“Eheu!”
The homeward-bound mail steamer had hauled out from the Cape Town docks, and lay moored to the jetty. In less than an hour she would cast loose and start upon her voyage to Old England.
The funnel of the Siberian shone like a newly blacked boot, as did her plated sides, glistening with a coating of fresh paint. Her scuttles flashed like eyes in the sun, and the gleam of her polished brasswork was such as to cause semi-blindness for five minutes after you looked at it. The white pennon of the Union Steamship Company with its red Saint Andrew’s cross fluttered at one tapering masthead; at the other the blue peter.
On board of her all was wild confusion. Her decks were crowded with passengers and their friends seeing them off, the latter outnumbering the former six to one; with hawkers of curios and hawkers of books; with quay porters and stewards bringing on and receiving passengers’ luggage; with innumerable hat-boxes, and wraps, and hold-alls, and other loose gear; with squalling and rampageous children; with flurried and excited females rushing hither and thither, and getting into everybody’s way while besieging every soul—from the chief officer to the cook’s boy—with frantic inquiries. The Babel of tongues was deafening, and over and above all the harassing rattle of the donkey engine lowering luggage into the hold. And to swell the clamouring crowd, an endless procession of cabs, driven by broad-hatted Malays, came dashing up to the jetty—laden with passengers and band-boxes and bananas and other truck of nondescript character.
Moving among the throng upon the ship’s decks vere two ladies—one elderly, plethoric, matronly; the other young, vivacious, tastefully attired, and in short a very beautiful girl. Many a male glance was cast at her, accompanied by an aspiration—spoken or unspoken—that she was going to sail, and was not one of the “seeing-off” contingent.
“Don’t you think, Violet,” said the elder lady, “we’d better go down to your cabin now? They’ll have taken your luggage there by this time.”
“Not yet, Mrs Aldridge. I can still see my brown portmanteau among that heap for the hold. I want to see it go down myself, and be sure of it. Besides, there must be some more of my things under that pile of boxes.”
“What a fine ship that New Zealand boat is!” said the old lady, looking at a large steamer anchored out in the bay and surrounded by a swarm of tiny craft, depleted or added to by a continuous string of boats between it and the shore. She, too, was flying the blue peter.
“Isn’t she!” acquiesced Violet. “She’s the Rangatira, and is nearly a thousand tons larger than the Siberian. I wonder if she’ll be the first to start. Ah! there goes my portmanteau. Now I think we may go below.”
The crowd in the saloon was not less dense than that on the decks, certainly not less noisy. Champagne corks were popping in all directions. Every table, every lounge was crowded. Stewards were skurrying hither and thither with their trays of bottles and glasses, steering their way with marvellous dexterity among the people, harassed by a chorus of orders, expostulations, objurgations from expectant or disappointed passengers. Groups were making merry, and pledging each other in foaming bumpers, the “seeing-off” contingent in particular making special play with the sparkling “gooseberry,” all chattering, talking, laughing. The din was deafening, but the two ladies managed to thread their way through it at last.