wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery - that every
plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water
in the great ocean its howling voice - is nothing. To say that all
is grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is
nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it.
Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury, rage, and
passion.
And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in a
situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as strong
a sense of its absurdity as I have now, and could no more help
laughing than I can at any other comical incident, happening under
circumstances the most favourable to its enjoyment. About midnight
we shipped a sea, which forced its way through the skylights, burst
open the doors above, and came raging and roaring down into the
ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a
little Scotch lady - who, by the way, had previously sent a message
to the captain by the stewardess, requesting him, with her
compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the
top of every mast, and to the chimney, in order that the ship might
not be struck by lightning. They and the handmaid before
mentioned, being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew
what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some
restorative or comfortable cordial; and nothing better occurring to
me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and-water, I procured a tumbler
full without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without
holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long
sofa - a fixture extending entirely across the cabin - where they
clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned.
When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to
administer it with many consolatory expressions to the nearest
sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to
the other end! And when I staggered to that end, and held out the
glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by
the ship giving another lurch, and their all rolling back again! I
suppose I dodged them up and down this sofa for at least a quarter
of an hour, without reaching them once; and by the time I did catch
them, the brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to
a teaspoonful. To complete the group, it is necessary to recognise
in this disconcerted dodger, an individual very pale from seasickness,
who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair, last, at
Liverpool: and whose only article of dress (linen not included)
were a pair of dreadnought trousers; a blue jacket, formerly
admired upon the Thames at Richmond; no stockings; and one slipper.
Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next morning; which
made bed a practical joke, and getting up, by any process short of
falling out, an impossibility; I say nothing. But anything like
the utter dreariness and desolation that met my eyes when I
literally 'tumbled up' on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky
were all of one dull, heavy, uniform, lead colour. There was no
extent of prospect even over the dreary waste that lay around us,
for the sea ran high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large
black hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it
would have been imposing and stupendous, no doubt; but seen from
the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily and
painfully. In the gale of last night the life-boat had been
crushed by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell; and there it
hung dangling in the air: a mere faggot of crazy boards. The
planking of the paddle-boxes had been torn sheer away. The wheels
were exposed and bare; and they whirled and dashed their spray
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about the decks at random. Chimney, white with crusted salt;
topmasts struck; storm-sails set; rigging all knotted, tangled,
wet, and drooping: a gloomier picture it would be hard to look
upon.
I was now comfortably established by courtesy in the ladies' cabin,
where, besides ourselves, there were only four other passengers.
First, the little Scotch lady before mentioned, on her way to join
her husband at New York, who had settled there three years before.
Secondly and thirdly, an honest young Yorkshireman, connected with
some American house; domiciled in that same city, and carrying
thither his beautiful young wife to whom he had been married but a
fortnight, and who was the fairest specimen of a comely English
country girl I have ever seen. Fourthy, fifthly, and lastly,
another couple: newly married too, if one might judge from the
endearments they frequently interchanged: of whom I know no more
than that they were rather a mysterious, run-away kind of couple;
that the lady had great personal attractions also; and that the
gentleman carried more guns with him than Robinson Crusoe, wore a
shooting-coat, and had two great dogs on board. On further
consideration, I remember that he tried hot roast pig and bottled
ale as a cure for sea-sickness; and that he took these remedies
(usually in bed) day after day, with astonishing perseverance. I
may add, for the information of the curious, that they decidedly
failed.
The weather continuing obstinately and almost unprecedentedly bad,
we usually straggled into this cabin, more or less faint and
miserable, about an hour before noon, and lay down on the sofas to
recover; during which interval, the captain would look in to
communicate the state of the wind, the moral certainty of its
changing to-morrow (the weather is always going to improve tomorrow,
at sea), the vessel's rate of sailing, and so forth.
Observations there were none to tell us of, for there was no sun to
take them by. But a description of one day will serve for all the
rest. Here it is.
The captain being gone, we compose ourselves to read, if the place
be light enough; and if not, we doze and talk alternately. At one,
a bell rings, and the stewardess comes down with a steaming dish of
baked potatoes, and another of roasted apples; and plates of pig's
face, cold ham, salt beef; or perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot
collops. We fall to upon these dainties; eat as much as we can (we
have great appetites now); and are as long as possible about it.
If the fire will burn (it WILL sometimes) we are pretty cheerful.
If it won't, we all remark to each other that it's very cold, rub
our hands, cover ourselves with coats and cloaks, and lie down
again to doze, talk, and read (provided as aforesaid), until
dinner-time. At five, another bell rings, and the stewardess
reappears with another dish of potatoes - boiled this time - and
store of hot meat of various kinds: not forgetting the roast pig,
to be taken medicinally. We sit down at table again (rather more
cheerfully than before); prolong the meal with a rathe
r mouldy
dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges; and drink our wine and
brandy-and-water. The bottles and glasses are still upon the
table, and the oranges and so forth are rolling about according to
their fancy and the ship's way, when the doctor comes down, by
special nightly invitation, to join our evening rubber:
immediately on whose arrival we make a party at whist, and as it is
a rough night and the cards will not lie on the cloth, we put the
tricks in our pockets as we take them. At whist we remain with
exemplary gravity (deducting a short time for tea and toast) until
eleven o'clock, or thereabouts; when the captain comes down again,
in a sou'-wester hat tied under his chin, and a pilot-coat: making
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the ground wet where he stands. By this time the card-playing is
over, and the bottles and glasses are again upon the table; and
after an hour's pleasant conversation about the ship, the
passengers, and things in general, the captain (who never goes to
bed, and is never out of humour) turns up his coat collar for the
deck again; shakes hands all round; and goes laughing out into the
weather as merrily as to a birthday party.
