Essays of Travel | Page 6

better that the lad should break
his neck than that you should break his spirit.
And since I am here on the chapter of the children, I must mention one
little fellow, whose family belonged to Steerage No. 4 and 5, and who,
wherever he went, was like a strain of music round the ship. He was an
ugly, merry, unbreeched child of three, his lint- white hair in a tangle,
his face smeared with suet and treacle; but he ran to and fro with so
natural a step, and fell and picked himself up again with such grace and
good-humour, that he might fairly be called beautiful when he was in
motion. To meet him, crowing with laughter and beating an
accompaniment to his own mirth with a tin spoon upon a tin cup, was
to meet a little triumph of the human species. Even when his mother
and the rest of his family lay sick and prostrate around him, he sat
upright in their midst and sang aloud in the pleasant heartlessness of
infancy.
Throughout the Friday, intimacy among us men made but a few
advances. We discussed the probable duration of the voyage, we
exchanged pieces of information, naming our trades, what we hoped to
find in the new world, or what we were fleeing from in the old; and,
above all, we condoled together over the food and the vileness of the
steerage. One or two had been so near famine that you may say they
had run into the ship with the devil at their heels; and to these all
seemed for the best in the best of possible steamers. But the majority
were hugely contented. Coming as they did from a country in so low a
state as Great Britain, many of them from Glasgow, which
commercially speaking was as good as dead, and many having long
been out of work, I was surprised to find them so dainty in their notions.
I myself lived almost exclusively on bread, porridge, and soup,
precisely as it was supplied to them, and found it, if not luxurious, at
least sufficient. But these working men were loud in their outcries. It
was not 'food for human beings,' it was 'only fit for pigs,' it was 'a
disgrace.' Many of them lived almost entirely upon biscuit, others on
their own private supplies, and some paid extra for better rations from
the ship. This marvellously changed my notion of the degree of luxury
habitual to the artisan. I was prepared to hear him grumble, for
grumbling is the traveller's pastime; but I was not prepared to find him

turn away from a diet which was palatable to myself. Words I should
have disregarded, or taken with a liberal allowance; but when a man
prefers dry biscuit there can be no question of the sincerity of his
disgust.
With one of their complaints I could most heartily sympathise. A single
night of the steerage had filled them with horror. I had myself suffered,
even in my decent-second-cabin berth, from the lack of air; and as the
night promised to be fine and quiet, I determined to sleep on deck, and
advised all who complained of their quarters to follow my example. I
dare say a dozen of others agreed to do so, and I thought we should
have been quite a party. Yet, when I brought up my rug about seven
bells, there was no one to be seen but the watch. That chimerical terror
of good night- air, which makes men close their windows, list their
doors, and seal themselves up with their own poisonous exhalations,
had sent all these healthy workmen down below. One would think we
had been brought up in a fever country; yet in England the most
malarious districts are in the bedchambers.
I felt saddened at this defection, and yet half-pleased to have the night
so quietly to myself. The wind had hauled a little ahead on the
starboard bow, and was dry but chilly. I found a shelter near the
fire-hole, and made myself snug for the night.
The ship moved over the uneven sea with a gentle and cradling
movement. The ponderous, organic labours of the engine in her bowels
occupied the mind, and prepared it for slumber. From time to time a
heavier lurch would disturb me as I lay, and recall me to the obscure
borders of consciousness; or I heard, as it were through a veil, the clear
note of the clapper on the brass and the beautiful sea-cry, 'All's well!' I
know nothing, whether for poetry or music, that can surpass the effect
of these two syllables in the darkness of a night at sea.
The day dawned fairly enough, and during the early part we had some
pleasant