This was my first insight into the subtleties of trade, and I noted with loyal anger, in my father's interest, how contemptuously the dealer belittled our books in buying them, and how eloquently he dilated upon their special values in selling back to us those my father found he could not spare. In every case these volumes were rare and hard to come by, greatly in demand, 'the pick of the basket,' and so forth. Well, I suppose that is commerce. At the time it seemed to me amply to justify all my father's lofty scorn and hatred for everything in any way connected with business.
If only the book-dealer could have adopted Mr. Fennel's praiseworthy attitude, I thought: 'Pray don't put yourself about, sir, on my account, I beg.' But then, Mr. Fennel, I make no doubt, was heading straight for bankruptcy. I have sought his name in vain among Putney's modern tradesfolk. Whereas, Mr. Siemens, the gentleman who bought our library, apart from his various thriving establishments in London, now cherishes his declining years, I believe, in a villa in the Italian Riviera, and a manor house in Hampshire. Though young, when I met him in Putney, he evidently had the root of the matter in him, from a commercial point of view, and was possibly even a little in advance of his time in the matter of business ability. He drove a very smart horse, I remember, was dressed smartly, and had a smart way of saying that business was business. Yes, I dare say Mr. Siemens was more a man of his time than my poor father.
It was on the afternoon of May 2, 1870, the day after my tenth birthday, that we sailed from Gravesend for Sydney, in the full-rigged clipper ship Ariadne, of London, with one hundred and forty-seven other emigrants and eighteen first-class passengers. It was, I suppose, a part of my father's enthusiastically desperate state of mind at this time that we were booked as steerage passengers. We were to lay aside finally all the effete uses of sophisticated life. We were emigrants, bent upon carving a home for ourselves out of the virgin wilderness. Naturally, we were to travel in the steerage. And, indeed, I have good reason to suppose that my father's supply of money must have been pretty low at the time. But we occupied a first-class railway carriage on the journey down to Gravesend; and I know our porter received a bright half-crown for his services to us, for my father's hands were occupied, and the coin was passed to me for bestowal.
Long before the tug left us, we sat down to our first meal on board; perhaps a hundred of us together. A weary poor woman with two babies was on my left, and a partly intoxicated man of the coal-heaving sort (very likely a Cabinet Minister in Australia to-day) on my father's right. This simple soul made the mistake of endeavouring to establish an affectionate friendship with my father, who was sufficiently resentful of the man's mere proximity, and received his would-be genial advances with the most freezing politeness. But the event which precipitated a crisis was the coal-heaver's removal of his knife from his mouth--the dexterity with which his kind can manipulate these lethal weapons, even when partly intoxicated, is little less than miraculous--after the safe discharge there of some succulent morsel from his plate, to plunge it direct into the contents of the butter-dish before my father.
Black wrath descended upon my father's face as he rose from the table, and drew me up beside him. 'Insufferable!' he muttered, as we left that curious place for the first and last time. I see it now with its long, narrow, uncovered tables, stretching between clammy iron stanchions, and supported by iron legs fitting into sockets in the deck. It was lighted by hanging lanterns which threw queer, moving shadows in all directions, and stank consumedly.
'Are we hogs that we should be given our swill in such a sty?' asked my father, explosively, of some subordinate member of the crew whom we met as we reached the open deck.
'I dunno, matey,' replied this innocent. 'Feelin' sickish, are ye? You've started too soon.'
'Yes, I'm feeling pretty sick,' said my father, as the glimmer of the humorous side of it all touched his mind. 'Look here, my man,' he continued, 'here's half a crown for you. I want to see the purser of this ship. Just show me where I can find him, like a good fellow, will you?'
We found the purser in that condition of harassment which appears to belong, like its uniform, to his post, when a ship is clearing the land. He was inclined at first to adopt a pretty short way with us. He really didn't know what emigrants wanted these days. Did they think a ship's steerage was a ho-tel? And so forth.
But my father was on his mettle now, and handled his man with considerable skill and suavity. There was no second-class accommodation on the ship. But in the end we were taken into the first-class ranks, at a substantial reduction from the full first-class fares, on the understanding that we contented ourselves with a somewhat gloomy little single-berth cabin which no one else wanted. Here a makeshift bed was presently arranged for me, and within the hour we emigrants from the steerage had become first-class passengers. The translation brought such obvious and real relief to my father that my own spirits rose instantly; I began to take great interest in our surroundings, and, from that moment, entirely forgot those prophetic internal twinges, those stomachic forebodings which, in the 'other place,' as politicians say, had begun to turn my thoughts toward the harrowing tales I had heard of sea-sickness.