could do to
play, and some of his hearers were scarce able to sit; yet they had
crawled from their bunks at the first experimental flourish, and
found better than medicine in the music. Some of the heaviest
heads began to nod in time, and a degree of animation looked from
some of the palest eyes. Humanly speaking, it is a more important
matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works
upon recondite subjects. What could Mr. Darwin have done for these
sick women? But this fellow scraped away; and the world was
positively a better place for all who heard him. We have yet to
understand the economical value of these mere accomplishments. I
told the fiddler he was a happy man, carrying happiness about with
him in his fiddle-case, and he seemed alive to the fact.
'It is a privilege,' I said. He thought a while upon the word,
turning it over in his Scots head, and then answered with
conviction, 'Yes, a privilege.'
That night I was summoned by 'Merrily danced the Quake's wife' into
the companion of Steerage No. 4 and 5. This was, properly
speaking, but a strip across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern
which swung to and fro with the motion of the ship. Through the
open slide-door we had a glimpse of a grey night sea, with patches
of phosphorescent foam flying, swift as birds, into the wake, and
the horizon rising and falling as the vessel rolled to the wind.
In the centre the companion ladder plunged down sheerly like an
open pit. Below, on the first landing, and lighted by another
lamp, lads and lasses danced, not more than three at a time for
lack of space, in jigs and reels and hornpipes. Above, on either
side, there was a recess railed with iron, perhaps two feet wide
and four long, which stood for orchestra and seats of honour. In
the one balcony, five slatternly Irish lasses sat woven in a comely
group. In the other was posted Orpheus, his body, which was
convulsively in motion, forming an odd contrast to his somnolent,
imperturbable Scots face. His brother, a dark man with a vehement,
interested countenance, who made a god of the fiddler, sat by with
open mouth, drinking in the general admiration and throwing out
remarks to kindle it.
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