Essays of Travel | Page 9

brother, who directed his talk to me for some little while,
keeping, I need hardly mention, true to his topic, like the seamen to the
star. 'He's grand of it,' he said confidentially. 'His master was a
music-hall man.' Indeed the music-hall man had left his mark, for our
fiddler was ignorant of many of our best old airs; 'Logie o' Buchan,' for
instance, he only knew as a quick, jigging figure in a set of quadrilles,
and had never heard it called by name. Perhaps, after all, the brother
was the more interesting performer of the two. I have spoken with him
afterwards repeatedly, and found him always the same quick, fiery bit
of a man, not without brains; but he never showed to such advantage as
when he was thus squiring the fiddler into public note. There is nothing
more becoming than a genuine admiration; and it shares this with love,
that it does not become contemptible although misplaced.
The dancing was but feebly carried on. The space was almost
impracticably small; and the Irish wenches combined the extreme of
bashfulness about this innocent display with a surprising impudence
and roughness of address. Most often, either the fiddle lifted up its
voice unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be footing it and
snapping fingers on the landing. And such was the eagerness of the

brother to display all the acquirements of his idol, and such the sleepy
indifference of the performer, that the tune would as often as not be
changed, and the hornpipe expire into a ballad before the dancers had
cut half a dozen shuffles.
In the meantime, however, the audience had been growing more and
more numerous every moment; there was hardly standing-room round
the top of the companion; and the strange instinct of the race moved
some of the newcomers to close both the doors, so that the atmosphere
grew insupportable. It was a good place, as the saying is, to leave.
The wind hauled ahead with a head sea. By ten at night heavy sprays
were flying and drumming over the forecastle; the companion of
Steerage No. 1 had to be closed, and the door of communication
through the second cabin thrown open. Either from the convenience of
the opportunity, or because we had already a number of acquaintances
in that part of the ship, Mr. Jones and I paid it a late visit. Steerage No.
1 is shaped like an isosceles triangle, the sides opposite the equal
angles bulging outward with the contour of the ship. It is lined with
eight pens of sixteen bunks apiece, four bunks below and four above on
either side. At night the place is lit with two lanterns, one to each table.
As the steamer beat on her way among the rough billows, the light
passed through violent phases of change, and was thrown to and fro and
up and down with startling swiftness. You were tempted to wonder, as
you looked, how so thin a glimmer could control and disperse such
solid blackness. When Jones and I entered we found a little company of
our acquaintances seated together at the triangular foremost table. A
more forlorn party, in more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to
imagine. The motion here in the ship's nose was very violent; the
uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the
lantern spun round and round and tossed the shadows in masses. The
air was hot, but it struck a chill from its foetor.
From all round in the dark bunks, the scarcely human noises of the sick
joined into a kind of farmyard chorus. In the midst, these five friends of
mine were keeping up what heart they could in company. Singing was
their refuge from discomfortable thoughts and sensations. One piped, in
feeble tones, 'Oh why left I my hame?' which seemed a pertinent
question in the circumstances. Another, from the invisible horrors of a
pen where he lay dog-sick upon the upper-shelf, found courage, in a

blink of his sufferings, to give us several verses of the 'Death of Nelson';
and it was odd and eerie to hear the chorus breathe feebly from all sorts
of dark corners, and 'this day has done his dooty' rise and fall and be
taken up again in this dim inferno, to an accompaniment of plunging,
hollow-sounding bows and the rattling spray-showers overhead.
All seemed unfit for conversation; a certain dizziness had interrupted
the activity of their minds; and except to sing they were tongue-tied.
There was present, however, one tall, powerful fellow of doubtful
nationality, being neither quite Scotsman nor altogether Irish, but of
surprising clearness of conviction on the highest problems. He had
gone nearly beside himself on the Sunday, because of a general
backwardness