As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. This
passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at Vingt-et-un
in the saloon yesterday; and that passenger drinks his bottle of
champagne every day, and how he does it (being only a clerk),
nobody knows. The head engineer has distinctly said that there
never was such times - meaning weather - and four good hands are
ill, and have given in, dead beat. Several berths are full of
water, and all the cabins are leaky. The ship's cook, secretly
swigging damaged whiskey, has been found drunk; and has been played
upon by the fire-engine until quite sober. All the stewards have
fallen down-stairs at various dinner-times, and go about with
plasters in various places. The baker is ill, and so is the
pastry-cook. A new man, horribly indisposed, has been required to
fill the place of the latter officer; and has been propped and
jammed up with empty casks in a little house upon deck, and
commanded to roll out pie-crust, which he protests (being highly
bilious) it is death to him to look at. News! A dozen murders on
shore would lack the interest of these slight incidents at sea.
Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we were
running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the fifteenth
night, with little wind and a bright moon - indeed, we had made the
Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in charge - when
suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of mud. An immediate rush on
deck took place of course; the sides were crowded in an instant;
and for a few minutes we were in as lively a state of confusion as
the greatest lover of disorder would desire to see. The
passengers, and guns, and water-casks, and other heavy matters,
being all huddled together aft, however, to lighten her in the
head, she was soon got off; and after some driving on towards an
uncomfortable line of objects (whose vicinity had been announced
very early in the disaster by a loud cry of 'Breakers a-head!') and
much backing of paddles, and heaving of the lead into a constantly
decreasing depth of water, we dropped anchor in a strange
outlandish-looking nook which nobody on board could recognise,
although there was land all about us, and so close that we could
plainly see the waving branches of the trees.
It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and the dead
stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and unexpected
stoppage of the engine which had been clanking and blasting in our
ears incessantly for so many days, to watch the look of blank
astonishment expressed in every face: beginning with the officers,
tracing it through all the passengers, and descending to the very
stokers and furnacemen, who emerged from below, one by one, and
clustered together in a smoky group about the hatchway of the
engine-room, comparing notes in whispers. After throwing up a few
rockets and firing signal guns in the hope of being hailed from the
land, or at least of seeing a light - but without any other sight
or sound presenting itself - it was determined to send a boat on
shore. It was amusing to observe how very kind some of the
passengers were, in volunteering to go ashore in this same boat:
for the general good, of course: not by any means because they
thought the ship in an unsafe position, or contemplated the
possibility of her heeling over in case the tide were running out.
Nor was it less amusing to remark how desperately unpopular the
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poor pilot became in one short minute. He had had his passage out
from Liverpool, and during the whole voyage had been quite a
notorious character, as a teller of anecdotes and cracker of jokes.
Yet here were the very men who had laughed the loudest at his
jests, now flourishing their fists in his face, loading him with
imprecations, and defying him to his teeth as a villain!
The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry blue lights on
board; and in less than an hour returned; the officer in command
bringing with him a tolerably tall young tree, which he had plucked
up by the roots, to satisfy certain distrustful passengers whose
minds misgave them that they were to be imposed upon and
shipwrecked, and who would on no other terms believe that he had
been ashore, or had done anything but fraudulently row a little way
into the mist, specially to deceive them and compass their deaths.
Our captain had foreseen from the first that we must be in a place
called the Eastern passage; and so we were. It was about the last
place in the world in which we had any business or reason to be,
but a sudden fog, and some error on the pilot's part, were the
cause. We were surrounded by banks, and rocks, and shoals of all
kinds, but had happily drifted, it seemed, upon the only safe speck
that was to be found thereabouts. Eased by this report, and by the
assurance that the tide was past the ebb, we turned in at three
o'clock in the morning.
I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when the noise above
hurried me on deck. When I had left it overnight, it was dark,
foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all round us. Now, we
were gliding down a smooth, broad stream, at the rate of eleven
miles an hour: our colours flying gaily; our crew rigged out in
their smartest clothes; our officers in uniform again; the sun
shining as on a brilliant April day in England; the land stretched
out on either side, streaked with light patches of snow; white
wooden houses; people at their doors; telegraphs working; flags
hoisted; wharfs appearing; ships; quays crowded with people;
distant noises; shouts; men and boys running down steep places
towards the pier: a
ll more bright and gay and fresh to our unused
eyes than words can paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with
uplifted faces; got alongside, and were made fast, after some
shouting and straining of cables; darted, a score of us along the
gangway, almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us, and before
it had reached the ship - and leaped upon the firm glad earth
again!
I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, though it
had been a curiosity of ugly dulness. But I carried away with me a
most pleasant impression of the town and its inhabitants, and have
preserved it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that I came
home, without having found an opportunity of returning thither, and
once more shaking hands with the friends I made that day.
It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council and
General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed on the
commencement of a new Session of Parliament in England were so
closely copied, and so gravely presented on a small scale, that it
was like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a
telescope. The governor, as her Majesty's representative,
delivered what may be called the Speech from the Throne. He said
what he had to say manfully and well. The military band outside
the building struck up "God save the Queen" with great vigour
before his Excellency had quite finished; the people shouted; the
in's rubbed their hands; the out's shook their heads; the
Government party said there never was such a good speech; the
Opposition declared there never was such a bad one; the Speaker and
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members of the House of Assembly withdrew from the bar to say a
great deal among themselves and do a little: and, in short,
everything went on, and promised to go on, just as it does at home
upon the like occasions.
The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being
commanded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. Several
streets of good breadth and appearance extend from its summit to
the water-side, and are intersected by cross streets running
parallel with the river. The houses are chiefly of wood. The
market is abundantly supplied; and provisions are exceedingly
cheap. The weather being unusually mild at that time for the
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