Post Haste | Page 8

a
side-table, had twisted his right foot into the loop of the
window-curtains, had fallen back, and hung, head downwards, howling.
Having been comforted with bread and treacle, and put to bed, the
committee meeting was resumed.
"Well, then," said Phil, consulting his paper again, "I give up the

superannuation advantages. Then, as to wages, seven shillings a week,
rising to eight shillings after one year's service. Why, it's a fortune! Any
man at my age can live on sixpence a day easy--that's three-and-six,
leaving three-and-six a week clear for you, mother. Then there's a
uniform; just think o' that!"
"I wonder what sort of uniform it is," said Madge.
"A red coat, Madge, and blue trousers with silver lace and a brass
helmet, for certain--"
"Don't talk nonsense, boy," interrupted Mrs Maylands, "but go on with
the paper."
"Oh! there's nothing more worth mentioning," said Phil, folding the
paper, "except that boy-messengers, if they behave themselves, have a
chance of promotion to boy-sorterships,
indoor-telegraph-messengerships, junior sorterships, and
letter-carrierships, on their reaching the age of seventeen, and, I
suppose, secretaryships, and postmaster-generalships, with a baronetcy,
on their attaining the age of Methuselah. It's the very thing for me,
mother, so I'll be off to-morrow if--"
Phil was cut short by the bursting open of the door and the sudden
entrance of his friend George Aspel.
"Come, Phil," he cried, blazing with excitement, "there's a wreck in the
bay. Quick! there's no time to lose."
The boy leaped up at once, and dashed out after his friend.
It was evening. The gale, which had blown for two days was only
beginning to abate. Dark clouds were split in the western sky by gleams
of fiery light as the sun declined towards its troubled ocean-bed.
Hurrying over the fields, and bending low to the furious blast, Aspel
and Philip made their way to the neighbouring cliffs. But before we
follow them, reader, to the wave-lashed shore, it is necessary, for the

satisfactory elucidation of our tale, that we should go backward a short
way in time, and bound forward a long way into space.
CHAPTER FOUR.
THE ROYAL MAIL STEAMER.
Out, far out on the mighty sea, a large vessel makes her way gallantly
over the billows--homeward bound.
She is a Royal Mail steamer from the southern hemisphere--the
Trident--and a right royal vessel she looks with her towering iron hull,
and her taper masts, and her two thick funnels, and her trim rigging,
and her clean decks--for she has an awning spread over them, to guard
from smoke as well as from sun.
There is a large family on board of the Trident, and, like all other large
families, its members display marked diversities of character. They also
exhibit, like not a few large families, remarkable diversities of temper.
Among them there are several human magnets with positive and
negative poles, which naturally draw together. There are also human
flints and steels which cannot come into contact without striking fire.
When the Trident got up steam, and bade adieu to the Southern Cross,
there was no evidence whatever of the varied explosives and
combustibles which she carried in her after-cabin. The fifty or sixty
passengers who waved kerchiefs, wiped their eyes, and blew their
noses, at friends on the receding shore, were unknown to each other;
they were intent on their own affairs. When obliged to jostle each other
they were all politeness and urbanity.
After the land had sunk on the horizon the intro-circumvolutions of a
large family, or rather a little world, began. There was a birth on board,
an engagement, ay, and a death; yet neither the interest of the first, nor
the romance of the second, nor the solemnity of the last, could check
for more than a few hours the steady development of the family
characteristics of love, modesty, hate, frivolity, wisdom, and silliness.

A proportion of the passengers were, of course, nobodies, who aspired
to nothing greater than to live and let live, and who went on the even
tenor of their way, without much change, from first to last. Some of
them were somebodies who, after a short time, began to expect the
recognition of that fact. There were ambitious bodies who, in some
cases, aimed too high, and there were unpretending-bodies who
frequently aimed too low. There were also selfish-bodies who, of
course, thought only of themselves--with, perhaps, a slight passing
reference to those among the after-cabin passengers who could give
them pleasure, and there were self-forgetting-bodies who turned their
thoughts frequently on the ship, the crew, the sea, the solar system, the
Maker of the universe. These also thought of their fellow-passengers in
the fore-cabin, who of course had a little family or world of their own,
with its similar joys, and sins, and sorrows, before